Of Sea Urchins and Hook-Worms (redux): the Power of Fairy Tales.

I posted this originally in 2013, but I think it has odd resonance in a time when truth and fact have given way to media and public figure pronouncements, when something shared on Facebook could look just as true as a curated article, and the lines are so blurry every bit of information requires research while the definition of “authority” is just as unclear.

I’ll add to the story below (and this will make sense after you read it) that I cannot eat raw flour and used to chew gum on long drives because with the first my mom said it would make me sick (even cookie dough) and with the second that if I fell asleep with gum in my mouth, I’d choke and die. Both have some basis in truth, but the odds are much lower than the absolutes written in my hindbrain.

Paros, Greece

Photo by Svein-Magne Tunli, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Okay, bear with me as I explain. I was quite susceptible as a child, open to every explanation because I’d been exposed to so many different people, cultures, and languages, that anything could, in fact, be true. I trusted in the people around me, in part because they treated me as a person. However, that doesn’t explain the sea urchins and hook-worms so I digress.

My mother lived up to the ancient tradition of using tales to teach important lessons. Whether those tales had a basis in fact or not, the underlying lesson did. The only trouble was that sometimes the context of the lesson got lost in the story.
And that’s where we come to sea urchins and hook-worms.

I had a strange upbringing that included spending summers on a largely tourist-free island in Greece. It had become a haven to an ex-pat community of foreigners from all over the world…and us. If you want the image of a child running wild, that was me on Paros. I went where I wanted, did whatever I felt like, and barely touched base with my mother…who was off doing her own thing. We had a few rules, such as if we were near home, we had to spend an hour at noon out of the sun, and a few benefits such as paid meals at the taverna below where we were staying so we didn’t have to scrounge for food or use up our allowance if we didn’t choose to. But beyond arranged time spent together, my sisters and I roamed our side of the island, both sides of our bay, at will. We went together, with friends, or on our own, traversing the miles between the main town and our section on foot or taking boats across the bay depending on timing and inclination. We even swam the mile or so across at least once.

One of our favorite activities was climbing the breakwater in the main town all the way out to the ancient structure at the end, now an abandoned collection of walls and fallen stone. The path involved scrambling and leaping from boulder to boulder while the waves splashed up to and over the top of the rocks. Every inch below the waterline, and sometimes above it, held black sea urchins clinging to the surface, their spines ready to pierce our skin.

What gear did I wear for this grand activity?

Flip-flops if I felt like it. Otherwise, I went in bare feet. I have no memory (which is not to say it didn’t happen) of wearing socks and shoes when we were there despite the prickly animal and vegetable life. Whether through luck or skill, I never slipped low enough to get pierced, but I had quite a few close encounters on those rocks…and a healthy respect for the creatures…though not enough to eat them.

Now, take that image of a young girl burned dark with the Mediterranean sun, my hair so blond it looked white, feet clad in flip-flops or nothing…and move her to the Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C.

No little tavernas here where the goats for dinner were slaughtered on a flat rock out back, where water had to be drawn by bucketful from a well and left to sit overnight to filter out some of the sulfur, or where evening light came in the form of smoky glass chimneys over oil wick lamps.

No, this was land of the manicured (okay, mowed) lawns, exercise clubs instead of open land, and controlled woodland parks.

I cannot remember how it came about, but I do know I was running around on our front lawn in bare feet as I had done for most of my life when my mother explained to me the dangers of hook-worms. She described what they were, that they were in the grass, and that they crawled into your skin.

It was enough. From that moment on, I stopped going barefoot almost completely. I still get squeamish when walking on grass, and the layer of callus that prevented anything from getting to me is long gone.

Logically, I know that getting a hook-worm in a place where there is quick access to medical care hardly compares to sliding down the side of a wet rock and collecting a grand load of sea urchin spines, but the reason why we still have fairy tales, why those stories are told to make children know they shouldn’t wander in the dark woods, is because those tellings sink into a deep part of us that’s stronger than logic, stronger than knowledge, and cares more about what goes bump in the night than the context. I can tell this to you now with full knowledge that it makes no sense, but it doesn’t stop me from hesitating before stepping onto grass in bare feet. These are lessons learned not through experience but warnings told through stories.

So what teachings did your family pass on to you as a child? Did any stick with you long after you knew them to be untrue, whether because they were, or because you expanded them past the context in which they had meaning? Were any true even when they seemed false and saved you from trouble? Share your teaching tales in the comments for all to enjoy.

This entry was posted in Deja Vu Posts, Kids and Cats, Life, Psychology. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Of Sea Urchins and Hook-Worms (redux): the Power of Fairy Tales.

  1. Oh, Margaret, they may have hookworms in Virginia, but you don’t have to worry in Reno–it’s much too dry. And if I knew you were climbing the breakwater barefoot, I would certainly have forbidden it. And then you’d have done it anyway. It’s a miracle that you survived to adulthood–as I’ve said many times about you and your sisters.

    • Margaret McGaffey Fisk says:

      Yeah, well, barefoot was probably safer than in flip-flops because my feet have better grip. And yes, we kept you both ignorant of so much simply by assuming you knew because it was obvious…wasn’t it?

      I actually rediscovered going barefoot a few years back when we had to walk back when a storm ran off with our boat and we had to walk back because though we’d gotten it to safety, there was no way we could tack it backwards through a tropical storm.

Share Your Thoughts

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.