“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” -The always pessimistic Murphy and his laws.
The swine flu H1N1 virus has taken hold of several Rock Chick family members, myself included. It’s an achy, coughy, fever of a flu. Personally, I prefer to keep my hotness level around 98.6 degrees because it keeps doctors and weirdos away, but what can you do?
It’s just one thing after another lately. My husband calls this phenomenon “Murphy”. I don’t think even Murphy is this unlucky. This has to be something much more sinister in nature like, oh I don’t know, a curse.
My friend Camilla called tonight to see how we were doing. Camilla and I were supposed to go to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Saturday, but couldn’t because I’m sick.
“It’s that damn gypsy curse!” said Camilla. You can always count on Camilla to poison your mind with some wacky idea.
THE GYPSY CURSE! I had forgotten all about that. Perhaps this is the reason I crave belly dancing lessons. Many (ok, 18 1/2) years ago I was at work alongside Camilla at the police department. I remember because I was about 9 months pregnant and a little bit cranky. The town where we worked had one of the largest population of gypsies in the country. We even had a detective assigned specifically to gypsy crimes. The irony to that is that the gypsies don’t normally “work” where they live, but, still, a lot of them were wanted for one thing or another and their domestic disturbances, trampery and thievery did keep us a bit busy.
That night there was a gypsy funeral and our detectives were in attendance scoping out the crowd for the wanted ones. Before anyone gets their panties in a wad, they do the same thing at mob funerals, too. That doesn’t bother me. I say don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. (That goes for you, too, Baretta!)
Several arrests were made at this funeral and within minutes of the paddy wagon arriving at the station, the phone calls began. I was answering the 911 calls that night and told the callers to please call back later when the detective was available. You know, so I didn’t have to talk to them.
Patience must not be a gypsy virtue. Our lines were constantly flooded with 911 calls from several of the gypsy residences and the detective refused to speak to them. Can’t say I blamed him, but that left me holding the bag phone. The wailing calls persisted to the point that I told them that if they called 911 one more time, they’d be wearing handcuffs, too.
It seems threatening a gypsy is not a good thing to do. She mumbled something I couldn’t understand and then informed me she had cursed me. OH NO, NOT THAT!
I hung up on her and my co-workers and I were sharing a giggle about it when I broke out in hives so badly that I had to go home. Camilla, God love her, reminded me of all the bad luck/horrible things that have happened since the gypsy curse. The “forget about it” box in my brain must have it’s own recycle feature because even I didn’t remember half of the stuff.
“We have to find a way to undo that curse!” said Camilla.
I agreed. It wasn’t like we are dealing with criminal masterminds here. How hard could it be? I looked up how to undo a gypsy curse and the remedy is as follows:
“First, you must gut a newly born lamb, under the full moon, and capture its entrails in a bowl made of oak. Then, these must be spread under the bed sheets of the cursed person for a month. In order to ward off any spirits that wish to re-enter the body, the effected person must block all possible points of entry to the body with either the feathers of a duck, or the fur of a wolf.”
Yeah, I don’t know. This whole reverse the curse idea just doesn’t seem doable. Where the heck am I going to find an oak bowl?
I think I’m going to take the easy way out and go back to forgetting that it ever happened unless anybody has any other ideas…
