Imagination Games; July 28 2019

When I was a kid, I knew one thing about Jewish people: everyone inexplicably wanted them dead. Or enslaved. Both, maybe? Either? Large groups of people had this in common, which was utterly wild to me in the worst way. (I say ‘was’; it still is.) What a thing to know, as a child.

It wasn’t like I was oblivious to religious contention. I’d been enrolled in a Catholic school for grades 1 and 2. That didn’t last, since I wasn’t there for religious reasons – they had the only fully bilingual curriculum in effect, and it wasn’t worth the brainwashing. I legitimately came home one day expressing confusion over the fact that people were sad over a little boy’s death.

‘He’s in heaven now! What are they crying for?’

Just like that, my parents watched a future unfold in which I was a religious mass murderer, and I was switched to a different school.

But I digress.

I knew that Jewish people had historically been abused, and I knew I wanted to be left alone during recess. I wasn’t an unpopular kid, but when it came down to a choice, I always preferred my own company. So I made up a game, as kids often do.

It was called Jewish Refugee.

On the surface, it was simple: Avoid Everybody. The teachers were the Gestapo, or the Egyptian slavers, or whoever else was the enemy du jour. All the other children on the playground were Nazis, or slave owners. Interacting with anybody meant Death... or an anxiety attack, which certainly felt like dying. In my imagination, I’d be returned to the camps, or to a whipping, and executed.

This was a child’s game. A grim one, yeah, but still a game. This was an unthinkable scenario on par with saving princesses from dragons, or discovering fairy caves, or any of the other imagination games kids like to play. Because that stuff isn’t real to kids. It’s all part of a story. Monsters aren’t real. Nazis aren’t real.

That was in the late nineties, early 2000s. And now, in 2019, Nazis are back, and no one’s playing anymore.

On that dour note, here’s part of a story that is just make-believe.

“We’ve tried fruit, fire, and blood,” I listed the offerings we’d burned through so far. My father worked on a small farm, where I’d grown up helping cultivate all manner of berry bushes and vegetable patches. When I’d left, I’d offered up most of the spring harvest to my new goddess, but it hadn’t done anything for her. Setting the offering ablaze had only served to create the nicest-smelling bonfire I’d ever been to.

“He’s bound to find something that breathes power into you, little sister,” Kiphes soothed. “What about a pelt? How do you feel about hunting?”

“I don’t know,” Seyhra said, but there was a note of hope in there. “I could be a goddess of the hunt...”

“Zaccheus, head towards the bark-hounds, instead!” Kiphes instructed, eager to have her suggestion tested. “If all else fails, you’ll die and become mine.”

I really didn’t want to walk into Kiphes’ embrace just yet. If nothing else, it would be awkward to see Leander again so soon.