Sister Sam

I used to always joke about becoming a nun whenever I failed at maintaining any kind of social life. It was kind of one of those things like “Man, I love pizza” and then someone would say “Well, why don’t you marry it then?” For me it was more like “Man, I suck at talking to boys” “Well, why don’t you become a nun?” Something like that.
Recently, I wanted to find out what would happen if I actually seriously pursued becoming a nun. So I googled, “Coptic nuns.” Here is the fruition of my research and the corresponding inner dialogue I had with myself after reading:

1. All the convents seem to be in Egypt (this is probably false, but no follow-up research was performed). I can’t speak Arabic. Nor could I even pronounce the names of the convents that were mentioned.
2. When I clicked on one of the convents, they had a menu bar featuring overviews of monastic history which included many saints I had never heard of. I then realized that I know probably next to nothing about any of the Coptic saints.
3. I found a book review of a documentary-style novel about Coptic nuns. In the review, they used the term “conservative faith” when describing the sect of Christianity that Coptic nuns subscribe to. I thought to myself, Christianity is pretty conservative in itself. And Christian nuns are almost the epitome of conservative. How in the world is a Coptic nun more conservative than all of that? Then I got scared.
4. While doing all this research, I was listening to Pandora.com, harmlessly. It then crossed my mind that hip-hop is probably not an acceptable form of leisure in the convent. This made me sad.

I realized, in about 5 minutes of light research, that I was incredibly discouraged from becoming a nun. I don’t know why all of this was surprising. I think I had the image of “Sister Act” in mind when I first considered nunnery. That’s probably not a very accurate image.

Nevertheless, if ever I find myself as an entertainer being chased by angry men who want to kill me, I’ll hide out in a New York convent, play double-dutch, and teach music to bratty inner-city kids who end up winning the big singing competition in the end. That’s more like it.