Hexs and Hammers

A little construction site fun. True story.

                  Hexes and Hammers
            Written by T. L. O’Neal

 

     Back in the early eighties I worked on a framing crew building houses. It was hard work but an enjoyable occupation when you’re young and strong. You had to also learn to work as a team because if you didn’t, it was hard to get anything accomplished. It was always a lot of fun banging those hammers, the smell of freshly sawn wood, the buzzing of the saws and the friendships that I had with my coworkers. We always had a lot of fun working too, sometimes we’d hangout after work and break time was always a plus, we were always doing something during break. We would tell jokes and sometimes Dale would even get me to draw the guys portraits on pieces of scrap wood, or at least draw something. I was an inspiring artist at the time so they all enjoyed my creative side in that respect. Anyway, on these jobsites we were always joking around with each other and this time was no exception.

 

    On this crew was Dale Williams; Dale and me went to school together by the way; his younger brother, his two cousins, his father who ran it and me. We were all the time joking around, especially Dale and me. One afternoon break on a Friday, Dale got it in his head to tell one of his cousins who went by the name of Pudge, and let me tell you that the name really fit him too. Anyhow, he told him that I could do hexes. This fellow was a bit of a strange looking fella, kind of like a fat munchkin but taller. One thing to note is that all these boys liked to party too. They would smoke pot on occasion, that occasion was usually waking up in the morning. I’m not saying that they were addicts or anything like that, so I guess you could call them herbalists.

 

     Anyways, this fella wanted me to do a hex and I was more than happy to oblige him. Not really knowing what to do or what I was doing, I decided to improvise so I made it all up as I went along to make it look good. So I took some sticks and little rocks that I found and made a configuration out of them. In the middle of that I built a little smoky fire and started to wave my hands around and in a strong voice, started to make up some chants. Some were gibberish and others were understandable but it was all for effect anyhow. I knew that he wouldn’t have known the difference in whether it was a real language or not, hell he had a hard enough time speaking English and that was the only one he really knew. But I don’t think I could have won an Oscar or even an Emmy with that performance but this boy looked on in pure amazement, his eyes sparkling with that small fire reflecting in his eyes. He though this was the neatest thing he had ever seen up until he found out that the hex; the one that he was so fascinated with… was on him.

 

   With this his face then turned from amazement to pure horror in just a second or two, and the sparkle in his eyes turned to fear. That to me was amazing in itself, seeing him change that quick that is. All the boys were laughing up a storm and enjoying this prank, everyone but him that is. He started pleading with me to take it off of him, so I assured him that it wasn’t real and there was nothing to worry about at all. He was somewhat relieved and we all went back to work and then home for the weekend that afternoon. I didn’t think anything else of it but I sure didn’t foresee that Dale was going to pick up the ball and run with it over the weekend, and boy did he ever run with it too. I was right proud of him; he surprised me, I didn’t know he had such a mischievous streak.

 

    The weekend went by without incident, on my end anyways but what happened with them boys I didn’t find out till Monday morning. I knew something was up when I saw that fella Monday morning. He looked like he hadn’t slept all weekend and had a terrified, pale look on his face. I’ve forgotten about all that hex mess and hadn’t even thought about it all weekend but he came up to me, and started grabbing me by the shirt with both hands screaming,

 

“Take it off! Take it off!”

 

Now I wasn’t exactly sure where he was going with this, but I knew I wasn’t that crazy about the proposition. I never was one to do stripteases at construction sites but he set me straight in a hurry on what he was talking about.

 

I said, “What the hell are you talking about Pudge?”

He said, “The hex! The hex!”

 

It became clear to me then and I was relieved it wasn’t the other thing. But sensing a chance to have some more fun with the old boy, Dale handed off the ball to me.

 

“Well, what’s wrong?” I said.

 

   He then proceeded to tell me about all the misfortune he had over the weekend and that he couldn’t even sleep because he was so terrified of the “hex.” He pleaded again to remove the curse.

 

So I told him in a mischievous manner, “Let me think about it a bit and we’ll see, but for now we need to get back to work.”

 

     As the morning progressed I found out what exactly happened over the weekend. Dale filled me in on all the details, because frankly I was lost over the whole ordeal. As it went, the boy had a flat tire on his way home, which started the ball rolling especially after Dale told him it was the “hex.” There are a lot of little things that happen in life that just seem to happen for no reason but that night they where watching TV and drinking, and the picture just went out. So Dale seeing an opportunity says to him,

 

“Watch this, Terry is fixing to pop up on the screen in a minute.”

