I went to lunch with the Keelhauler, and when I got back, there was a message from Sam Ann, regarding my "obscene hand gesture" entry.

To fill in a few details, the "obscene hand gesture" was a totally meaningless design that Lorelei came up with solely to entertain herself. The image consists of the silhouettes of two hands making the "OK" gesture, one hand being right-side-up, the other upside-down, inside a green disc, with the words "HOLY UNION" written in red Olde English lettering along the bottom. There is no evil intent, no actual "Holy Union" group that worships demons, nothing. It sprung directly out of her sense of the absurd, and she put it on her web site to amuse herself. (I should mention at this point that Lorelei had a very religious childhood, but has grown up to be more moderate. While she's not fundamentalist, neither is she the anti-Christ.)

I'm just going to let Sam Ann tell the story here, because she's already written it, and there's no point in re-wording her excellent description, although I've edited it a little for germane-ness... Germane-itude... Context:
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Just thought I’d share with you (you know, add to your irritation) that a few weeks ago, we were at your mom's house so E could make a failed attempt at teaching her how to extricate the pictures from her digital camera. She started excitedly telling us about this site you and your friend were making art for. Anyway, she attempted to explain the symbol Lorelei designed. She said she didn’t know what it was, but she was obviously suspicious of its possible evil origins and thought it might be anti-Christian. She actually refused to complete the gesture, describing it while only partially twisting her hands and not completing the circles with thumb and forefingers. She finally insisted on looking it up online to show us. E thought her reaction so humorous that he tried to convince me that it was something we should do all through our trip [to our cousin's wedding], "We can do the gesture during the ceremony and nod knowingly to each other." Now I really wish we had.
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Do you see what I'm dealing with, here? When I described the "Holy Union" symbol to my mother, I told her very clearly that it was meaningless, and invented as an amusement. And yet somehow, she still interpreted it as not only evil, but specifically "anti-Christian."

After reading Sam Ann's message, I decided to officially give up on my lifelong campaign to convince my mother that I am not really evil. There's no way to grapple with someone who finds sinister intent in every innocuous transaction, and I'm just wasting my time. I don't know what's taken me so long. I should have realized it was a losing battle as a child, when she made my brother and me find and destroy everything in the house bearing an image of:
1. an owl
2. a frog
3. an elephant
4. a pig
The reason? These animals are satanic. Or demonic. One of those. (I obviously didn't absorb the lesson.) As I understand it, the animal itself isn't evil, but demons inhabit them and cause, I don't know, malaise or something. My brother and I were young enough to go along with the task--think Rod and Todd Flanders, but less amiable. We ferreted out every offending item we could find: coffee mugs; trivets; tablecloths from India; even a Ranger Rick magazine with a photograph of a snowy owl on the cover. We collected all these items and destroyed them ("Yay! Destruction for Jesus!") before tossing them in the trash. (We destroyed them so that the inherent demons wouldn't afflict the poor, innocent garbagemen charged with their removal.)

For a period of time I partially believed that the printed image of a pig on, say, a deck of cards, could admit demons to the house. The idea was constantly reinforced by my parents; the eerie, Zondervan Press books they gave me to read; and the creepy, judgmental members of an organization they belonged to, called the Light Group. I found myself feeling nervous in my friends' homes, wary that their parents' cheerful, frog-themed ashtray or macrame owl wall hanging could be magical demon superhighways, drawing evil spirits into their living rooms. (VIOLET'S SOUL, EXIT 1 MILE)

It's probably not a big surprise that I originally believed that the movie "Carrie" was a true story.

Star of the day. . .Dolores Claiborne