The Blues

The Dark Mark

On August 9, 2011, in Books, Family, by Rosie

Oh dear. The dark mark has infiltrated our home.

Was reading the fourth Harry Potter book to Pop this evening and Pip came to sit next to us on the couch. She’s read it 400 times before, so decided to add humerous commentary to the text I was relaying, which is quite annoying. Why? (a) It interrupts the lilting tones of my own voice, and (b) it ruins the storytelling atmosphere, makes me lose my place in the reading, distracts everybody …

Until the moment where Snape tells Karkaroff (both considered ‘baddies’ at this stage and for those unsure of the Harry Potter universe) to ‘put that away’.

Prof Snape was instructing Prof Karkaroff (a visiting teacher to Hogwarts) to pull the sleeve of his top down and the reader assumes that Karkaroff has exposed his ‘dark mark’ on the inside of his forearm. (The sign that he might be a death eater/baddie/Voldermort supporter).

Okay. All well and good until Pip, just turned 10, says ‘some people say “put that away” when they are talking about the penis,’

Um? OMG, what? You’ve just turned double digits, there’s riot and famine all round the globe, we’re reading about the magical mystery of your beloved Harry Potter and you’re talking about genitals? Not only ABOUT THEM, but about putting a penis AWAY?

Rather than sputtering over the Snape/Karkaroff dialogue (which was evidently falling into a homoerotica slash-type escapade in Pip’s mind), I swallowed the sentence, closed my previously agape mouth and turned to her.

‘What did you say? Where did you hear that? About a penis? About putting it AWAY?’

I wanted to be cool. I’m groovy, I’m hip, have street cred and know a couple of dozen words for male and female genitalia, swear a bit, write a bit of adult lit, trade in crude puns and rude jokes. I’m not freaked out by a daughter talking about putting penises away.

Like hell.

‘Oh, I read it in a book’. (This is Pip’s reason for anything. If she is caught doing something unattractive in coming years, I’m sure she’ll turn around to me and say ‘I wanted to try out exactly what the book implied’).

‘Really?’ I said, wondering what book instructed its reader to do such a thing. And why I hadn’t read it.

‘In a funny book. A boy was mucking around in school and someone told him to put his penis away.’

Oh? A funny book? Well that’s alright then, ffs! If it’s funny, then it doesn’t matter what it says! Like hell.

Just as I was about to lecture Pip about what this might really entail and the situations one might find themselves in whereby the penis might need to be ‘put away’, Pop rebounded the cock … the shuttlecock, I mean, in this game of hideous, Harry Potter badminton.

‘Maybe that’s what Professor Karkaroff is doing? Showing Snape his private parts. Maybe the dark mark is on there? You know …’ Pop placed two two hands upon the area she was discussing. ’He has a dark mark down here.’

Then both of the girls? Sitting either side of me, as I sunk further into the couch and my greyness of hair? They giggled. Laughed out loud, jollily, merrily, mocking the penis, the dark mark, the fact that Severus Snape asked Prof Karkaroff to ‘put it away.’

Yep, this is SO not the Harry Potter journey I know and love.

Instead of slamming the book shut and sending both spawn to their rooms, I looked at the text of a beloved book and my eyes glazed over. The hilarity continued as they laughed at ways that the dark mark might have made its way down there. They were practically choking on giggles and dissolving into fits of ‘put it away’ hysteria.

‘Enough!’ I said. ’This is silly and rude. Stop, please.’

‘Oh mum,’ said Pop, the younger, bolder one. ’You were laughing too.’

‘I was not!’

Well, I was trying not to.

There’s an interesting belief that children choose their parents before birth, that they come into this world needing to learn something from one or both of their parents, hence their placement in our lives. Jeez. No wonder they selected me. Both of them take so soundly after their dad, they’ll need all the guidance in the world to modify their senses of humour.

I hear a convent calling. Hmm. Or not.