2 posts tagged “salem witch trials”
I finally finished "decorating" my office with an item I salvaged from the the Brain Tumor Hall moving extravaganza.
The English Department decided to part with this gem:
I love all the various cat/mirror/light interplay going on in this pic. (Here's my question--they invented anti-red-eye technology for cameras, but when will they invent anti-yeem technology? After all, at least 35% of all photos taken in America are of peoples' cats. Right?)
If you're wondering what sorts of things are on a Literary Map of New England, let me offer you a sample:
The Question of the Day and the Fucking Question of the Day are vying for my attention today. I feel so special.
Let's just say that by answering the QotD (What was your favorite game to play at recess in grade school?), the answer to the fQotD (Were you ever beaten up during recess?) will follow naturally.
My favorite recess game was something of my own devising: Voodoo Priestess. I first invented the game when I was was seven, after reading an article on voudon in Time magazine. There I was, a white girl in rural southwest Kansas, in a town that had 1 church for every 97 people, and I didn't believe in any of the theology behind Christianity. Like a true philosopher, I set out to investigate a variety of other theologies. That year in second grade, my experiment was both a bust and a roaring success.
As a game, Voodoo Priestess involved me acting out the various rituals that Time magazine had led me to believe were at the core of voudon. I created little altars on which to offer gifts to various school deities. I created little poppets with which I cast spells on people who had earned my wrath in one way or another. I divined the future using various natural phenomena. At the height of Voodoo Priestess, I offered my services to others. That event both occasioned my meteoric rise in playground popularity and ensured my plummet from the pedestal of approbation and admiration on which my teachers had placed me.
I was a smart kid, funny, and my teachers loved me, right up until the day that word of Voodoo Priestess finally breached the student/teacher barrier. Then I was called into the principal's office, where a number of teachers and the principal attempted to recreate certain portions of the Salem Witch Trials. In short, I was shouted at, cried over, and ultimately made to kneel and mouth prayers to a god I steadfastly refused to believe in. After about two hours, they gave up. Inquisition flunkees. After that, the recess monitors watched me very closely, and called me back if I got far enough away that they couldn't hear what I was saying. Ultimately, I had to spend my recesses sitting on the steps next to the recess monitor, reading a book. They didn't trust me not to corrupt the other kids.
Which leads me to the fQotD. I was never beaten up during recess, because the other kids were afraid of me. Deep in their little Christian hearts, they believed in the Voodoo Priestess game, and they were scared of me. Later, in high school, when my classmates realized that the teachers would let people abuse me about religion, I was verbally harrassed and my homework was on a few occasions confiscated and destroyed, but when we were still kids, no one was brave enough to bother me.
