Vent

Last Beltane (6 months ago), I allowed Chantria to lend our large celebration/cutting/craft/game table to the local Pagan/Wiccan community to use for their Beltane festival. They were to pick it up that Friday evening and return it that Sunday evening.

They picked it up, no problem at all.

But I never saw that table again.

It was a solid, 30″x92″ folding convention table. Wood, not laminate – it was very old, with sturdy steel legs.

The person who borrowed it kept procrastinating in returning it. First she claimed she had no way to return it. Funny, she had no problem finding a way to get it.

When we countered that excuse with the fact that we had at our disposal 2 pick up trucks and 2 station wagons, any of which were large enough to haul the table away, she changed the excuse to the fact that she had it buried under too many things and didn’t have time to clear it off.

Then she avoided Chantria for a while.

Now, she claims the table was destroyed and she can’t return it.

She made no offer to replace it, no apology for damaging someone else’s property, no remorse for not returning it promptly.

I paid $229.00 for that table. I don’t think I can get a replacement that is equivalent nowadays for that price. All the replacement tables I can find are plastic with aluminum legs – weak and wobbly and probably unable to withstand the uses to which we put our tables.

I mourn the loss of all the future activities we could have done on that table – the feasts and the celebrations and all the people would have sat at that table, the costumes and clothes that would have been measured out and cut on it, the scupltures that would have beencrafted on it, the Elf Chess games that could have covered it from time to time.

I hope we can find some suitable replacement.

And then the woman who borrowed and presumably destroyed our table had the gall to ask if she could borrow some of my cookbooks!

This is a classic example of why I prefer to associate with Numenists and friends of Numenists, and not the general Pagan community.

It’s not the table itself and its loss that angers me – as much as I moaned about it, I’m sure we can find a suitable replacement, it is just a thing, after all – it was the constant excuses we were given for not returning the table. And the other Pagans supported her in her desire to keep our table. Not one chided her for her delays. Not one offered to help return the table. Not one encouraged her to let us pick up the table from her.

Instead, we are made out to be the bad guys for insisting upon the return of our table.

The other part of this is that I know she’s lying. Our table is not destroyed. She’s still using it. By telling us it was destroyed, she thinks she can continue to use the table guilt-free – and without having to buy such a nice table herself.

She doesn’t understand magic if she thinks that. We may not get our table back from her, but she won’t enjoy keeping it, either.