Purple Pilgrims

Purple Pilgrims

The way Pilgrims are supposed to look…if you have no creativity.

As a child you learn many lessons:

• Regardless of how far your garden hose sprays, you’re still too close to the hornet’s nest.
• You don’t want to discover the quantitative value for the phrase “mad as a hornet” at any point in time.
• Regardless of how sturdy it seems, an umbrella is not an adequate substitute for a parachute.
• Your cousins lie.
•  You can be lying in a crumpled heap, several bones broken, some of them relatively important, and the first thing any adult will think to say is: “look at what you did to my umbrella.”
• Even though most varieties of snakes are not venomous, you still don’t want them to bite you.
• Convincing your cousin to let a snake bite him so that you find out whether or not it’s venomous, seems like a good idea, but it will really piss-off your aunt.
• Did I mention cousins lie.
• Never utter the phrase “sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me,” to someone who is in possession of sticks or stones. In the jungle that is playground justice, you will be pelted with a barrage of sticks and stones.
• When adults say cheaters never prosper, they’re full of it. Cheaters prosper all of the time, mostly because they’re cheating.
• Do not ever, under any circumstance, ask a girl if she’s going to be as fat as her mother when she grows up.
• Definitely don’t ask her that question if she’s holding sticks or stones.
• Don’t melt play-doh on the stove. (What seems like a scientific experiment to you, is just wanton destruction to your mother.)
• Ditto with crayons.
• Don’t purposely try to set off the smoke alarm just to see how loud it is. It’s loud.
• Thinking your mother won’t hear the smoke alarm because she’s in the shower, is a big mistake.
• Artistic creativity is not always welcomed.

It happened when I was a first-grader at R.R. Rogers Elementary School in Jamestown, NY.

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