Don't Mess with Me, I Know Voodoo

In my opinion, New Orleans is one of the best places you can ever visit.  For exactly 4 days.  No more, no less.  If you stay less, you won't have a chance to do a swamp tour, the Creole Queen paddlewheel cruise, the plantation tour, the graveyard tour and 3 nights out on Bourbon Street.  You will need 4 days to hit the best of the best restaurants.  But if  if you stay longer?  You might as well go online and find yourself  a 12 step program right after you book your air and hotel.  They ought to sell it as a package.

Once upon a time, I was on my third day in New Orleans and I decided to take a little tour of Madame Someone's House of Voodoo.  Maybe it was the 2 previous nights out on Bourbon Street talking, or maybe it was the slightly spooky atmosphere in this little museum.  But I found myself asking "what would you suggest if you wanted to make someone 'go away.'"  I was speaking about my nemesis, an evil Napoleonesque troll who I could only imagine lived under a bridge in his exclusive Connecticut neighborhood.  The scary tour guide looked at me a little different from this point on, and suggested that perhaps I could place a voodoo doll in a boat in a bathtub and push the water to symbolize this 'going away.'  Of course in order for this to work, he did coach that I would need something that belonged to the putz.  The gentle boatride was a much kinder and gentler version of what I had been considering doing to this voodoo doll.  But of course this was all a joke.  Because I didn't believe in voodoo.  Just for kicks, I bought the doll.

I brought my cool souvenier home and hung it on the wall.  The troll must have done something to me soon after that trip to annoy me because I named the doll after him.  But what I didn't do is obtain a hair that had fallen naturally from his thinning head of hair. Because to do something like that would be crazy.  And I am not that.  But if I did, I would have attached it to the doll before moving the pin holding it to the wall to its stomach area.  Of course nothing ever happened to the troll.  Not that I was trying.

Then came a day when I was leaving the company that I had been graced with the troll's presence at.  Graced through his undermining me and effectively nudging himself in and me out of the project that I was spearheading with a few others.  As I celebrated my final week with the company at a lunch, he was not present.  But the voodoo doll with his name was invited.  He had a seat right next to me, head down, submerged in my water glass. 

You know, he never set sail while I was there.  And he never drowned (which, of course, I would not have wanted anyway - because we have already established I'm not crazy).  But according to legend, he did get himself into HOT water a few years later which cost him reputationally.  So, while I still don't believe in voodoo, I believe that you don't need it when karma is on your side.