Snakes and a Thane

Nuns with battle axes fighting hairy gorillas with Cockney accents being attacked by snakes!!! Oh my!

Thane of Groans

A thane is a local lord (but we’re going with “Nun” for this story) who had sworn loyalty to a higher authority, and in return, they were granted land.

The term is often associated with early English history and comes up in historical texts, like Beowulf or Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Others you might know would be Megan Thane Stallion, Thane Fonda, Thane Goodall and Lil’ Thane.

For the essence of this story, we’re going to use the most bad ass Thane of them all, Samuel Jackson with his famous quote as Mace Windu in Pulp Fiction: “GET THESE MOTHER FATHER SNAKES OFF THIS MOTHER FATHER THANE!” (it’s as if I’ll use this later in this completely factual story).

Hairy Situations

I, like many of you, am fascinated by genealogy, hoping to uncover some grand historical figure in my lineage. “Grand” like Hanno the Navigator, the famous 5th-century Carthaginian explorer who sailed along the African coast, documenting strange encounters. Encounters such as meeting “hairy women,” which we now understand were probably gorillas.

Actually if you need me to man explain this, I’m happy to but will deflect all blame while gaslighting you.

It’s easy to laugh at such misunderstandings, but wipe that smug off your mug. We live in a time where people still believe the earth is flat, that divining rods a stick can locate water, and that it’s perfectly fine for current laws to be based on loosely translated texts from ancient scriptures. Add to that the glorification of billionaires by some who see them as paragons of success, even though amassing obscene wealth while millions struggle is the very definition of unethical. We’re all prone to buying into stories, whether they’re ancient myths or modern fairy tales about wealth and power.

Oh, to all my female bros: If you don’t want to be a slick-shaven baby Barbie doll, rock your hairy self with pride. Gorilla you are not—you’re more a “GlowReal, Ya!”

I shaved my legs once and never again. My hat is tipped to you women who do this for a lifetime.

Thick pens

After tracing my family lineage, I discovered that both my parents’ roots lead back to England. The name Thigpen isn’t Irish, as I once thought, but Old English. It roughly translates to “thick” and “pen,” meaning “hill or enclosure,” but I prefer to think of “thick” as in “damn, girl, you thicc as hell.”

Percival Thigpen was often found cat calling to the lasses in ye towne square. His life was cut short when one lady decided he needed to find out about his fucking around.

Nun bred

One intriguing story I found was of a Hilda Thigpen, born in 614 CE in northeast England. She was a feisty lass, became a nun and later the Abbess of Whitby England around 675 CE. The abbey housed both monks and nuns, and Hilda ran a tight ship—she enforced a strict no-wanking policy. If you were caught playing pocket pull in your Habit, she’d have nun of that!

(Did you just groan? You try writing a weekly newsletter and landing every joke!)

What is it about religion and wanking?

But Hilda wasn’t your stereotypical nun. Us Thigpens are a hardy bunch, and Hilda wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. Legend has it that she took on venomous snakes in the area. This is where folklore and history blur, but it’s said she prayed for a divine intervention—a big, sturdy axe to slay those serpentine fiends. (Also, can we stop vilifying snakes? They’re essential to the ecosystem and have contributed to modern medicine. I once dated someone who thought snakes were the literal embodiment of Satan. Please don’t be that person.)

Dr. Phil is the only person I know that mansplains in non-sequiturs.

Snake Temple Pilots

We Thigpens are devoid of fear—well, except maybe for hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (the fear of very long words). Hilda was no exception, ever the fearless nun, she solved the slithery severity in the town of Whitby. As the story goes, she got down on her knees and prayed:

“Gor blimey, Lord! These bleedin’ snakes are ravagin’ the poor folk! Be a darlin’ and gimme somethin’ to whack ‘em proper. I don’t need no fancy tricks, just a good sturdy axe’ll do me right. Oi! And make it a proper beaut, eh? Thanks a million, luv.”

Whether or not Hilda actually sounded like a cockney character from a British sitcom is up for debate, but legend has it that she was blessed with an axe that turned snakes to stone once whacked. According to local lore, that’s why we find ammonite fossils in the area today, called “snake stones.”

