This morning we had the following email exchange:
Me in email to Allison:
I HAVE to see this documentary about Jim Jones and the People’s Temple – it’s at the Quad … and, I don’t know, seems like it’s something you and I need to see together. ha!!!
wanna go this weekend? Saturday is out for me – but maybe Sunday?? Wanna go see 900 people kill themselves with poisoned Kool-aid on screen??
Allison in email to Me:
OH MY GOD. MUST MUST. Can not literally think of a better way to spend a Sunday.
Hahaha. The first time I read this documentary, I instantly thought of you and how I wish we could see it together.
hahahahaha
Can’t wait!!!
It’s that whole cult-mass murder thing that we both adore, I guess.
hahahaha
And we’d spend like eight hours after it was over talking about it.
Never letting the other one finish a sentence.
I mean, seriously, I’ve been obsessed with Jim Jones since I saw that TV movie with Powers Boothe – I think I was, uhm, 10 years old or something like that when I saw it.
Yeah. Really appropriate for a child.
FASCINATING.
I remember that movie!
I remember when Jim Jones happened!! EEEK!
you’ll have to tell us about it
I never would have killed myself for Powers Boothe.
You know, that was the first “big bad news” story that my parents didn’t manage to protect my brother and me from. (I think I was like 8 or 9 when it happened). It still creeps the hell out of me to think about it, probably because I was a little kid when I heard about it, and it seemed so horrific and twisted…and it was a long time before I could look at Communion the same way again….
That said, I hope you find the documentary, um, instructive. (I’m not going to suggest you have fun…that seems wrong to say).
I will also say: I wish people would stop using the “drink the Kool-Aid” meme to describe groups of people who follow some leader blindly. My reasons are purely selfish, so I can’t really justify them, but: I get a horrible chill down my back every time I hear/read that phrase.