Growing up Catholic was not for sissies! Even after our First Confession and Communion at age seven we weren't done with learning about sin. It turns out that sins had consequences even if they were forgiven! Even venial sins.
Poor Sister had the burden of explaining that even after our sins were forgiven in confession that we were still going to be punished for them when we died. This was because of "the punishment due to sin." So we did not receive a get-into-heaven-free card with Confession. Oh, no, we were still going to suffer for all our sins when we died and the length of punishment time was measured not in minutes or hours; no, it was up to years in duration. But, how was this to happen? If we didn't go to heaven when we died and we weren't damned to hell, then what? Sister explained that there was a third option, purgatory! This was somewhere you stayed, suffering, until you were pure enough to get into heaven. Was this the origin of "bait-and-switch"? We were trapped!
"But, no," said Sister, "because you can get indulgences." Turns out there were these indulgences you could earn to reduce and even wipe out all of your sentence in purgatory. Good deeds, approved practices, and saying certain prayers came with indulgences and they were very precisely quantified. For instance, simply making the Sign of the Cross was valued at 100 days reprieve from punishment; 300 days if you used Holy Water to do it; receiving Communion on nine consecutive first Fridays of the month was one way to get the "gold card" of indulgences, a plenary indulgence! Every way to get a plenary indulgence was obviously tougher to get, but this little beauty would wipe out all of your accumulated sin-debt. Wow, that got our attention. But, even more confusing was the option we had, to either benefit ourselves from an indulgence or to transfer it to "the poor suffering souls in purgatory." (It was not made clear if you could designate some particular person whom you assumed was still suffering there.)
There remained much more about sins and sinning to be learned before we left elementary school, e.g., sins of intent and sins of omission, which were sins you got even when you didn't do anything. A sin of intent was acquired when you had decided to do something bad but were prevented from actually doing it, e.g. waiting until a clerk's back was turned so you could steal a baseball but he continued to watch you like a hawk. Sins of omission were trickier because they meant that you had the chance to do something to prevent a bad thing but chose not to do it, e.g. deliberately not warning someone about a danger they were walking into. See? You can sin without even doing something. There's another one, too... impure thoughts! You must do everything you can to wipe out any impure thoughts because failure to do so is a sin.
Sin... Sin ... Sin .... It was everywhere! You couldn't get away from it! What's a poor kid going to do? Hell beckoned, purgatory loomed, heaven seemed very, very distant. Where was a plenary indulgence when you really needed it?
And we hadn't even gotten to puberty yet!!!
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