Pennies For Virgins

Here's something that occurred to me the other day:  If you think about it broadly enough, the concept of tossing a coin into a well and making a wish is fundamentally the same as pitching a virgin into a volcano and hoping for a bountiful harvest.

Throwing away perfectly good money is a sacrifice, right?

Luckily for all the local virgins we've come down somewhat on the severity of necessary sacrifices but the idea is pretty much the same:  The thing you sacrifice has to have some value, or the thing doesn't work. 

Otherwise wishing wells would be filled to the brim with used oil and magazine inserts and the like. 

Whoever figured out that a coin in a well works just as well as a virgin in a volcano must have got the equivalent of a Nobel prize back in the day, I mean... that's a pretty big deal you would think. 

Here's the headline:

"Local Man Appeases Gods With Coin:  No More Virgin Sacrifices!"

-- There was celebration in the streets today in downtown Tenochtitlan as thousands of citizens rejoiced the new non-sacrificeable status of their families and friends.  As it turns out, flicking a coin into any old deep hole filled with water is absolutely just as effective as pitching maidens headlong into bubbling mountains of molten rock.

The man behind this ground-breaking discovery is Dave... Spaulding?, of 153 West Palm Rd., who apparently stumbled across the idea while drawing water from a local well.  A coin slipped from his pocket and plummeted into the depths just as he said "I wish it wasn't so hot out here".  According to eyewitness reports, a cloud immediately passed in front of the ball of fire in the sky, proving irrevocably that the Gods had heard him and had granted his wish.  

Dave... is being heralded as "Chap of the year" and has been awarded a bag of sacred chicken feet for his discovery. 

It begs the question:  Whose hair-brained idea was it to pitch maidens in there in the first place? 

Why was that the first thing they thought of?  If I had to guess, I'd wager that ordinary folks would tend to lean towards the virgin sacrifice as a last resort rather than a go-to plan from the onset.  Maybe that's just me...

TSN