Ma and the Ouija Board
I don’t know what it’s all about, but Ma says that she wants to know
If spirits in the other world can really talk to us below.
An’ Pa says, 'Gosh! there’s folks enough on earth to talk to, I should
think,
Without you pesterin’ the folks whose souls have gone across the brink.’
But Ma, she wants to find out things an’ study on her own accord,
An’ so a month or two ago she went an’ bought a ouija board.
It’s just a shiny piece of wood, with letters printed here an’ there,
An’ has a little table which you put your fingers on with care,
An’ then you sit an’ whisper low some question that you want to know.
Then by an’ by the spirit comes an’ makes the little table go,
An’ Ma, she starts to giggle then an’ Pa just grumbles out, 'Oh, Lord!
I wish you hadn’t bought this thing. We didn’t need a ouija board.’
‘You’re movin’ it!' says Ma to Pa. 'I’m not!' says Pa, 'I know it’s you;
You’re makin’ it spell things to us that you know very well aren’t true.’
‘That isn’t so,' says Ma to him, 'but I am certain from the way
The ouija moves that you’re the one who’s tellin’ it just what to say.’
‘It’s just ‘lectricity,’ says Pa; 'like batteries all men are stored,
But anyhow I don’t believe we ought to have a ouija board.’
One night Ma got it out, an’ said, 'Now, Pa, I want you to be fair,
Just keep right still an’ let your hands rest lightly on the table there.
Oh, Ouija, tell me, tell me true, are we to buy another car,
An’ will we get it very soon?' she asked. ‘Oh, tell us from afar.’
‘Don’t buy a car,' the letters spelled, 'the price this year you can’t
afford.’
Then Ma got mad, an’ since that time she’s never used the ouija board.
Other works by Edgar Albert Guest...
