Little Red Riding Hoodie. Riding through the woodsy ‘hood. What wanted to eat her was a terrible giant dog, razor thin with teeth of a nightmare. It. Eats. Her. Grandmother. Often, it eats Little Red. And wolves don’t eat like cobras, friends, they chomp and tear and gulp. They gnaw and chew.
The phrase “the wolf at the door” was once a common way to indicate poverty. In bad winters all over the US and Europe, starving wolves would risk scratching and nosing at human doors. Two packs of desperate boney beings separated by a wall. Then —voilà—a few techno tweaks to agriculture and distribution and even the poor humans have food and, well, we killed the wolves. We won totally. Historically speaking, it happened fast.
Until the 19th century in Europe every generation knew famine. Either crops or their transportation could fail and you could find a town dead from starvation, some folks with grass or bark in their mouths. In normal times wolves eats mice and other little mammals in the woods, but if those go scarce, the pack might dare to come close and the little shepherd or shepherdess would wake to find a carcass.
Everyone knew stories of wolves stalking children at play. At times, they’d attack the smallest, eating him or her then and there. Wolves can eat a great deal fast, hence the term wolfing one’s food. Stay with me in the horror that they wolfed down a child, what is real is the story of our nightmares.
Forget the picture books where she goes into his belly whole. They’re inside their house. The little girl is terrified, talks to the wolf. The wolf kills and eats her.
What happens when a culture that has lived under frequent famine and regular scarcity—to the point of being eaten by other hungry beasts— is suddenly food abundant and safe from being eaten?
They get just as scared of being fat as they used to be afraid of starvation and wolves. Curled up with their chubby dogs on the couch they think about food and body size a lot. They practice going hungry on purpose.
All that food related energy had to go somewhere, at least at first. Historically speaking we are still in “at first” on this.
So the apes won and in some extreme perversion we have nudged the wolf’s evolution such that we can carry our descendent of the wolf, Floofy, to the dog salon and get him a wash and a blow out. Maybe do the nails. Note too that the wolf became the metaphor for a sexual predator and harasser. The murderous name suggests we knew how dangerous these men were, but words go flat and fears change.
We forget, we forget. We forget famine, we forget war, we forget disaster. All those signs that say, “We will never forget,” really mean, “We are sorry that someday we will forget.” People aren’t stupid, they know the grass covers battlefields and no one remembers how the day was won. My goodness no one knows who fought in the French and Indian War or when the war of 1812 was.
In the story her hooded cloak was what protected her and, in an anachronistic way, the word “hoodie” carries extra strength now. If we return to Little Red as a place of metaphor, we can consider her riding hood as a sign of her own frightening power. She had been awfully brave. Recall that the happy ending is either that the wolf, a dog-like beast, is knifed open or that this dog-like beast is boiled to death in a cauldron.
Some humans still live in a violent world. If you don’t, why not try to remember what used to lie in wait for us. Now go feed the dog.
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Well I hope that turns your world upside down a little. I wrote the above when I was healthy but have Covid now. It’s not the worst but I’m weak and tired. Posting this in a rare hour of strength. I had this post in the chamber but who knows what I’ll manage for Weds. We’ll see. Stay safe, stay strong, stay, alive, and stay away from anyone coughing. Thanks for reading, subscribing, and especially thanks for supporting, it means the world.
love,
Jennifer