Horseshoes

This is a pastime that I will always cherish.

Dad always kept his horseshoes with him in his car—you never know when you might run across a fella interested in an impromptu game.

I was interested and Dad taught me. Soon, everyone else seemed interested, too, and I thought this was, well. . . very, very strange.

After the Jasper Riverwalk was completed in 2000, I was ten years old and the horseshoe court seemed to always fill up every time Dad and I started playing. (Side Note: It’s now a hybrid horseshoe/cornhole court.)

You see, I did not realize that these people were shunning us. I had been shocked just by the sheer magnitude of the number of supposed players that surrounded us.

I would begin to recognize a pattern of people following me around and then shunning, as though they’re following instructions that they have been given.

My birthday is exactly one week before my dad’s, and I truly never knew just how big a deal my birth was. I never even knew I was planned until I was in my early teens.

I started to notice that anywhere—and everywhere—I went, people would always be showing up and then they’d shun me, continuing to this very day.

Shunning is known in the Mennonite community, which are tax-exempt communities made up of groups of individuals following religious faith; they are a subset of the Amish, but they are not as strict. The terms of Amish and Mennonite are used very interchangeably, and they mean the same thing: people who wear the Amish dress.

This religious sect often crossed paths with me when I worked inside the Jasper Walmart (from the summer of 2005 until 2008) and beyond that, and I was shunned. This, I believe, is because of the fact that all women and girls must wear dresses or skirts and wearing pants is unacceptable—much like not wearing a hair covering is.

I didn’t realize that shunning is done as a way to dehumanize; that these people hadn’t had a bad day or they weren’t upset with me: they simply were given instructions, and they were following those instructions that they were given.

This is done to cause psychological damage to the victims.