How a Washington Heights Witch Doctor Tried to Exorcise Me and Failed Spectacularly

Looking back, I'm not entirely sure what tipped my mother over the edge; the Chanel No. 5 incident (replaced with olive oil, a fragrance swap I still stand by) so it gave her a rash... nothing a little windex didn't fix, the electrocution experiment on cousin Carlos (cartoons are liars), or perhaps the Mary Poppins reenactment I orchestrated using our neighbor's kid as my stunt double (he was genuinely excited to have an arm cast). But there I was, seven years old, 40 pounds of bones with a head too big for my body, being dragged to a curandera in Washington Heights like some sort of demonic Cabbage Patch Kid. My rap sheet was admittedly impressive: iron-grilled cheese (delicious), strategic chocolate heist foiled only by diarrhea (rookie mistake), pee-filled water balloons (efficiency at its finest), and grand larceny at church for pizza money (the Lord works in mysterious ways, and so did joe's pizza). The woman didn't even look mystical...she looked exactly like Angie from All My Children, which honestly felt like false advertising.

The whole ritual was pure theater. She waved a smoking bush around me like I was a brisket (i did get a tingling sensation like a peppermint patty), handed my mom a dried chicken for under my bed (free-range exorcism, very trendy), and boiled some roots into what she claimed was lethal holy water. One touch, she said, staring into my soul with those soap opera eyes, and I'd die instantly. Naturally, this presented an irresistible scientific opportunity. After my little sister wisely rejected my candy bribe, Then my candy-plus-two-dollars bribe (that's serious capital) for a 4 year old! Employed the old "ooh, is that a fish?" distraction technique and dunked her hand right in. Her bloodcurdling scream brought my mother running, chancla already hand like the lone ranger, while my sister remained conspicuously alive. I tried explaining that I'd just exposed a fraudulent spiritual practitioner and saved the family money, but apparently parents don't appreciate consumer advocacy when it involves weaponizing younger siblings.

The real mystery isn't whether I was devil spawn. The egg test was inconclusive, and I maintain that most of my childhood innovations were simply ahead of their time. No, the real question is why nobody interrogated Grandma for fleeing a smoking house (a slice of bread on the stove with burner turned high always did the trick... for extra smoke add butter). with her suitcases while abandoning all the children inside... thankfully I didn't miss my favorite show "Wonder Woman", or why my mother trusted a woman who looked like a daytime TV character to perform amateur exorcisms.

That judge at Bronx Supreme Court smiled through our entire hide-and-seek bust because he got it. Childhood is just a series of experiments with occasionally catastrophic results. The curandera's cursed water didn't kill my sister, the iron made an objectively good grilled cheese, and I learned a valuable lesson that day: always negotiate higher than two dollars, and as DJ Jazzy Jeff so wisely observed, parents just don't understand.