Ammonite fossils look like one of those crazy puzzles by 80s rap star, M.C. Escher

It’s a charming blend of faith and folklore, much like your crazy uncle’s fishing tales about catching a whale that “got away.”

Sadly poor Reginald was catfished.

Pre-hysterical bloggers

Before you go fact-checking my family history on the Googles, remember that there weren’t any bloggers or Instagrammers around in Hilda’s time. No one was live-Xweeting her snake-slaying exploits or making Tick Tacks about her strict no-wanking policy. Stories like these were passed down orally and only written much later, often with a generous sprinkle of embellishment. So take ancient narratives with a grain of salt—and a generous pinch of humor.

Dorcas Thigpen’s dream was to be an influencer adored by all the lass and gentlemen in ye olden land. Sadly she was shadowbanneth like I usually am.

Family Ties and Tall Tales

Okay, I confess—I’m not actually related to Saint Hilda, as far as I know. I embellished this story to entertain. History does mention a Saint Hilda of Whitby, but she didn’t turn snakes to stone. That’s pure folklore. This is me blowing smoke up your ass for the sake of going viral and getting a million billion likes a narrative flair. If I had to guess, the most famous thing a Thigpen probably ever did was invent the first-ever commode. Who knows.

The very first internets argument by Sextus Pompeius Thigpen. Like me, he was a terribly rediculous looser.

The truth is, I am descended from Oliver Cromwell, a rather polarizing figure, which seems about par for the course.  Cromwell was either a hero who brought democracy to England or a villain who brought chaos, depending on who you ask.  That’s right, I’m just like Oliver but with a twist.  (See “did you just groan” above. 👆)

But these old tales remind us how history can be exaggerated and used to serve various agendas—much like Hanno’s “hairy women,” which were probably just misunderstood gorillas (but there’s a chance they could’ve been a ‘Squatch!!! I want to believe!). And isn’t it interesting that no one back then documented hairy men as gorillas? Patriarchy is a hell of a drug, eh?

The Ghosts of Thigpen Past

There are probably countless untold stories in my family history, but they’re lost to time. Every one of those ancestors, like all of us now, believed they were the center of the universe and wanked behind Hilda’s back (biology > religion). They lived their lives, loved, wanked, struggled, wanked and they died, just as we all will (so you might want to get in that wank today as you never know when you could get bit by a cockney British snake and die at the hand of a hairy gorilla!). In the grand scheme of things, these ancestors, like us, are just blips on a vast timeline—dust particles in the vast expanse of history. Like sands through an hourglass, these are the days of our lives.

80s soap operas, man…

When you think about the 4.5 billion-year history of the Earth, it’s sobering to realize just how insignificant we are. To put that 4.5 billion in perspective, let’s think in terms of $$$; If you saved a dollar a day from the dawn of time until now, you still wouldn’t be as rich as elon. Yet, some people continue to hold him up as the gold standard of success, ignoring the fact that accumulating that kind of wealth while others suffer is morally bankrupt. Sorry, I got off track—billionaires just really grind my gears, especially when they act like petulant children who need a good whack of common sense from Saint Hilda’s axe.

Now I am Death, destroyer of words

I think about wanking death a lot—not just because my wife is a palliative care physician and our dinner conversations sound like a grim reaper’s erotic fanfic. It’s because it’s the one certainty we all share, and that’s just terrifying. And if anxiety is getting the best of you reading this, I highly recommend

Haley Weaver

’s “Give Me Space but Don’t Go Too Far”—it’s an excellent self-reflective book on how to make peace with your little pal, anxiety.

I cannot recommend Haley’s book enough, it was easily my favorite of 2024.

I have a tattoo that reads “Memento Mori”—“remember you must die”. It’s got a skull, an hourglass, and a rose: life, death, and the fleeting time between. Thinking about death helps me appreciate life, even if only for a moment. And it’s this kind of thinking that has allowed me to be brave enough to tell friends and family “I love you” despite how uncomfortable it makes me, or them, feel at first. In my world, I want them to know they are viewed as someone I love and care deeply about even if it does make them feel all weird and yucky (especially my emotionally handicapped bros). 

