Once Upon A Pirate

So anyway, a long, long time ago I used to be a pirate. Yeah, I know what you're thinking: a bunch of mentally unstable, unshaven brutes running around gnashing their teeth and shouting things like "Har matey!" And "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!" And you probably imagined that these boisterous, hairy individuals might not smell very good either.

And well, what can I say? Partly you've got it dead right, but there's also a whole lot that you'd never ever guess about life on a pirate ship. Like, did you ever know that pirates sing each other lullabies at night?

Ah...I'll never forget it. I was a sullen, aggressive lad of tender sixteen. I had run away from home, stowing away in the black, fetid hold of a weather-worn merchant ship called the Virgina Constance. However, at that point I actually thought that is was a merchant ship. Little did I know.

I had heard all the stories of pirates of course, living along the swampy shore of Virginia, I had been born and raised on the daring, bloodcurdling, romantic and adventurous tales of Blackbeard, Captain Kid and the likes, and as much as I feared them, I secretly idolized some of these men like no one else.

So the spring after my father died and my mother started looking for a husband, I decided I couldn't take it anymore. I was the eldest son, with only my sister Margaret older than me, and two children younger than both of us. I felt some guilt about leaving them. After all, I was the man of the family now, and that meant my job was to provide for them and protect them. But Ma and Margaret were both strong as mules and just as stubborn, and usually told me straight out that anything a half grown boy could do, they were bound to be able to do better.

Pa was a quiet man all his life, apt to dreaming and reading the works of Shakespeare and the Bible, and not fit for much else. He was so meek and quiet all his life that when he died, meekly and quietly of pneumonia from staying out in the rain too long, and although we missed him, there really wasn't much of a change in our house.

Pa died in the winter of that year, 1732, and after wearing black for four months, Ma decided that she had mourned Pa long enough, shut her black clothes in a trunk up in the attic, and began to go courting.

I was outraged. I had never talked to Pa that much while he lived, but we'd had a sort of understanding between us that went deeper than words. So I thought it was just plain vulgar of Ma to take up courting a mere four months after her husband had died. I mean, I thought at the very least she should be heartbroken for years and hold Pa's memory sacred, never letting another man near her, or if she did, not for at least 10 years or so.

But it didn't seem matter much what I thought. In April of 1733, Ma and Will MacPherson were married in our town's church on the edge of a swamp. I was so mad I wouldn't have even gone to the service, except that Margaret dragged me.

Will MacPherson was a big, loud, darkly handsome man, or so my Ma and Margaret said. I disliked him from the beginning. In my opinion, he was the worst choice of a husband Ma could've picked. But once again, my opinion didn't seem to matter much at all.

So the night Will beat me for saying that I'd never obey him because he wasn't my father and couldn't make me, I realized there was nothing left at home for me, and I made up my mind to get out of there the only way I knew how: stowing away on one of the ships that went in and out of our little port, little knowing that my dreams of piracy were soon to become a much too vivid reality.

But where was I? I never meant to start rambling on like this, but sometimes when you get to telling a story, other things come out than what you first intended to say. And I meant to tell you about the lullabies...