Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – Mike Firesmith

Sept 9, 2006

We welcome another new writer for Storytime Tapestry.  Mike Firesmith, becomes

writer #353.

Of Paint and Pagans

Mike Firesmith

When I was a teenager my father decided to let me paint my bedroom. I wanted to paint it black. I have always wanted to have a dark bedroom because I sleep better in total darkness. I live far enough away from anything and everything to have a near black situation when the moon isn't shining so I'm happy now. Back then, it was a different story.


My father and I went down to the local paint store and a nice woman came up to us and asks us what we wanted. Paint, I tell her. What color? Black. No, my father tells her, not black. Well what color can I have then? Any color you want, just not black. Okay, dark blue. No, you cannot have dark blue. Then what color can I have? Any color you want, it's your room.


This went on for a while. I would pick out a color, he would tell me no, then tell me I could have any color I wanted. The poor clerk stood there and smiled, and never said anything like, "Why don't you two get the hell out of here and decide that you want and what you will allow and get back to me?"


I had the same conversation three decades later with a friend of mine who insisted that she believed in freedom of religion. I asked her of her daughter was to come home and want to be a Satanist if she would allowed it. Well, of course not, those people are evil! Well, what if she wanted to be a Hindu? Hell no! Those people think cows are god! Well what about Islam? Those people are all terrorists. I went down a laundry list of religions and she shot them all down. Then I asked her if she still believed in freedom of religion and finally, she admitted that she did, as long as it was her religion or something close to it.


But when it came right down to it, she didn't really trust the Catholics. They weren't exactly her shade of Christianity.


But this same woman, once we had drifted away from the conversation, then drifted back to it, still maintained that she believed in individual freedom. I asked her if students in school should be allowed to pray, and she said that of course they should. Should teachers be allowed to led prayers? Of course! Should the school PA be used to broadcast prayers? Certainly. What if those prayers were to Satan?


Que record scratching sound.



We walked through the same freedom thing again, and once again she was forced to admit that as long as it was her shade of god everything was fine, but she got all bent out of shape at the idea of her kids having to recite the Koran. She had this idea that the Declaration Of Independence guaranteed we would have freedom of religion meaning the same religion as the people who wrote the Declaration.


Uh, you mean the Constitution, don't you?


She and I don't have this conversation anymore. She accuses me of being "picky about every damn thing."



I knew a woman who was a Wiccan and took holidays off that reflected her beliefs. Her employer called a lawyer to find out (a) what a Wiccan was. And (b) if he could get into any trouble if he didn't let her have those days off. In the end he decided that it was a good thing to have a couple of women show up dressed in long flowing robes to bless the office. He didn't understand it, but he did like it. It's amazingly simple to distract someone from what they're doing, it's changing their minds about what they're thinking that don't come easy.


The best case I can think of was a guy I knew who was accused of sleeping with someone else's wife. He had a terrible reputation of doing such, but in this particular case, he wasn't guilty. But because he had done things like that in the past, then everyone thought he had this time too. Because it event took place during work hours it made him look really bad at work. As fate would have it, there was a position that opened up in his office and he didn't get it because of the hanky panky that he wasn't involved in. It didn't matter one bit. Enough people had come to the conclusion that he had done it so that was that. Even the woman who had been caught sleeping around told people that it wasn't him, that made them think that she was trying to cover for him. That event haunted him for years. Well, that and all the other stuff that he got caught doing he was guilty of.


To this day the rumor of him getting caught with that woman lives on. Since I worked with him, people still come up and ask if he really got caught in a company truck parked at a cheap motel during work hours. I tell them no, it isn't true, that he never did get caught doing that. Ah, they say with a smile, that sly dog knew how to get away with anything.



In the end I wound up getting a sort of dark gold color for my room. Once I got the room painted he asked me if I liked it. I told him, no, not really, it wasn't what I wanted. It was better than the color before, which was pink, and that was because it was my sister's old room. I guess I had it better than she did. Girls got pink. It's their color of gender whether they like it or not. I don't think she was even involved in the conversation. Ah, you're a chick, you get the pink room, yea. Why didn't you get what you wanted, he asked. Because you wouldn't let me get what I wanted. Well, you didn't really want that anyway.

Take Care,
Mike Firesmith