Myth demeanour

by RAF KATIGBAK

Remember how you felt when you found out the Easter Bunny wasn’t real? Or when you discovered that Santa was really your dad? Or when you found out the place called Solid Gold that that same dad had you waiting outside of in the car for two hours every Friday was not a dance school where he was “learning to soul-dance” but, in fact, a strip club where he was putting dollar bills in the underwear of women with mysterious bruises who writhed to the sounds of “Rock You Like a Hurricane”?

Maybe because I have the memory of a gnat, or perhaps it’s because I was so traumatized that I blocked it out, but I can’t remember what it was like to figure all that stuff out. But I kind of wish I did. I wish I could remember how that felt because it reminds me of a time when there was still some mystery in the world. Now there is none. Thanks to the instant access to information, if anyone wants to know something, they just look it up. Right away. On their phone.

I’m guilty of that myself. I feel that my phone replaced my brain and now, if I want to know something, I just punch it in and voila! I get all the films the director of the movie I’m currently watching has done in the past. Oh, you’re curious to know why moss grows on one side of a tree? Let me tell you…

At the risk of sounding like an old fart lamenting the good ol’ days, I kind of miss the idea of not being able to know something. Back then, the world was huge and weird and wondrous and unknowable. But now, all the wonders of the world, amazing and creepy alike, are laid out for anyone curious enough to type “Centaur Porn” into a search engine.

But parents must have it the worst. I can’t imagine how disheartening it must be to try to bring some magic into a kid’s life when, five minutes later, they just walk up to you and call bullshit on the Tooth Fairy after Googling it on their Smartphone.

What I miss most of all is what that bit of mystery and rumour did for my music appreciation. As a kid, I remember visiting a record store and staring at Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality cassette when a scruffy young clerk came over and said, “Sabbath is totally awesome. You know the lead singer used to bite the head off an animal every show? I heard that he was banned from Canada after peeing on a live beaver in Toronto.” Of course, that sealed the deal and I bought the tape. And late at night, when I lay in bed listening to the opening strains of “Embryo” move into the sinister chug of “Children of the Grave,” I imagined this demonic being of pure evil defiling our national aquatic rodent in front of thousands. In retrospect, the idea was of course rather ludicrous, but the fact that I couldn’t know for sure was cause enough for me to get excited and fill my head with a million questions. Where did he get the beaver? What did they do with it after? Did the urine-soaked mammal run wildly through the crowd?

But all is not lost. Recently I had the good fortune of meeting someone who restored my faith that there are still some people with myths un-busted. While visiting my house, my friend A. watched one of my cats trying to catch a hornet. Visibly distraught, I asked her what was wrong. She said she was concerned for my cat’s safety since, as she learned as a child in Germany, “Seven hornet stings can kill a horse.” This sounded dubious. Firstly because hornets are actually rather peaceful, and secondly because horses are pretty frickin’ strong. I mean, I’ve seen people do rails of horse tranquilizers and the worst that happened was that they came to two weeks later behind a strip club outside of Niagara Falls with a massive headache and bloody underwear.

Quietly, I checked the Web and discovered that this myth had permeated German culture so deeply that the European hornet has become endangered in the country and that killing one is a crime punishable by a fine of up to 50,000 euros. I had a dilemma. Should I leave A. with the warning her mother so lovingly gave her as a child? Or shall I tell her the truth and lose just that much more innocence in the world? In the end, I didn’t have the heart to tell her.

So I sent her a link to the wiki. From my phone.

RIFF-RAFF@SYMPATICO.CA