I do not often find myself swarming with conflicted emotions; like Tinkerbell I feel things so intensely I am capable of holding no more than one emotion at a time. One and a half puts me at capacity, and I am liable to begin leaking transmission fluid.
An example: in the fourth grade my teacher sent me back to my desk for neglecting to stay on-task during a group assignment. As I walked to my seat, my head swirled with visions of galaxies and I thought You have no idea who you are dealing with. I could make and unmake you with my mind; my thoughts contain the universe and you are nothing. I was eight years old, and I thought murder at a kind, unmarried woman who spent most of her time patiently teaching me cursive and fractions. Much of my internal monologue during the years 1996-1998 could double as a supervillain origin story. So I’ve found it best to confine myself to one feeling at a time, in order, before moving on to the next one.
But when I was eight years old, I had two feelings at the same time (and, almost, a leprechaun), and the memory of it has never left me.
The art of leprechaun-trap-building is, I believe, a specifically Midwestern practice, although I have no evidence for this other than A) I built leprechaun traps as a child and B) I grew up in the Midwest. It consists of covering a shoebox in bright green cardboard paper, propping the lid up on a stick (Popsicle is best), and secreting some sort of leprechaun-attracting lure in the lower half of the arrangement. A cookie that has been dyed green works best. A string may also have been involved; I misremember.
My mother was largely responsible for overseeing this process, as my mother was responsible for most things magical during my youth. She was particularly afflicted, I remember, by an occasional tendency to lose control of her car as she drove us about running errands; the wheel would begin to shake, and she would exclaim “Oh, no! The car is taking over! It’s happening again! I can’t stop it,” and the car would drive itself — despite her best efforts to resist — into the nearest Carl’s Jr. drive-through, where I was rewarded by the car for her lapse in vigilance with a small cheeseburger (mustard only) and waffle fries. She was weak, but I did not hold it against her. As I grew older, her ability to maintain control of the car grew steadily, and she has not been overpowered by the steering wheel in over a decade.
The St. Patrick’s Day of my eighth year — one only sets traps for leprechauns on St. Patrick’s Day, I shouldn’t have to explain that to you — I came downstairs to find a shower of clover-shaped glitter around the collapsed box.
Something has been here, I thought, and shivered with knowledge. Until that morning, my belief in the existence and possible capture of leprechauns was more aspirational than grounded in true belief, but this was hard evidence. This was confirmation. I was Dr. Ballard hovering over the bow of the found Titanic. Leprechauns were real — of course they were real, I had been a fool to doubt — and I had nearly mastered one at the tender age of eight, without any previous experience or training.
I cannot describe to you the fierce, the exultant joy that filled my trembling form. Everything was possible now; everything was true. I knew it. I knew it all along, and I had not been wrong. The veil between the worlds was pierced through the heart, if veils can be said to have hearts at all. In the night, a leprechaun had stolen across my threshold. This made him mine, by all the oldest and the strongest magics in the world.
The box was empty. My spirit flagged. There was a note and a mannikin devoid of life or expression inside. I picked them up. The note read — in a script that felt oddly familiar to my fevered, seizing heart –
You almost caught me! Thanks for the cookie. I’m leaving you something as a reward for coming so close to beating me. See you next year!
It was a small, crude felt facsimile of a leprechaun. He wore a top hat and a bland smile and bore the name JEROME stitched across his chest; I treasured and hated him in equal measure.
The weight of feeling two things at once nearly rent my flesh in two. Like Rumpelstiltskin I was ready to seize myself about the legs and scream “The devil told you that! The devil told you that!” until I ripped my own body down the middle and descended into Hell. He was lost to me, lost entirely for an entire year. I had lacked vigilance, like my weak and magic-less mother. But he was real, and that gave me joy. But he was not mine, and that filled my eyes with tears and bile. But he was somewhere, and I had almost caught him, and next year I would have more than a handful of glitter and a note acknowledging my worth to show for my efforts.
