by Amelia Love

Created on: July 09, 2008

Witches and Innocence

A little girl walked to a local store to buy a chocolate vanilla raisin banana sherbert macadamia nut candy bar. As she stepped inside, she was transfixed by a strange - an old woman wearing a tall black hat stooping over a long row of brooms. Ugly warts were placed in a connect-the-dot fashion along the woman's chin. The old, warted woman stood up and noticed the child gawking at her.

"What are you looking at, girl?" the woman demanded.

"Did you know that you have ugly warts placed in a connect-the-dot fashion along your chin, Ma'am?" the young girl asked.

The old woman began brandishing a broom at the unsuspecting child. "How dare you, you mannerless child! I am not a Ma'am! I am a Miss. It's amazing how rotten you children are in this generation. It's no doubt your parents' fault. Your father surely misses plenty of brain cells, your mother must be surging with stupidity, and both of them were surely cousins when they married."

The child looked at the woman with a dumbfound expression. "How did you know? Indeed, my father used to be a salesman, and he does miss branging in those sells. And my mother truly is a surgeon, and she's always saying that most of the work comes to her because of pure stupidity. And when they were married, Uncle Sylvester hid the car from them as a joke; and it's true - they were cussin' up a storm about it."

By this time, the conversation had drawn a crowd. And the store's manager was forced to intercede. "Is there a problem here, ladies?"

The old woman answered. "I should say so! I demand that you throw this girl out of the store and never allow her back in! She has been doing nothing but insulting me since she came in, which is completely inexcusable, which is demanding of punishment... which is... which is... which is..."

By now, the woman had stirred herself up so much that she couldn't continue; she just kept saying " which is..." over and over again, until finally the child interrupted. "I'm very sorry, ma'am. I didn't know I had upset you so much. I was simply trying to make some sense out of you, any sense..."

The manager was eventually able to handle the situation by offering the old woman a free broom and the young girl a free chocolate vanilla raisin banana sherbert macadamia nut candy bar, and the crowd finally dispersed. But since the conversation took place in a small, boring town where nothing of any real significance ever happened, the bored townspeople told the story over and over and over again, exaggerating it further with each telling until it had become legend.

And that is, of course, how old women with warts, tall black hats, and brooms became known as witches, and how little girls became symbols of innocence.

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