Game From Peter Straub's Ghost Story

[ER]

In Peter Straub's magnum opus, Ghost Story, a question gets asked, almost ritualistically:

"What's the worst thing you've ever done?"

To which comes the reply, "I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me....the most dreadful thing."



I once played a game in a group one summer in high school where we answered the first question, then took up the second part. Silly thing was, we were all so young we hadn't lived long enough to experience what life had in store for us that'd really let us answer either part. Just perhaps (shudder!) I still can't answer these questions.

Care to play along, though, or are you too faint of spirit?



What's the worst thing you've ever done?

What's the worst thing that ever happened to you....the most dreadful thing?



For me the worst thing I ever did involved an act of abandonment at a terrible time. The summer after high school I simply walked away and drove off without a word to anyone, going a thousand miles away, causing worry and shock and stress and broken-heartedness to many, staying out of communication for weeks and being gone for half a year. Doing that was not just selfish, though admittedly I was justifiably stressed out, in hindsight it was like flipping the first domino in a long line that ultimately got someone killed.

The second, well, that's too easy, and anyone who doesn't give the same answer is fortunate indeed: I know what it is to lose someone I loved. (Though a close second might be when this stylist cut off most of my hair without my permission. Ugh, bad.)

Anyone else benighted enough to answer Mr. Straub's terrifying little question....?

[Trevor]

That is one of the scariest books I have ever read. 

The worst thing I have ever done: I nearly killed someone at school during a rugby match. The result was I never played rugby again and started playing soccer which I enjoyed much more and still do. That was in 1981: I promised I would never get that angry again.

Done to me?

Abandoned and abused as a child.
My parents prevented me from being abducted by a pedophile when I was 12.
Abused as an adolescent.

Makes me wonder why I have never taken my own life and I did try to do that in 1983. 

[ER]

We went on a cross-state field trip today at work to go to an art museum as a goodbye to most of our interns, and I asked the interns to play along with the Peter Straub game, and several did.

The first said the worst thing she ever did was throw her brother's Easter basket in the pool, and the worst thing that ever happened to her was when she had knee surgery.

Another presented the opinion that her worst misdeed was cheating on her boyfriend in high school with his friend from the baseball team (they ended up going together the rest of junior year and the boys obviously quit being friends after being friends since grade school), and the worst thing that ever happened to her was someone stole her car and trashed it.

Yet another told us her worst misdeed was when she put her baby sister's poopy diaper in the video return slot at an after-hours Blockbuster when she was seven and had been told by her mom to throw it into the trash can next to the return slot, and the worst thing that ever happened to her was one time in sixth grade she got pushed off a swing and fell and her tooth went into her lip.

And the last one who played said such a mouthful that I don't know what to think of it all, but after saying her worst misdeed was "probably just shoplifting" when she was in middle school, she said the worst thing that ever happened to her was when she and her family lived outside Manila in military housing when she was a child, and she kept seeing this crazy old Filipino woman in a shabby dress inside their house, who would keep her back turned to her til the last minute, then turn slowly around and stare at her with bulging insane eyes, before walking swiftly away. She claims her parents told her she was making it up, she said she "swears to God" she wasn't, that she saw this old woman many times when they lived there. Huh.

Well, my father was listening to all this and so the interns go to him, "Come on, play too, tell us."

So right off the top of his head my dad said two things so insanely mind-bendingly over the top that nobody spoke a word for about half a minute, even me, and then the rest of us kind of went on and conversations started again, but I told him later, "Good job, I think you broke the interns, and now they think they worked all semester for a crazy person."

He goes, "Yeah, the funny thing is they probably don't even think I was serious."

No, he was serious....

[indianasmith]

WOW!  The mind boggles at the thought!