Me, my tattoo and my pupper, Tess

Stop and Smell the Mortality

We’re all caught up in our daily grind—jobs, relationships, bills, existential dread. It’s hard to remember we’re human, right up until we lose someone we love. Suddenly, we’re reminded of our own mortality, and it hits like Hilda’s snake-slaying axe. It’s scary as hell.

What helps me is taking walks with my wife, where she’s a pro at stopping to smell every goddamned flower in the neighborhood. It used to annoy the hell outta me because I want to get in a good walk so my Apple Watch will tell me I burned enough calories to eat some double fudge froyo, but instead, it’s walk a few feet and smell a flower, walk a few feet more and smell the next one. It’s a small meditative practice for me now, and it gives me some space between my anxieties and the chaotic thoughts that constantly churn in my mind.

My gorgeous heterosexual life partner, Heather, smelling the roses.

And this is what happens to me when I try to smell the flowers:

See?I told you I’d use that “mother father” gag again.

WOO-Tang, Stan, is not anything to mess around with.

Get with the plan, Stan, this isn’t some new-age, woo-woo nonsense. It’s just being present, if only for a few seconds. It’s a little mental floss that allows that allows me to remove that metaphorical popcorn hull lodged in my brain. It makes me a bit braver to face unknowns like the reckoning we are headed towards for fucking around with Mother Nature; it helps keep me more centered in this very short time we have here on Earth.

I’ve made, and will continue to make, plenty of mistakes. But I take comfort in the knowledge that people’s attention spans are short. Really short. For example, remember Julie Nolke, the pandemic comedic queen? She was everywhere for a moment, then disappeared from the public eye (however she continues to pump out hilarious skits). And I’d wager some of you might have thought for a moment saying, “Who is Thig talking about? Ooooh yeah, THAT girl who went back in time to talk to her naive self, she was hysterical! I should look her up!” That’s what happens to most of us, too. We’re here, we are stories, then we’re gone, forgotten, like so many of the stories before us.

So let’s take a moment to do what my wife does: smell the goddamn flowers. It gives you some space between your anxieties and the shit we have to endure daily.

Hilda’s Heritage: A Cut Above the Rest

Long live the imaginary Hilda Thigpen. You might not have existed, but I like the thought of you and your badaxe self!

Now send this article to someone you’d like throw an axe at (yes, I ended this with a preposition).

Citations:

1. 1. Hanno the Navigator:

   1. “Hanno the Navigator’s Voyage to Africa.” World History Encyclopedia. https://www.worldhistory.org/Hanno_the_Navigator/

   2. “Hanno’s Voyage and the Gorillas of Africa.” Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hannos-voyage-and-the-gorillas-of-africa-114245899/

2. Saint Hilda of Whitby:

   1. “St. Hilda of Whitby.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Hilda-of-Whitby

   2. “The Legend of Saint Hilda.” The Northern Echo. https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/history/11144567.legend-saint-hilda-whitby/

3. Oliver Cromwell:

   1. “Oliver Cromwell: Controversial Leader.” BBC History. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/oliver_cromwell

   2. “Family Tree of Oliver Cromwell.” Geni.com. https://www.geni.com/people/Oliver-Cromwell-Lord-Protector-of-the-Commonwealth/6000000001826235694

4. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (Fear of Long Words):

   1. “Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia: The Fear of Long Words.” Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia

5. Ammonite Fossils:

   1. “Ammonites: Fossils of a Bygone Era.” National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/ammonites

   2. “Ammonite Fossils.” Natural History Museum, London. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-are-ammonites.html

6. Memento Mori:

   1. “Memento Mori: The Reminder We All Desperately Need.” The School of Life. https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/memento-mori/

   2. “What is ‘Memento Mori’?” The Art of Manliness. https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/manly-lessons/what-is-memento-mori/

7. Haley Weaver’s Book “Give Me Space but Don’t Go Too Far”:

   1. “Give Me Space but Don’t Go Too Far” by Haley Weaver. Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55799462-give-me-space-but-don-t-go-too-far

8. Julie Nolke:

   1. “Julie Nolke, Comedian.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsS-7iujwosN8eD1amwKnNg

   2. “Julie Nolke Talks YouTube Success and Pandemic Videos.” The Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2020/07/21/how-julie-nolke-got-millions-to-watch-her-pandemic-youtube-videos.html