On pirates

Perhaps like my Hogwarts letter that got lost in the mail, the sea never really called to me.

I was born in the middle of the mountains, facing a lake so impossibly large that my gaze could never quite lose itself entirely. A block from home lived a couple of kids whose father had built them a wooden platform that in my memory was a ship. And not just any ship, but a pirate ship.

With trees as far as the eye could see, the sea looked more green than blue, but one thing was certain: aboard that ship, the authority of the older kids meant nothing — except when by decree someone had to be invited to play because they’d been left out. After all, even pirates know when to listen to their mothers.

The cruelty of real pirates, of course, went far beyond not letting someone climb aboard to play. Their contemporaries called them “monsters,” “hellhounds,” “thieves, opponents and violators of all laws, human and divine,” if not outright “demons in the flesh.”

And yet, pirates are romantic villains: fearsome men — with a few notable exceptions — willing to forge a life beyond the reach of the law, freed from their jobs and society’s constraints to pursue wealth, happiness, and adventure.

For nearly three centuries, we’ve been marveling at their merciless tales of high-seas mischief, camaraderie, and rebellion. And their beards, of course. Always on the edge of the law, yet bound by a legendary code, our ambiguous fascination likely coincides with the increasing bureaucratization of our own lives…