The harpy folded her wings and fell like a star – not at the unicorn, but beyond her, passing so close that a single feather drew blood from the unicorn’s shoulder; bright claws reaching for the heart of Mommy Fortuna, who was stretching out her own sharp hands as though to welcome the harpy home. “Not alone!” the witch howled triumphantly at both of them. “You never could have freed yourselves alone! I held you!” Then the harpy reached her, and she broke like a dead stick and fell. The harpy crouched on her body, hiding it from sight, and the bronze wings turned red.
It’s best to feel just one thing at a time. Much more orderly that way.
[Image via]
Tags: feelings i guess, i don’t have any more tags, leprechauns, magic, moms
This is making me feel things, because when I was a kid, I devised a plan to catch Santa Claus, as well as the Midsummer Eve faeries.
Hoping these things were real, despite knowing somewhere in my much-too-adult-for-a-kid brain they weren’t, allowed for a big enough rip in my seams that brought in disappointment and embarrassment that I’d believed at all.
Now I find not having feelings – big feelings, at least – in public or out loud is the best way. (Therapist disagrees.)
I remember a particular morning in my childhood when I woke up to find the tooth fairy had not taken my tooth over night. I had enough suspicions about the whole tooth fairy business that I knew to go tell my mother about this and then decide spontaneously to nap in her bed while she stepped out for a moment. I was still uncertain enough to feel a rush of triumph in my deduction skills when I went and found my money and my suspicions were confirmed.
Back during elementary school, my friend Andrew set out to capture Santa Claus on tape. His parents were cool enough to help him out with the trickier technical aspects: loading the camcorder, setting up the tripod near the milk and cookies, concealing the whole rig behind a stand of poinsettias.
Complete documentation proved elusive, but there were small successes. One year, the camera caught a white-gloved hand. It swooped obliquely into the frame, selected a macaroon, dunked it twice in the milk, and withdrew.
Ronbledore, leprechauns, and The Last Unicorn all in one day? Mallory, you’re spoiling us.
The tags…where are the tags??? *screams in horror*
Leprechaun got ’em.
Your mom is a special lady.
When I was…not eight. Six? Six-ish — I made a cat trap, but it was not because I believed I might catch a cat in our 1.5 bedroom Manhattan apartment. It was because I had asked for a cat, been denied, and this was my way of guilt tripping my mother into getting me a cat. That is…significantly less heart warming, I guess? But IT WORKED.
(R.I.P. Socks.)
I still kind of wish there had been more swirls of galaxies and magic involved, though.
Thanks for this. 🙂
It worked in that it caught a cat, or in that your mother was successfully guilt-tripped? (I hope it’s the former and I want to hear the story of finding a cat in your cat trap.)
Man, it would have been awesome if she’d surprised me with a cat in the cat trap. But I was pretty satisfied with a successful guilt trip, and this way i got to take the kitten home on the train.
(This is the kind of thing I think of whenever people talk about the innocence of children. Really? …Innocence? I don’t know if I remember that. Or was it more of a naked glee taken in the most cynical of endeavors, unimpeded by a capacity for shame? If I ever have kids I am almost hoping for naked, unashamed glee disguising the deepest cynicism, because that shit is funny.)
I was never innocent, I never believed in Santa Claus, I have been disapproving and judgmental since I was a baby and my mother says I was born forty years old.
Adult me, though? Adult me DESPERATELY wishes fairies were real. Not the flighty, sparkly kind with wings and wands (although wings are okay if they’re not just ornamental). I want the fairies from War for the Oaks, or Little, Big. So, so much.
I want the fairies from War for the Oaks, too, but mostly so that I can bone some of them. So… still not particularly innocent or childlike.
gimme dat pooka
FOR SURE. Also maybe Hedge? Send him over, at least we’ll get coffee and see how it works out.
I wouldn’t mind ghosts, either. Any kind of double-edged magic, really.
Okay now I need War for the Oaks. I loooove Little, Big and just went and read the amazon descrip of War for the Oaks and oh, I need it. *waits for payday impatiently*
War for the Oaks isn’t NEARLY as magical as Little, Big. Just…warning you. And it’s pretty dated, what with Emma Bull’s fetish for describing her characters’ clothing choices and musical stylings in excruciating detail. It’s still worth the read, though! Charming and enjoyable. Also a nice little bit of 80s nostalgia if you’re into that sort of thing.
