Faerie Festivals for Fine Folks #3: Finding Neverland

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Here, oh yeah, we celebrate heroes, yeah!

To my newer readers: This site is dedicated to worship of the god or goddess you choose, in the way you choose to worship, so long as no one gets hurt and the furniture doesn't get stained.

Okay. Done with that.

You know how little kids get crushes on Disney characters and pretend to be that character, and won't answer to their own names, but only to the character's name? Follow me? Ever had a four-year-old that wouldn't come to dinner unless you said, "Jiminy Cricket! Please come get your vittles!"

Anne's hero of that sort was Peter Pan.

Never mind that Anne's a girl, and Peter Pan is a boy. Let's not get technical here. Suffice it to say that from age three until age six, Anne would not answer to any name but Pan. (Except in school, where in those days you could get a lickin' for pretending to be a flying, perpetually youthful spirit.)

Little did Toddler Annie know that Peter Pan is far more significant than just the insouciant flying bad boy of Barrie and Disney. He has been linked to The Green Man, and even -- if you read your Robert Anton Wilson -- to visits by extraterrestrials. He is, in short, a very important bored god staying active through creative packaging.

Anne's dad had an extremely happy boyhood, spending every summer in a remote Allegheny Mountain township where everyone was related to him and the swimming hole was always filled with his cousins. He loved his mom and pop, and they loved him. He adored his big brother and his sweet little brother, and they adored him. Not one cloud marred the horizon of his boyhood.

When Anne's dad became an adult, he married a chronically ill woman (Anne's mom). All but two years of the rest of his life was spent caring for Anne's mom. It was an enormous burden. She couldn't work. So the family was poor. She had to be hospitalized frequently. So the bills piled up. And her illness was of a nature that it completely disrupted normal family life, yet it left no visible physical signs.

Anne's dad hung in there. It was a hard knock life.

When Anne's dad reached his deathbed, he told Anne one day that he saw Peter Pan standing in the doorway of his room. Peter Pan was standing with his hands on his hips and his legs spread wide, just like in the movies.

Anne's old hero, the bored god of eternal youth, had come for another Lost Boy. Soon enough, Anne's dad became a wild pirate-hunter in Neverland.

The week after Anne's dad made this transition, Anne and her younger daughter went to the movies. The previews started running. And there, in all his gorgeous glory, was Johnny Depp in a new movie about Peter Pan!

Thank goodness the theater wasn't crowded, because Anne and her daughter both started crying.

To make a long post short, Anne has paid closer attention to Peter Pan than ever. She figured that he might be at the Faerie Festival at Spoutwood Farm. That's not a reach, folks.

And sure enough, Anne found him, and hugged him, and asked him to pose for a picture, and he was very, very kind!

We at "The Gods Are Bored" salute Peter Pan, excellent faerie eternal, and all the boys who are "following the leader, wherever he may go."




FROM ANNE
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS
AREA 14, STAR 14