Adaptation, Little Girls, and the Spirit World

You learn to adapt when you have fibromyalgia. One of the things I do to adapt comes courtesy of two little girls and the spirit world.

Bending over is often painful. If I need to pick something up around the house, I almost never use my hands. I use my feet. I can do this from a standing position without having to bend over. I almost never wear shoes so it is pretty easy. I can pick up almost anything with my toes, and the reason is because of two young girls known as the Fox Sisters.

The two sisters were Margaret and Kate. In 1848, when Margaret was 15 and Kate was 12, they lived in a house that had a reputation for being haunted. The two girls discovered a little trick they could do.  By snapping their toes out of sight against a solid surface, they could make a rapping sound that seemed to come from nowhere.

They explained that the rapping was caused by spirits, and soon were able to rap out letters of the alphabet and other forms of information. They were the first rappers. They would expand this ability and become world famous as mediums. Hundreds of other women would discover that they had the power, aided by a few simple tricks, leading to the rise of Spirtualism both in the United States and around the world.

It would be many years before Margaret and Kate would reveal the trickery that made them famous mediums. They would be old women by then. Countless other mediums would develop their own forms of trickery.

As a young magician, I worked to master the methods of the mediums. I could recreate the spirit rapping using my toes. I could write in chalk on a spirit slate that was under the table, using just my toes. I could use my toes to pick up a bell and ring it. In my teens, I put on séances to entertain family and friends, and my toes came in pretty handy (or toey).

So, a skill I learned in my teens has proven to be quite useful for entirely different reasons.