Also: OH MY GOD someone else who’s read Little, Big without my recommending it to them! I’ve only met two others and one of them’s the guy who recommended it to me. SO GOOD TO MEET YOU.
And me! I love Little, Big but his other books were a big disappointment.
I agree entirely.
Have you ever watched a baby start to cry? It’s actually kind of hilarious. They start whimpering and then of course Mom or Dad swoops in to cuddle and reassure them, which stops the whimpers. Then, as soon as they realize that Mom/Dad have gone to do other things, assuming that the baby has been pacified, the kid steps it up and starts wailing. Wash, rinse, repeat until they’re satisfied.
Babies are master manipulators, is what I’m saying here.
This story makes me feel entirely un-alone in pretty well every respect.
The time when you believe in fairies, the time when you are pretty sure fairies don’t exist but you can still rationalize them as a possibility, the time when you realize they are all stories made up to pacify/entertain/instruct children.
The time when you clap your hands honestly during Tinkerbell’s death scene in Peter Pan, and the time a few years later when the same scene makes you so very embarrassed and you don’t clap at all.
Alternately, you may progress to the stage where you watch the slow process of children growing into disillusionment with amusement from your overstuffed fairy-skin armchair
Aaaaaah, leprechaun traps were the best! We left Guinesses (and perhaps this made it more acceptable for mom to fill the trap with all of the green candies and trinkets while we slept?).
This story makes me think of these parents, and their awesome, lengthy Dinovember con: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/refe-tuma/dinovembe…
I’ve passed into “enjoying the state in-between dream and reality where you lose track of what might be true”. See also my holiday decorations from last Christmas:
THAT IS SO PRECIOUS I am now imagining that a family of mild-mannered, talking mice live behind that door. Perhaps in a repurposed dollhouse.
On a related note, is anyone familiar with the Beatrix Potter ballet series? The Tale of Two Bad Mice came to mind as I was typing that. They are equal parts whimsical and horrifying.
Thanks! I don’t usually do anything like that, but I someone sent me a link to this article on fairy doors in Ann Arbor and I just really wanted one all of a sudden. Warning: if you like this stuff don’t do an image search for “fairy doors” unless you have a lot of time to kill.
I WANT SEVEN IN MY APARTMENT IMMEDIATELY.
You ever catch that bastard?
Another child of the midwest agreeing that yes, leprechaun-catching is a thing. My kindergarten class nearly caught one by leaving out only the marshmallow bits of Lucky Charms. In the morning there were green footprints everywhere (actually suspiciously only on bits of paper that had been left on the counter, not on anything permanent) and a few green m&ms for every kid.
One holiday/magic tradition that apparently is midwestern and doesn’t happen elsewhere is St. Nick’s day. My parent’s didn’t know about it and were thoroughly confused when I came home from school bawling that St. Nick didn’t like me enough to put candy in my shoes. Good thing he had just missed us by one day. (And frequently missed us by one day for several years after.)
St. Nicholas day, in my experience, is a very German thing, so it makes sense that it’s a midwestern thing (at least in my parts of the midwest). The missed-by-one-day thing is adorable.
It’s funny, I did both the leprechaun thing and St. Nick’s day, but I grew up in CT and none of the other kids did these things. And it was pretty inconsistent, too; some years we’d get to Christmas and I’d suddenly realize that St. Nick hadn’t come that year and get really angry…
Is there anyone else who doesn’t really remember ever believing in stuff like this? For instance, I have no memory of ever believing in Father Christmas. (But I do have very cynical parents.)
Same! My parents made an effort to preserve the Santa illusion, bless them, but I never remember believing in it–I always knew it was a game.
I only remember mistakenly ruining it for other children and then desperately trying to cover my tracks.
My parents definitely made just about the lowest-effort stab at the Santa con ever so there was that (‘Merry Christmas from Santa… and also the dog! And me!’), and we’d go along with our grandmother’s fairy and ghost stuff without buying that a literal fairy might ever show up, but OTOH there was a year or two where I was absolutely convinced that the gremlins from Gremlins and devil dogs from Ghostbusters were going to get me, so call it a wash
I don’t know by what logic, but this was also the same period during which I was cheerfully sneaking, say, Alien and Friday the 13th at my friends’ houses and mostly just thought those monsters were cool.
