Faux Pas

I went to my drawing teacher's office to turn in my portfolio early so that I wouldn't have to drive all the way to school just to turn in my portfolio tomorrow. I said hi and then saw she had a big black mark on her forehead. "You have a big smudge on your forehead," I said, thinking it was from class (it's pretty common to come out of drawing class with charcoal smudges everywhere and we even had discussions in that class about letting people know if they has charcoal on their face). She was like, "um, no it's Ash Wednesday" and I felt pretty silly. My teacher is cool, she wasn't offended or anything. I'm sure I wasn't the first today.

Clearly I am not Catholic! I totally forgot it was Ash Wednesday. This is Catholic Country, but I haven't seen anyone else today with ash on their forehead.
Usually if I see people with ash on their forehead, I go "Oh yeah, it's Ash Wednesday" but it the context of her being my drawing teacher I leapt to other conclusions! I had to laugh at myself.

It's nice to know that other people are religious as well, especially in my art department. Most of my teachers and fellow art students are not religious at all.