Rock-tober 25, 2021

A meme came across my feeds recently that had me laughing and remembering an incident. It was a picture of a voodoo doll with the caption:

"Do you ever get the feeling someone is sticking pins in you?"

"No....?"

"How about now?"

A lifetime ago, when I was attached to USS Seahorse, I was on shore leave on an island in the Caribbean. A buddy of mine from the boat and I were chilling on the beach with painkillers from the waterside pub in our hands, trying to absorb as much real sunlight and suck in as much non mechanically filtered air as we could. I suddenly felt a shadow blocking my communion with Sol Invictus. When I opened my eyes, I was looking up at a scowling, elderly local. Wrapped in rags and with a gnarled hand clutching a staff, he was sporting matted, grey dreadlocks that hung down to the middle of his back. On his face and chest, mystic symbols were painted on with ash. He had my attention.

With his free hand, he reached into a pouch tied around his waist and produced what looked like a chicken claw. Still scowling at the both of us, he began a low murmuring chant, all the while gesticulating with the chicken claw. Our local neighborhood shaman was definitely beginning to harsh my mellow. "Dude. What's this guy doing?" This was not my buddy's first port of call on the island, and he quickly deduced the situation.

"I think he's trying to hex us."

We'd bottomed out our painkillers, so we ceded our spot in the sun to the dude with the chicken claw. We didn't think anything else of the encounter until later that night. Unknown to us, in our wandering, we'd wound up in a restricted area of town. Looking to our rear, we realized we'd pick up a tail of several locals. My buddy starts rolling up his sleeves and looks at me. "Hey, Cap, how are you in a fight?"

I've never considered myself superstitious. The closest was as a 9-year old during the Orioles' run for the World Series pennant. My trio of talismans - hat, ball, and shirt - were always worn on game day. All in all, in spite of beach bum shaman, I consider I've lived a bit of a charmed life. I've written previously about surviving minefields, faulty aircraft navigation systems, and a photographic misadventure on the Grand Canyon's south rim. There's also camping on the side of a live volcano and surviving a drag racing crash, but those are posts for another day.

Part of that charmed life stems from the fact that I don't (usually) take unnecessary chances. I wear a seatbelt behind the wheel, eye protection in the shop, and I've even been known to use sunscreen. Even so, there are times to throw caution to the wind. A recent movie I saw had a character talking about the pivotal points in your life and that they are not times to be timid. On the contrary, at those times, "All you need is 20 seconds of insane courage." This is about the amount of time it took me to ask Andrea out on our first date. I guess the correlation holds.

I don't think that 24 years with a redhead was the juju that beach bum shaman had in mind, but I'll take it. Maybe the coat of arms of Casa Capuyan should include a chicken claw.

Annie Lennox - "I Put A Spell On You"