Yesterday, I sold my netbook. The guy that I sold it to — we’ll call him J — agreed to meet me at the Starbucks up the street from my house. He had essentially described himself as a Steelers fan, and it was easy to spot him when he arrived.
He sat down and told me that his son liked to mess with things.
“Well, my step-son. He’s not my real son, not my blood son.” He trailed off while trying to describe how his love for his wife overshadowed his displeasure with his step-son. You know, not his real son.
That’s a great way to introduce yourself.
After he looked over the netbook, he paid me what I had asked for it, then asked if I knew what was on my feet.
For those of you who don’t know, this is what is on my feet:
It says “Surgite” and “Inventite” – from Final Fantasy VIII, which are Latin for “Arise” and “Search”. In addition to symbolizing my love for Final Fantasy, my tattoos are also for my dad, since his Cherokee name is Agiyo, which means “Walks slowly looking.” I love them.
I explained why I had them to J, who then said, “Ah, yeah. I’m a Freemason. I just didn’t know if you knew what you had tattooed on you. My daughters — my real daughters — they’re really into that tattooing stuff. I just have two, one for being a Freemason and one for my initiation.”
All right. So, this is neat. I just took $100 from a guy who’s part of a group that scares me. Not because of the people, mind you.
It’s mostly scary because the last time I was in a Masonic lodge, I found things that looked like part of a Silent Hill game.
The entryway was what creeped me out at first. There were portraits of men — old pictures, mostly faded black and white photos — with tiny pictures of women in the corners. I figured that these were their wives, but some of them had the entire bottom of the frame lined with women.
There was one room, just at the top at a rickety, unlit flight of stairs, that was just big enough for the “chair” that was in it — a chair that looked like something you’d see in a dentist’s office. Instead of a lamp, though, there were straps obviously used to hold a person’s wrists and ankles down. These straps had been used quite a bit, too. They were broken in to the point that they felt almost like suede.
I left that room pretty quickly. There were several locked doors, but one was unlocked and led to a huge room, kind of like this:
The floor was the same, there were chairs lining the walls, but in the one I was in, there was an altar in the middle of the room. It could be opened, and was lined with a velvety red fabric, but I couldn’t really figure out what was supposed to fit in it. There was also a microphone hanging above the altar, like someone would stand at the altar and speak. There was also a podium at the far end of the room with several tomes on shelves built into it.
Then… the host of whatever party I was at came up and yelled at my friends and I for snooping around. Fail.
That was my first impression of anything having to do with Freemasons. Today’s netbook sale was my second impression, so my only ideas about them that come from real life are the following:
- They play too many high quality survival horror games
- They’re better with Latin than other people
- They like checkerboard floors too much
- They sometimes have too many wives(???)
- They like the Steelers and miniature laptops a lot.
That’s quite reassuring. Thank you, Google, and thank you, Dan Brown, for making me think that all of these things could be related. Now is when a more gullible person would end up thinking that the guy I sold my netbook to is off to kill a pope or something.
The pope is a Templar so it’s totally okay.