All the kids in my church were raised to NOT believe in Santa. I guess that way we would never draw unfortunate conclusions after learning there isn’t an old man in the sky keeping track of our goodness/badness.
My dad specifically did not allow us to believe in Santa, nor would he read books to us in which animals were anthropomorphized (wearing clothes, talking, etc) because he “did not believe in lying to his children”. Which was pretty ripe when he left our family 10 years later for another woman, so.
I don’t really remember believing in this stuff either, though that may have been because of my older siblings, and the fact that my parents put minimal effort into pretending. Santa was definitely an excuse for us to have presents to open so we wouldn’t wake up my parents at five in the morning, and to give us slightly less parentally-condoned gifts like video games. The tooth fairy was probably to preempt complaints about our friends getting money for teeth (although this practice sadly never translated to paying us for good grades), and same with the Easter bunny. I don’t know, maybe I believed when I was really young, but I have a pretty holey memory of my childhood, and I certainly don’t remember any great unveiling santa-isn’t-real moment.
you know what my preschool class got for our consistent failure at wrangling a leprechaun? no leprechaun. we would have eaten the lucky charm trail straight off the playground tar but the leprechaun ate it. we colored a shamrock picture. in Ohio we salt the wounds of the young.
I grew up in North Carolina and also did leprechaun traps, so I can confirm that it is more than a Midwestern thing. (Although maybe my teacher was from the Midwest?)
Also, your mom is wonderful.
When I was five, I asked my mother if she and my dad were pretending to be Santa, over breakfast, and she confirmed the truth. I calmly nodded, said, “Yes, that’s what I thought,” and felt like the architect of my own bitter unhappiness. (Not entirely related but I eventually became Jewish).
i am imagining you turning Jewish gradually, with no effort on your part, like when a puppy grows into its ears
I used to leave similar “traps” for the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, although mine usually just… involved food and a note asking them to leave me their name.
The Easter Bunny was named Chester and the Tooth Fairy was Belinda.
When I was little, I used to play “heffalump trap” with my younger brother and sister, a game very, VERY loosely based on a chapter of one of the Winnie-the-Pooh books. It involved turning a large plastic laundry hamper on its side and propping up the lid with a stick, to which a piece of string was tied. Sometimes I threw a Pop-Tart in there as bait. Then I made my sibling of choice be the heffalump and snuffle along on hands and knees in feigned innocence, spy the snack, and enter the hamper, at which point I would pull the string and TRAP THEM.
That was the entire game.
This is an EXCELLENT game.
oh my goodness yes, i just remembered how i always cringed at poor Piglet in that chapter; i used to make my mother skip it because it embarrassed me too much
As children my brothers and invented an EXTREME SPORTS version of this game. We would hogtie each other up with bathrobe ties and anything else ropelike. then we would roll the player into sheets and blankets, which were often knotted and then tied again on the outside. I think I remember a stuffed snake that was pulled into this, usually used around the ankles. We then rolled the player under the bed. Sometimes we also sat on the bed to keep the person underneath from being able to lift it up with their legs like a leg press, to get more room. The player won if they could get out. The other siblings win when the player has a panic attack and starts crying or just suffocates to death.
This most dangerous game was known as houdini or burrito.
Oh my god your family sounds terrifying. Also, I love that such a potentially-traumatic pastime had such a cute name.
My parents fully encouraged my fairy obsession, going so far as to take “bites” out of the cinnamon sugar graham cracker I left out for them and leaving little notes, and once my father sneaked out outside the house and “flew” a fairy doll by my window, which totally blew my mind. Awwww, parents!
For me it was an “Apper Trap”. This was a red balloon I carefully placed behind a chair every night. Then the next day I would check the balloon and loudly announce that no Apper had been caught.
The purpose of this exercise was so that everyone in the family would ask me what an Apper was, and I would feel superior and tell them they were pronouncing it wrong.
