The Goodwill Fairy

When I first moved to Portland I lived in a two family house with seven other friends and five other cats.  I drank a lot, worked a little, devoted full days to my tan and otherwise got into summertime twenty-something "I don't want to grow up" hi jinx.  There were lots of pranks, the favorite being "pretend you're asleep" whenever anyone comes home.  There were drinking games and late night dance parties and fast food eaten on the floor with too much sauce and twice weekly Michael Jackson "Thriller" dance practices.  One of my roommates was particularly superstitious.  I recall her doing a ward for evil spirits burning sage in all the corners of the ceilings one night my first week there, and if I wasn't a complete Buffy Aficionado and hadn't seen Willow and Tara do that like, a million times I would've headed for the hills.  Instead I made fun of her out loud but felt secretly a little safer.  Y'know. Just in case.

So one day when I wasn't looking, this weird ceramic cat appeared on top of my bookshelf.  We had really high ceilings so I didn't notice it way up there at first, but once I did, I picture messaged it to everyone all "are you missing a ceramic cat?"

No one owned up to it and most of them were really shitty liars and pranks usually got ruined in minutes because no one could stop laughing.  Like the time Jamie hid baby clothes in DJs laundry.  So I became totally freaked out by this ceramic cat and began to believe it was haunted and it's so creepy and weird that I should think anyone would be weirded out by it.  I refused to touch it or move it.  I once held on to a Ouiga board for YEARS and moved all over the country with it because I thought getting rid of it would be bad juju and I'd wind up like Robin Williams in Jumanji until I learned the only safe way to get rid of it was to give it to someone else.  I wouldn't even let anyone open it.  I only ever played it one time and it spelled out full names of people, including me, and it was only me and one other girl playing it and I think she was too freaked out by it to have been moving it.  I hope Goodwill counts as giving it away, cause that's what I did.

And SPEAKING of Goodwill, this haunted phantom cat statue was actually purchased at the Goodwill very near my apartment and was put on my bookshelf by Jamie's boyfriend (Jamie is too short) and they kept the straightest faces I've ever seen.  I felt a fool, and didn't realize I still had the cat until now.

Good bye, fake curse.  I hope you find my Ougia board and you two can cancel one another out.