“It’s hard to think so pious a woman be secretly a Devil’s bitch after seventy year of such good prayer.”

The Crucible by Arthur Miller
1995
Weight: 5 oz.
Method of Disposal: Donating to the AKF thrift store. I am sure someone will buy it for 25 cents for some other student who needs to read it for school. It will be quite the deal.



The last week or so I have felt like an angsty teenager who is incapable of facing the world a.k.a my responsibilities. I want to call into work and sleep until 3 or 4 pm, but I know I cannot. I can barely pay rent when I do show up to work each and every day, even with side jobs. The dogs still need to eat and get their monthly flea preventative. And my car is my only shot for all the day hikes and trips away from the city I have needed lately to maintain my sanity. So, instead of becoming an unreliable person and getting fired I am just going to get rid of THE CRUCIBLE.
I don’t guess that makes a lot of sense to most people but THE CRUCIBLE, for me, is directly related to my teenage years. I had a not-so-brief obsession with witch hunting after a nod from my mom in the direction of THE CRUCIBLE. The movie, with the lovely Winona Ryder, came out around that time as well. Later, we would read it in school. It did not seem unfathomable that people would kill other people because of their ridiculous assumptions about someone’s character. With the way the other kids treated me in school when they found out I was queer, it seemed like old news. Looking back on it, it matches up even better than I thought it did then. Children’s wicked games reinforced by the adults around them who should know better.
My favorite CRUCIBLE moment really is not related to the play. It is when I created an e-mail address with the name Devil’s Bitch, which I got from the book. I loved it. My mother received a forwarded e-mail from my cousin around that time, and she admonished her for knowing someone who would have that pseudonym. My cousin had to politely tell her that it was her own daughter who chose that name. We laughed about that for some time, and I never let that address go.

Anyway, I am donating THE CRUCIBLE. It is a symbolic letting go of that teenage darkness. I hope I can rid it from my adult life A.S.A.P. It is highly inconvenient, and it is not sexy.

*Oh and, don't get me wrong, I do think that THE CRUCIBLE is an amazing piece of literature and is far more important than this post expresses. It is much more than teenage required reading. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it.*