Pinky Pinky

 

1.      Conan Doyle failed to do good detective work by sending someone who is a firm believer in fairies to investigate the origin or “the truth". Without concrete evidence, he believed everything that Edward Gardner said. Even though he went out to investigate and found out about the two girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, he believed that these two young girls can’t photoshop such pictures and that it was “entirely beyond them”.

 

2.      Jane Addams discovers that all these women that visit the Hull House, have lived a depressed and harsh life. I believe that one of the stories that made my heart ache was the second story Jane wrote about. This lady gave birth to eleven children, all of whom died young but one. Nonetheless, all came crashing down one night when her husband in a drunk state, chased them with a knife trying to murder them and then die after them. The little girl named Liboucha was only twelve then, but she witnessed her father committing suicide with her mom. Her mom was really worried about her daughter’s mental state after the traumatic incident but since Liboucha did not show her any signs but happiness and innocence, she assumed she is okay. She wanted her daughter to pursue more and not be trapped like her in a house one day, with nowhere to go. Only in the second year of High School, did her mother realize that she was wrong all this time and now, her only child runs away from home every chance she gets. This resulted in the mother taking her daughter to the asylum but made sure to visit her once a week. This was comfort for her because she was still alive and she can still cook, clean, and even wash the clothes for her daughter. Now that she also died from heart failure and the fact that the asylum took their time to contact her, caused her to lose her last child. This is similar to Conan’s life where he lost his only family members both at WWI and believing in spiritual and folk tales, distracts them from their sorrowful life in many ways. Both essays depict the sadness of ordinary people, finding something to focus on, other than their harsh reality, which seems to haunt them as if they were woken up by facts. Hence, people around them let them be.

 

3.    Some of what he said is accurate, including the development of cameras and the existence of structures that appear to reach the sky. In other words, I think science has greatly advanced our understanding of the universe and how we live and yes, I believe there are mysteries beyond science, some that we might never be alive to uncover.

 

4.      As kids, we have encountered a lot of times adults telling us about folk stories and times when some rumor would spread about a certain monster living under our bed and never looking under our beds. Well, my encounter with this is when I was still in primary school, there was this mysterious door behind one of the bathroom stalls that was always locked but from time to time, you can hear something from there, or was it just our ears igniting our fears and confirming our fears even more. We kids were told that we cannot go inside the bathroom alone as a girl because Pinky Pinky would come and get us. “Pinky Pinky is a half-human half creature with claws that resides in the women’s bathroom, thus haunting the women in South Africa for generations.” A lot of people believed this was to keep the girls safe and to always travel in groups, but others believe they have encountered Pinky Pinky themselves and from then on, they cannot go to the bathroom alone. Some boys claimed to have witnessed it in the boy’s bathroom but she only attacks girls, especially if they are wearing pink. They say going as groups, makes it unable to reveal itself. Scared? Well, if you don’t take off that pink shirt or pink underwear, it is believed that she would injure and sometimes rape or murder the girls who do not listen to her. Some people claim that they have seen the worst side and barely escaped.

 

Sometimes, the children used to chant in front of the bathroom, making anyone who goes into the bathroom shake with fear but the urge to pee wins against it. Some are scared that the teacher goes with them to the bathroom. This has been a great prank, so to say, by other kids who find it funny chanting the creature’s name ten times for it to come out and scare you off and if you are not out by the tenth chant, you will likely be in there forever.

 

 Now, many of you might be curious about what was behind the scary door in the bathroom stall. As usual, I was terrified to bits, going to the bathroom alone and my mind did not give me rest. My tiny hands were shivering from the fear that I would be trapped forever because I couldn’t bring any of my friends with me. I breathed in and told myself I will be out of there in a minute. Rushing to find a clean stall to use, I found that my stall is two stalls away from the mystery door. I cleaned myself up and after flushing, I heard a door opening, and then I realized the mystery door suddenly opened. I thought at that moment, that it was the end for me, and I did not get to say goodbye to my family. I prepared myself mentally and thought of ways to run out of my stall. There, a screeching noise suddenly filled the toilet, like something is being dragged on the floor. I silently opened my stall to curiously witness Pinky Pinky but to my surprise, it was just the housekeeper dragging the bucket onto the floor and the door was just the storage room for the cleaning equipment. I believe these stories were just made up to no avail because it was just funny to watch little children run out of the bathroom screaming. I was just relieved that I was not murdered at the end of the day and for those of you who are still scrounging their nose, yes, I did wash my hands.  

Source:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/south-african-story-pinky-pinky/id1561577187?i=1000538054773