Let’s face it, in these times of turmoil, trial, and doubt, there are many things that can keep a person up at night worrying.  Things like international terrorism, Bob Dole’s mullet (which would be a mulletastic name for a band), Stephen Hawking’s techno DJ career prospects, and of course, whether or not any witches from the 18^th century need to be apologized to by the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Fortunately, though all the rest remain major sources of angstiness, you may now feel free to cross the last of those off of your emo list, because as of last week, the Governor of Virginia formally apologized for the trial of Grace Sherwood, the Witch of Pungo.  This is her story, all of which is true, except for the parts I made up.

            Grace Sherwood lived in Virginia Beach in 1706, with her husband and three sons, in a very, very, very fine house, with two cats in the yard.  She was reputed to be thoroughly the epitome of magical hotness, and was well-known for not taking no guff from nobody.  Like most of us, she enjoyed wearing pants on a regular basis (which, back then was kind of unusual, since most women dressed either as ninjas or pirates.  Or pirate ninjas, for the exceptionally fashionable).  Also like most of us, she enjoyed flying around in a teacup and occasionally traveling therein to England.  Whether she made herself all tiny and fun-sized when carrying out this unusual operation is left unsaid.  And one supposes that if she simply kept a mammoth teacup around to purely for such outings it would have turned up the first time the police showed up at her house.  And how did they learn that she’d been going over to England in said teacup anyhow?  Did the mayor of Pungo get a letter from the King of England saying, “Hey guys, just thought you might want to know, some crazy ho from your side of the pond has been hanging out over here lately and stealing all our royal English flava.  If you could drop a house on her or something, it would be much appreciated.  See ya at the Revolution in a few, King Smacky Vander-Cheeselings IV”

            Also, just in case you were wondering about the whole teacup thing, it seems that way back in the day, brooms were far from the officially endorsed for of travel for witches and Harry Potter.  Originally colanders were all the rage, and it wasn’t until later that things like teacups, hubcaps, houses with chicken legs, and William Shatner’s toupee gained widespread acceptance amongst the airborne magical community.  All of which kind of makes sense, since of you think about it, riding around on a broom for any length of time would be totally uncomfortable and even if you’re in league with the Devil, you’re still going to want to avoid unnecessary chafing like that.

            Now, as if this weren’t enough to get a person hauled before a judge, Grace Sherwood was also generally believed to sneak into places by slipping through keyholes, though once she was there, all she apparently ever did was makes someone’s milk spoil once.  In terms of non-keyhole-related witchery, she is said to have once bewitched someone’s crops (how can you tell anyway?  Did his crops start glowing or doing phat beatbox rhythms?), and a brief yet terrifying rash of incidents involving flaming bags of flying monkey poop (that’s poop from a flying monkey, by the way, rather than the more mundane flying bag of poop from a regular, non-flying monkey) on the front porches of her neighbors.

            Now, the people of Virginia, being a fairly inexperienced group when it came to witch detection, didn’t really know where to go from here, and thusly decided that the best way to figure out the matter for sure was to have her inspected for any black marks of demonic allegiance.  And since they didn’t really find anything all that conclusive and she was, as I said back in the first paragraph, rather on the attractive side, they went back and had her looked over again, just to be sure.

            Now, by about the sixth time through with this, it dawned upon people that as much fun as this was turning out to be for the whole family, this trial really had to be going somewhere, at which point they decided that the best thing to do would be to tie her to a big Bible and throw her into the river, the idea being that water hates evil things like Ringwraiths and fat kids with waterwings, and that if she floated, then surely she was a witch.  On the other hand, if she sank, than clearly she was alright after all and not a witch, and someone would be along in a couple of weeks to kind of fish her out and apologize for the mistake.  Amazingly, she agreed that yes, this seemed like a good course of action with no foreseeable problems.

            So, on July 10^th, Grace Sherwood was tied to the aforementioned big Bible and thrown into the river.  Much to her credit, rather than either sinking or bobbing around like a duck, she saw fit to paddle around in the water singing a cheery little song until she managed to untie herself and swim back to shore.  All of which begs the question of whether, even for such an important purpose as witch-finding, it is appropriate for a body of Christians to tie a Bible to someone evil and toss it into a river, which does not immediately present itself as being one of the more Godly uses for the Gospels.

            Anyhow, they sent her to jail for a bit, but after an unexplained series of problems with guards turning into newts, and the fact that no place with a keyhole was going to keep her on ice anyway, they let her go, after which point she went on to live a long life of wacky hijinks, pants, and flying about in tasteful kitchenwares.

Now, were I one of those moralizing political types, I’d probably put something in about the importance about separating politics and religion.  The truth is though, that the whole thing is just too silly to really learn any important lessons from, so instead, just stay in school, don’t do drugs, and always vote for retired pro-wrestlers.