Dear Reader, when I say “Cults” are on everyone’s lips, I am not talking cigarettes.  I am talking those mysterious things that many of us wish to explore but don’t for fear of being trapped.  Owing to this lack of courage on my part I have asked a number of eminently qualified commentators to give their take on “Cults” in order for you to be better able to make those life choices you have been assiduously avoiding.  Thus over the next few days we will post those pieces, trusting our security measures are effective.

Pig Skin and Purple Kool Aid

by Cantina Baulk

Sometime in 1972 I overheard my mother whispering– a cousin’s son  was in a cult.  I was intrigued.  How does someone go in never to be retrieved?  Six years later cult leader Jim Jones ordered 900 to suicide by drinking Purple Kool Aid.  And they did.  With superiority in my teenage voice I sighed, “How do they get sucked in?”

Thirty years later, I am caught in the vortex of a country cult.  My husband has been involved for decades; my son will never leave of his own volition.

It’s Victoria.  It’s a cult.  It’s football.

Initially it was state-sponsored Auskick after school.  We innocently took our 8 year- old- old boy to “The Minis” —keen tykes playing at half time during “big boy” football.  The darlings ran about in oversized jumpers.  There were no positions, just a swarm of boys on the ball and a voice calling, “Gran did you see me?”  The scene was like the flower extended by the Harre Krishnas.  We took it.

We began our rostered life of junior football with zeal.  The club song was memorized.  We joined trance-like convoys of parents in order to be to be at places called Pimpinio and Rupanyup by 8:15 in the morning.

All our Saturdays from April to September were sucked away from us, like an orange at half time.

Thursday nights are training night.  As the boys run under the lights, mothers swarm in the canteen with ladles feeding the 200 sons, fathers, as well as the daughters of the associated cult (netball).

22 team jumpers come home in a muddy bag to soak and wash.  They whirl around my Hills Hoist while I imagine life on the outside.  Every home game requires a plate of afternoon tea or a vat of soup.

On Saturdays in the canteen I hawk pies with icy middles and blue Powerade.  The beverage distributor reports our club buys more of this mixture than any other client.  Ah, the days I naively puzzled at Jim Jones’ followers queuing at their vat of purple Kool-Aid.  Now I sell it in red, orange and blue.

I don’t see my husband much.  He’s huddled on the score board 25 feet the in air on an icy July morning.

You could still get out I hear you say. Make a run for it after the Reserves.  But no, our son is rostered on for water boy during the Seniors.  My husband is on the gate. We would be exposed.

People in cults forget their past.  I dimly remember when I discussed literature in the summer sun.  Now I can’t risk it. We discuss number #28’s groin injury instead.

If we relocated outside of league boundaries maybe they’ll let us go.  I dream my son could get a clearance and come too.  I know in my heart it won’t happen; in cults we supress the possibility and the questions.  It’s as foolhardy as asking cult leaders “Does anyone ever win the meat tray?”