The Egypt Game: a childhood memory

When I was in elementary school, I read a wonderful novel called The Egypt Game. It was about five children who decided to recreate ancient Egypt on a piece of abandoned property, and how the gods of the game integrated themselves into the children’s everyday lives in spooky and entertaining ways.

I fell in love with the book, and knew immediately that I wanted to create ancient Egypt for myself, because I would certainly be a very fetching priestess for Isis. I looked very good in sparkly gold eyeshadow.

My baby brother and I were deeply imaginative. In fact, my brother was so imaginative that my mother wasn’t always entirely sure that he was altogether sane. He went through a phase of his life where he would gather very small objects of roughly equal size, such as pebbles or pennies, and would confine himself to a corner, cross legged, tossing the objects around on the floor, rocking back and forth, and making strange sound effects. If a kid did that kind of thing today, doctors would call him autistic or somesuch nonsense and dope him up with drugs until that silliness was knocked right out of him. But in those days, folks just figured it was kids being kids. My mother thought it was strange, and it was, but eventually my brother grew out of it and that was that.

I say all that to say that the fact my brother and I owned nothing at all that even remotely resembled idols from ancient Egypt did nothing at all to deter us from our steadfast determination to blaspheme against Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior right there in my mother’s backyard.

“We don’t have any statues of Isis or Anubis,” I pointed out thoughtfully, pretending I knew what I was talking about. The foreign names felt good on my tongue, and made me sound intelligent. “But we got those two empty water cooler jugs and some art supplies in the garage. We could paint ‘em up and stick some jewels on them, and then we could just pretend they’re ancient gods from Egypt, okay?”

My brother was two and half years younger than I, which made him about five at the time, and he did just about anything I told him. He nodded his head, having absolutely no idea what I was saying, and helped me lug the oversized plastic containers into the backyard.

We must have painted and glued for hours before I was satisfied with how our make-shift gods looked. Painstakingly, we draped our mother’s red, silk Christmas tree skirt over a couple of overturned cardboard boxes for an altar, and set the freshly decorated five gallon jugs on top.

“Those look great!” I exclaimed, stepping back to admire our handiwork. My brother silently agreed, lifting up the crocheted afghan he held in his left hand.

“Oh, right,” I said, turning him around and draping the blanket over his shoulders. I took a safety pin from my pocket and secured the blanket in a cape-like fashion around his neck. I don’t know why we decided that ancient Egyptians wore capes like Superman, but it seemed right at the time. And, really, if you can use a painted water cooler jug for the goddess Isis, I suppose nothing is completely out of the question.

We arranged ourselves around the altar, and I raised my hands to the sky, throwing my head back melodramatically. I summoned all the serious I had at my disposal, along with the biggest, most impressive words in my vocabulary. I had forgotten the gold eye glitter; fancy words would have to suffice.

“O wondrous and inimitable lady Isis! We are your humble servants, born to honor and serve thee!” Ancient Egyptians certainly spoke in Elizabethan English. If it was good enough for the Hebrews, it was definitely good enough for a priestess of Isis, even if I didn’t have any idea what “inimitable” meant.

My little brother raised his arms, too, and said, “Amen!” I didn’t think it was right to say “amen” to an Egyptian god, but I didn’t know what else to say, so I repeated him. “Amen!”

We got down on our knees and began prostrating ourselves before these plastic water bottle idols. We managed a few “hallelujahs” and quite a few “amens” before my mother appeared before us, arms crossed angrily across her chest, face twisted in a fury.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

Common sense fled me. I knew what I was about to say was the wrong answer, but I couldn’t help myself. A good, believable lie escaped me. My only option was the truth.

“We’re worshipping Isis and Anubis like the ancient Egyptians did,” I said.

My mother breathed in deeply, trying to keep her voice level. My mother could be quite a spectacle when she got angry. “We are Christians,” she hissed. “And you know that! Thou shalt have no other gods before me, remember? What are you thinking? And bringing your baby brother into your heathenry? Get your ass in the house and don’t let me ever catch you worshiping idols again! Really! What’s gotten into you lately?”

Forlorn, I unclasped my brother’s cape and followed him into the house. The paint hadn’t even dried on our idols before we were forced to abandon them to the twilight. The next morning, they were gone.

It was about that time my mother decided my brother and I needed to be baptized.