How do you become an Atheist?

[Lethe]

I was seven and me and my mother were discussing "God", I was skeptical that there was a man living in the sky causing chaos and miracles and no "astronaut or airplane" had found him. I asked her flat out, "Do you know that god exists?" She said 'no', she's always been irreligious. So from that point on I was an atheist, I could do with or without the agnostic qualifier, though I didn't have a name for it then. I stuffed the 'god idea' in with the fanciful notions of the boogieman, fairies, unicorns, and the like. Though I didn't actively disbelieve in any of them. There was always: well, there could be fairies, there could be gods, there could be a hand underneath my bed waiting to grab my ankle when I wake up in the middle of the night to pee -- but, I just love playing around with 'what ifs' and 'could bes' in general, no matter how minimal their likelihood. Santa Claus followed in to that same category the next year, apparently I found Santa's existence to be more likely. I reasoned he had a time machine, and that the children who weren't given presents on Christmas were given extra presents on their birthdays. I didn't actually label myself as an atheist until fairly recently though.