aumsworld

Religion, Ouija Boards, and Claudia Schiffer

My parents have a way of attracting to them the strangest people. I don't know why - it may be because they're deeply religious, or because they have five children, or because they believe society is like a clockwork orange - pretty on the outside, rusty and creaky on the inside, that's right. It's weird, but it's a fact. My parents have a way of attracting the strangest people.

Take the B... family, for example. Five years ago, my parents, my four sisters, and I went to an Adventist (yup, that's an actual religion) camp meeting, over in - what was the name of the place? - Pennybrook, or something in the like. We met the B...s there, and my parents were drawn to them with this immediate and compeling feeling of kinship. Maybe because they dressed like mennonites, with ankle-lenght dresses, bonnets, and umbrellas for the four women, and shaker hats and suspenders for the men. Maybe because they believed in homeschooling, vegetarianism, and the evils of Hollywood and capitalism. Or maybe just because they reminded my mom and my dad of our own family. (Yes, we were that religiously disturbed back then.) Anyway, truth is that we spent the entire weekend together, and promised to write each other and make sure we get back together sometime during the next years.

Three years later, we learn the whole family's split apart. The Bible-quoting apocalyptic prophet of a father had been beating his wife and five kids, to the point that she decided she couldn't stand it anymore and called the police. They put him in prison for a couple nights and sent social workers to fetch the children. What a mess, what a mess.

The eldest of the kids - a girl about my age, that is seventeen - came over to our place for a week. I tried to be nice, but fuck was she a pain. She was pretty - even prettier than I am, and trust me, I'm pretty enough - and she kept acting as if she were Claudia Schiffer or something, flirting with the guys at church, passing around pictures of herself sitting in some surfer-type dude's lap in her underwear, and telling me what a pain it is to be hot and to have all the guys after you, and all that blah blah. As if I didn't know! Her manners were also terrible. Now I'm not too old-fashioned, I think, especially compared to the rest of my family, but one thing I can't stand is bad manners - and boy, hers were awful. She picked at her nose (and at her food), ate messily, was rude with my mom, and carried this delicious aroma of horse manure and stable hay about.
- "Do you want to use the shower?" I inquired politely, after using it, but she shook her head. "I already washed this week."
(Now why does this remind me of Walt Disney's Snow White? You know, that scene where the little clueless princess asks the Dwarfs how often they wash?)
I pinched my sensitive nostrils and invited her over to my friend Brianne's place, where we and a few friends had been planning to have a sleepover. Now this was nice of me to invite her, and of my friends to accept her presence - she hadn't been all that sweet to me, and my friends didn't know her and weren't overly excited at the idea - and she ought to have been grateful, but WAS she? Oh, no, oh no no no no no. She talked during about an hour about her horse while we listened patiently, giving only the occasional yawn, and then Brianne stood up and said, "Let's play Ouija!"

We were all like yeah, lets! All, that is, except for our Claudia-Schiffer-wannabe. "Do you know those things are SATANIC?" she asked, eyes wide in horror - the worthy daughter of her prophet of doom of a father. "Do you know you are risking your SOUL???" And then she left, back stiff with pride and indignation. My poor friends, who are your typical children of the atomic age and have gotten over those medieval superstitions, were nevertheless made very uncomfortable. The Ouija game was a bit forced, but the rest of the evening, without Little Miss Revelations, went smoothly. Need I say I never invited that girl over to our place again?

Now will someone explain to me why sitting in a boxer-clad guy's lap in one's panties and bra is better than playing Ouija? Why praying everyday makes us superior to non-christians and atheists, in spite of our beating our own wife and children? Why condemning society and yet mimicking it in our human relations makes us superior to, say, a politician or a movie star? I think I'm confused here. Can someone explain me? Obviously, I'm missing something.

But, weirdly enough, I'm beginning to attract the strangest people. My parents' influence, maybe. But at least my pink-haired, sunglasses-wearing alien friends aren't strong Christians. I thank God for that.

Aum

Beauty is in the eye of the beholden.