I’m not especially wise yet, but I hope to be, at some point. She’s the crone aspect of the Triple Goddess, the waning moon, the wise woman. Over this past month, I’ve also thought a lot about these representations of the hag in popular culture – the green-skinned, warty witch – an image of which I’m personally very fond. I’ve decided.” That same year, I wore a black-hatted, broomstick-toting witch costume to school on Halloween.
I’ve been a practicing witch, with lapses in practice and in varying degrees of diligence, since the second grade, after writing in my Lisa Frank diary, “I’m a witch. As the veil thinned throughout October – and pop culture witches appeared more and more in store windows, my Twitter timeline and on Netflix – I’ve thought a lot about my personal relationship to witchcraft. I may not have mentioned that at age seven I realized that I was a witch. Have I mentioned my youthful dragon obsession? Yes? Okay. MindMaze’s intro screen not only showed the beckoning jester but also a dragon peeking out of a window. Now, I was primarily interested in this because I liked castles and could be tricked into playing educational games if they had even the slightest whiff of magic. MindMaze was trivia ensconced in fantasy: the player has been transported back in time to a medieval castle and must answer questions to defeat the labyrinth, break a curse and be returned to their own time. I’ve never met anyone IRL who played Encarta MindMaze, but according to a Reddit thread and a few YouTube videos, the game did exist. A jester stood on a castle drawbridge, beckoning me inside, while calligraphic text announced that I was entering “MindMaze.” One weekend, while researching ermines in Encarta’s digital encyclopedia, I accidentally hit CTRL+Z and stumbled upon something. Every Purple Moon game, Freddi Fish, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Myst and – wait for it – Microsoft Encarta ’95. I didn’t get it, but I did understand that they allowed me to play games. My mom once tried to explain how they worked.
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This column is reprinted from Unwinnable Monthly #109.
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