 

With that said, that boy went off screaming bloody murder. The poor guy had bad luck all weekend, and Dale played with his head the whole time till he was the tormented soul that I saw that Monday morning.

 

     As the morning went on, that fellow kept hitting his thumb with the hammer, dropping this and that and was just having a hard time all the way around. He would look in my direction every now and then and I would give him one of those looks or say “Boo” in his direction and he would go to pieces again. The poor boy was a nervous wreck; he was pale and shaking and with the look of a madman in his eyes. At this point he was a certifiable basket case for certain. He pleaded in a begging tone on several more occasions to remove it but I just told him I would think about it some more but he needed to quit worrying me. As time went on we had about as much fun as we wanted to have with this joke, and about as much misery as that poor boy could possible stand, so I told him that I would remove “it.” With this he was tickled to death and I was sure that he would have done about anything I asked of him.

 

    So just like before, I took some sticks and little rocks that I found and made a configuration out of them. And then in the middle I built a little smoky fire and started to wave my hands around and in a strong voice, started to make up some chants. Some were gibberish and others were understandable but all just for effect. Then I told him that it was removed and he would be just fine now. He had such a relieved look on his face and thanked me several times over; he even shook my hand on several occasions throughout the day. Dale and the others were laughing their heads off at all of this and enjoyed every minute of it. Me, I just found it all a bit embarrassing.

 

    Well after that his luck changed and he quit hitting himself with the hammer and dropping everything, and he seemed to have some confidence and was a lot happier too. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was all in his head, but even if I did, I’m sure he wouldn’t have believed me anyways. People are going to believe what they want to, whether it makes any sense to them or not. Superstition can be a dangerous thing to have, especially in people that don’t have much sense to start with.

 

    After that he never asked me to do another hex and to tell you the truth, he never did have that much to do with me anymore either. And he always kept me at arm’s length away from him on the jobs we worked at together too. But every now and then just for fun you know, I just really couldn’t resist myself, I would have to wave a hexing hand at him or give him a funny look just to keep him inline.

 

Reviews

[C.J. Klein]

Too funny.

Saying, "Boo" like that, waving fingers, for shame! I am still laughing though, which means I would probably have enjoyed tormenting this poor soul just as much as y'all did.

Nice write, thanks.

~ C

[Dante]

This was pretty funny, I liked how the boy tokk everyday things out of context the way he did. Interesting story, I like being able to take a peek into how things really are relative in the mind.

[James]

its amazing what the power of one's own mind is capable of. i enjoyed this..
i find it funny because of the reality of how gullible people can often be
thank you for sending this to me

[Christy Hauck]

Miss K is right. It's all in the mind and if you believe something is true there is no way that your mind is not going to believe it's true until your told and made to believe it's not true.

here's another example one of my teachers told me she did when she was in college:

She was taking a psych class and her teacher told her and some other classmates to have a party in their dorm and serve some non-alcholic beer, though not tell the guests that it wasn't alcholic. Everyone that had the beer acted extremely drunk and did very crazy things that they probably wouldn't have done when they were sober. They all felt like idiots when they found out that it was non-alcholic.

I'm guessing that this took place in the midwest since I couldn't find anything wrong with it, grammatily or otherwise. I'm also a Wiccan, but the way you put this didn't offend me in any way so points for being nonoffensive and humorous!

[Cove Mitchell]

Good story :). Really entertaining. Thank you for the fun read! Wish I could have been there! lol
Reth N.

[Miss K]

fact or fiction ?

if you believe in something enough , that's all you need

this was a very good read but i must say if it is true then what goes around comes around

take care :)

[James K. Barton]

nice story!! i wish i could tell stories like this. very fun and memorable.

you have wonderful sentence structure. it's very efficient and keeps the story rolling. nice work.

[Christopher Tait]

Funny story. I've had pranks like that played on me before, but it was long ago and far away and I was too gullible for my good and I can laugh about it now. My suggestions would be to clean up some of the spelling errors and maybe a grammar thing or two. The tone of voice works. Nice job.

[Siobhan MacIntyre]

I love your stories; I read the one about the institution and about laughed myself into a hernia.

You have an amazing narrative voice and a great talent for setting the scene for the reader's visualization.

I don't mind the "s" on "anyways"; it's a narrative and you're spelling it like you're speaking it. It works.

Thanks for the laugh, and the warm fuzzy feeling I had reading this. ;-)

[Kira Love]

OHMYGAWD!!! That is a riot!!! It's amazing what you can do with a person's psyche heh heh heh. Awesome story, fantastic flow, great job!

OH, just one thing, take the "s" off anyways (second to last paragraph) ;)