Outside our small safe place flies Mystery... A snake beneath the forest floor, a whisper: Melusine

"Mommy, look at the WITCH!"

 

It's every mother's worry that their little angelic child will blurt out something about a stranger in public.  The kid can't help it.  They see someone unusual or funny or different and they gotta belt out a reaction.  I find this precious.  The mother of the child who called me a witch was very observant, however she wouldn't have really appreciated that, she just thought he was being rude.  I reacted with hysterical laughter, giggling to the point of almost losing my breath (sometimes I laugh that hard) because for a second there I had thought the child called me a BITCH.  He was about four years old, the age when kids can't totally pronounce words just right, the age when they're bound to repeat naughty words if they hear them and say them at in appropriate times. 

 

Like yesterday when I was shopping at Target for a memory card reader and associated software to recover photos from a corrupted memory card from my digital camera.  That and shopping for other things, too, just doing an everyday sort of thing.  I didn't think I was dressed like a Halloweeny kind of witch, however I do wear clothing that marks me as different.  I don't wear T-shirts or jeans, I prefer to wear dresses or loose trousers, rayon batiked sarongs and ponchos, silk jackets and anything Bohemian-esque.  My hair is long, goes down, right down and almost over my ass.  I wear big jewelry and sometimes I jingle when I walk.  I also have long, painted nails bejewelled with large cocktail rings I find at thrift and imports stores. 

 

But mostly I wear black.  Not because I'm morbid.  Black just tends to be easy to mix and match.  Yesterday I wore a black mesh cashmere sweater over a purple dragonfly batik poncho.  My heavy black leather boots give me four inches to my height and peek underneath my black rayon goucho pants sorta like the boots on the characters from Star Trek (the original series).  I guess that's very witchy looking.  But for me this is everyday wear.  My signiture look, if you will.  I was just minding my own way through the store when that little angel shouted out to his mother I was a witch.

 

Why do things like that always happen to me at Target?  Target is usually, in my opinion, way better and much more laid back than Walmart, but it's still a major department store and prone to be populated by the general public.  So I guess I'd stand out there just as much as anywhere else.

 

Before the mother could apologise to me for her kid's observation, she was in shock.  "Did he just call you a..." she didn't want to make her thoughts loud, but I got the point.  "No," I assured her, "I really am a Witch.  See?"  And I took out a lip gloss wand from my purse (giggling as musically as I could) and blessed her kid.  He blushed.  "There, now I have YOU under my spell!"  The little boy danced in a circle and couldn't stop laughing.  Now the mother was laughing by that time, too.  Our laughter attracted other customers.  It quickly became a shared joy. 

 

Sure, I could've gotten angry or frustrated.  I could have corrected the little angelic monster child for being accidentally rude.  But I really am a Witch.  And I forget that being called one is still considered an insult to the general population. There was no need to explain to him, or to his mother, what me really being a witch really meant.  It was obvious that the child really thought I was cool.

 

It's such a blessing when a little one recognizes you like that.  If I'm cool to that kid, then I must be really, really, really cool because children have no adult bias or prejudice.  For all I know I just granted him a fairy Godmother wish.  You never know.  All I know is that it made everyone around me smile.