Potholder: A Love Story

Once upon Ye Olde English heath, as the door to her cottage swung open, Hildegard smelled burning. Her husband’s boot had crossed the threshold, he would expect dinner, and he would not want it to be burned.

Hildegard rushed to the hearth. She grabbed the dangling pot of stew and instantly, agonizingly, the metal seared her palms.

“Zounds!” she cried.

“Woman!” her husband remonstrated.

“Zounds, it hurts!”

“Hold thy foul tongue!” her husband roared. “Thou wilt not blaspheme in my house!” (For zounds, dear reader, derived from God’s wounds, a reference to the crucifixion of Christ, and to employ the torture of one’s Lord and Savior as an epithet was as shocking to a pious old Englishman as the lyrics of NWA would prove to his descendants' erstwhile colonists 400 years after.)

“But it hurts!” Hildegard cried. “Thy stew burneth, and the metal hath proved too hot for my tender hands!”

“Stow thy pitiful excuses!” her husband retorted. “Find thyself a godlier path, or never again look me in the face!”

Hildegard departed. She wept even after she treated her second degree burns at the home of a crone who practiced homeopathic medicine, for Hildegard loved her husband, for some reason, or at least loved having a roof over her head to escape the goddamned English rain. To keep her husband roof husband, she needed aid, so Hildegard set out to a person who could set her on a godly path.

“Woman, why dost thou weep?” the Archbishop of Canterbury asked.

“Forgive me bishop,” Hildegard answered. “I hath displeased my husband.”

“How?”

“With an ill word.”

“What ill word did thee speakest?”

Hildegard hesitated. “I said, Zounds, your bishopness.”

“Jesus,” said the Archbishop of Canterbury, “that’s fucking awful word. Why wouldst thou say such a thing?”

“I burned my hands, your bishopness. On a pot. Heaven help me, if I don’t find a safer way to hold a pot, I might blaspheme again, and my husband will disown me. Is there any hope for such a disgraced wench as me?”

“Let us pray.”

And Hildegard and the Archbishop knelt and prayed, and, i dunno, burned frankincense or something, and lo, the Holy Ghost sent them down a dove, which carried in its beak a thickly woven fabric, and they gave thanks to the Lord.

“Almighty God,” asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, “what wouldst You, in Your Infinite Wisdom, have us call this thickly woven fabric with which to hold pots?”

The candles flared, the stones of the cathedral shook, the Archbishop wet himself, and a voice from the heavens boomed, “A potholder.”

And so Hildegard carried the potholder home, and gave knowledge of it unto other women, and prepared many delicious stews without burning her hands, which meant she never again said the unforgiveable zounds, which meant her husband loved her, five times a week whether she were in the mood or not, and she bore many children and had a roof over her head to protect her from the goddamned English rain, and they all lived happilyish ever after until the plague destroyed their bodies and minds.

The End.