As a little girl, whenever we ran from worms or dogs or anything
that my mother deemed harmless, she would say, “What you all are supposed to be
afraid of, you’re not afraid of.” I used
to think, of course we are afraid of what we consider scary. As I got a little bit older, I realized that she
was referring to boys; and she most likely was talking to my older
sisters because when she died, I was 11 and had the body of a nine year old……boy.
For the past 45 years, nobody was skillful enough to convince me
that ghosts existed. Not saying that
hearing the stories didn’t scare the crap out of me; and if we had to go home
alone in the dark, it wasn’t fun trying to see who was pulling up the
rear. And over the course of my life, I’ve
always known somebody who knew somebody who was a friend of somebody who got
possessed by demons and had to eventually leave Antigua for the United
States. And for some reason those same
people also knew of a young girl whose jealous neighbors went to an obeah
man/woman who worked obeah on her and she too had to leave. But for some reason, I never personally knew
these people; and no one I knew personally ever knew them personally.
If you are not familiar with the Charlie Charlie Challenge, here
it is in a nutshell: you balance a pencil
on another pencil, draw two lines to form four quadrants, write the words YES
and NO twice so that they are diagonal to the identical word. You summon this Mexican demon name Charlie…..go
figure. And if it lands on YES, something
something. If it lands on NO, you cannot
leave. Oh yeah, if it lands on YES, it
follows you home. I personally lost interest
halfway. Apart from Charlie not being a
common Mexican name, I have a few questions.
Does it matter what kind of pencils are used? Like do they have to be brand new? Have an eraser? Be perfectly sharpened? Do they specifically
have to be No. 2, because I know for exams that is a requirement? Some pencils are of very bad quality and
every time they get sharpened, they get smaller and smaller. Can these short pencils work?
Since Charlie is Mexican, do I have to call him Charlie Charlie by
the way, or one Charlie will do when I’m talking about him, BUT not summoning
him....digressing...if this game is played in some African, Asian or European country, is it
implied that Charlie is multilingual? I mean
no is no in both English and Spanish, and even if most Mexicans don’t know
English, they at least know yes. But
what happens when kids who speak Swahili play this game?
And my last issue is this, if it was that easy to summon a demon: two pencils, YES facing YES, NO facing NO on a piece of paper, why the hell did
people waste so much money hiring obeah men and women? If any child can summon a demon all the way
from Mexico at that, why are celebrities selling their souls to the Devil for
fame and fortune? If any idiot can
summon a demon, why did those people have to leave Antigua for good when they
were possessed? Couldn’t their enemies simply follow them and work obeah on them again once they crossed oceans?
When I first heard about the Charlie Charlie Challenge, I thought it
had something to do with Charlie Edbo, and I thought to myself, “Okay, as much
as you think these people are fanatical about their religion, it is not worth
dying over to piss them off.” Trying to
see if an Islamic extremist group will issue a fatwa on you if you write something
negative about Mohammed is a challenge.
Summoning a Mexican demon named Charlie that no one has actually ever seen
is a joke.
Look, I’m not trying to convince you not to believe any more than I
expect you to convince me to believe; however I just feel that praying for
protection from Charlie might be bit futile.
What might be more effective is telling your young daughters about charlie
if she comes into contact with one and was never given “the speech” because perspectively
speaking, without the right information and necessary tools, summoning that charlie
can cause her in nine months to deal with a demon for 18 years to life.
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