So…um…what’s an Apper?
Nothin’ much, what’s an Apper you?
…wait.
It’s actually pronounced *Ahhper*, so…..
Good lord, if I could feel just one thing at a time I’d be running a Fortune 500 company by now.
Also I categorically refuse to disbelieve in fairies; I mean CATS exist, come on.
Given the tone of this piece, I thought the last sentences were going to read, “It’s best not to feel anything at all. Much more orderly that way.” Which would lead me to conclude that you are secretly Mycroft Holmes.
…and the car would drive itself — despite her best efforts to resist — into the nearest Carl’s Jr. drive-through, where I was rewarded by the car for her lapse in vigilance with a small cheeseburger (mustard only) and waffle fries.
My mother was magical in some ways — one year she actually climbed on top of our roof in the dark to stomp around like reindeer over our bedrooms, shaking a fistful of Christmas bells, and spray-painted two neat rows of hooves on our decks — but she was also an awful cook who Believed In Proper Nutrition, by which I mean she made something called tofu pie and homemade “grape nuts” (read: mush) for breakfast, and so YOUR mom’s weakness in the face of her Carl’s Jr.-loving car actually makes her a sparkling magical SuperMom in the eyes of eight-year-old me.
When I was about twelve or so I found this round metal thing in the backyard- I think it might have been a brooch? It had a clip on the back. But the front had a sort of Celtic knot/flower pattern on it, and I was convinced that I’d found a FAIRY SHIELD. Why did fairies need shields? Were there fairy wars being raged in my backyard? If so, why was I not finding fairy corpses scattered across the back lawn when I got up in the morning? Who knew? WHO CARED? I had a fucking fairy shield!
I also found a hair clip with flowers painted on it while wandering the park on May Day. Naturally, I was convinced that this was also a fairy relic. My mom still wouldn’t let me put it in my hair.
Can confirm the existence of leprechaun traps in California, at least in the 90s. We made them out of those green plastic mesh baskets strawberries come in. (I don’t know where one buys 30 of those in March though, maybe that’s the real magic).
When I was small I was obsessed with fantastic creatures and I wanted to catch a leprechaun, I really thought it through, and decided that the best method was to draw a “life-sized” leprechaun-girl (leprechaunette?) in order to attract the leprechaun-dude and then catch him with a net.
PS: This is my first comment ever on The Toast, so I feel like I should add that the site is awesome, and I love your posts, Mallory :B
As a girl who grew up in Ireland, the home of Leprechauns, I feel robbed that we didn’t do this kind of thing…..oh we knew where they lived but all the superstition prevented us from hunting them down! On another point, I love this place!! I wouldn’t mind getting trapped in a toast trap!
Heyyyy I lived in Ann Arbor and the fairy doors are great. The kids go on like scavenger hunts for them every year and I am always jealous.
My mother used to see the Easter Bunny just as I’d turned my back and gone into the house. Very frustrating.
St. Nicholas day, in my experience, is a very German thing, so it makes sense that it's a midwestern thing (at least in my parts of the midwest). The missed-by-one-day thing is adorable.
I don't really remember believing in this stuff either, though that may have been because of my older siblings, and the fact that my parents put minimal effort into pretending. Santa was definitely an excuse for us to have presents to open so we wouldn't wake up my parents at five in the morning, and to give us slightly less parentally-condoned gifts like video games. The tooth fairy was probably to preempt complaints about our friends getting money for teeth (although this practice sadly never translated to paying us for good grades), and same with the Easter bunny. I don't know, maybe I believed when I was really young, but I have a pretty holey memory of my childhood, and I certainly don't remember any great unveiling santa-isn't-real moment.
My sister and I had tooth fairies who left long letters about how proud they were of the quality of our teeth along with a dollar under our pillows. Mine was named H.G. Ronalia and my sister's was Hermione (pronounced, according to my mother, her-moy-nee) Eleanor Something-or-other. Also, my mother insisted that when no children were present in the pancake aisle the Mrs. Butterworth containers really came to life.
This is, like, almost making me cry. Moms. Moms. Moms omg. Moms… *dissolves into a pile of wist*