A school holiday, followed by four snow days, then the weekend, and then a two hour delay? And then a four day week of early release followed by yet another snow day? There can only be one explanation for this: obviously, the gods to whom our children are praying are much more powerful than the ones the rest of us are worshipping.
I know; it’s hard to believe. In fact, I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t just witnessed it firsthand. I, too, openly scoffed as my daughter, Clementine, went around the house conducting all of her voodoo “snow day” rituals: the three ice cubes in each toilet, turning her pajamas inside out. Scoffed at her until they started working, that is.
By the third day I had started following around behind her, trying to undo everything she did. I couldn’t do anything about the pj’s (for one thing, she’s not that light of a sleeper; for another, she goes to bed later than I do), but as for the ice cubes—no, I didn’t scoop them out by hand. I added hot water instead, trying to melt them. Well, not exactly hot—more like warm. Or at least body temperature. Hey, I had to go anyway, okay? All that hot chocolate has to go somewhere.
Still, all of my attempts to undo her voodoo tricks were, in the end, no match for her super voodoo powers. Steinbeck once said, “Ah, the prayers of millions; how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God,” and I’m sure that, for him, that was true; however, I’m thinking that mothers and children don’t even pray to the same deity. I doubt our patron saints would even consent to be seen with each other in public—in fact, they probably wouldn’t sit in the same row at the movie theater even if they only had one bag of popcorn.
At one point in my life I would have been upset that my deity appeared to be so much weaker than Clementine’s—I mean, really, four snow days in a row? Put our two gods in the ring and it would have been a TKO for Clementine’s by day two. But, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that different gods have their different specialities. It’s not that Clementine’s god (who I think, judging from the blood-stained shrine in the corner of her room, is Cthulu, Devourer of Souls) is better than mine—he’s not—it’s just that he is better at creating chaos. Like four snow days in a row.
And like I said, that’s okay—for a child. As you get older you realize that, while worshipping the gods of chaos might be more fun (the parties are certainly better), it’s a lot more work than worshipping the more mundane household gods of order. And not nearly as useful.
Take the goddess of lost car keys. (Frequently worshipped by making a pilgrimage from the car, to the bedroom, to the kitchen, to the living, to the bathroom—repeat as necessary.) Or the god of keeping crappy cars alive for one more day (Mantra: “Come on baby, come on, you can do it, just start, just start. Oh, you piece of—thank you! Thank you!”). Or, my favorite, the Guardian Angel of Lost Files. (To contact this deity, make a sincere and repentant prayer to St. Norton, offer up a blood sacrifice—bitten off fingernails will do— and promise to save more often. It must be noted, however, that this is a god I’ve prayed to less and less since I converted to Macism.)
So, in the end, I have to remember that it’s not that Clementine’s snow day gods are more powerful than mine—it’s just that they’re worshipped more diligently. But I’m still going to melt all of her ice cubes. Just in case.