Word: rituals
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...tell you a little story first. At home over Christmas I had my ritual fervent fight with my parents to counterpoint our otherwise pleasant time together. In fifteen minutes we managed to hit all the sore points, and finally we got to the war. My parents were urging that I go on into the Army rather than get out in some "dishonorable" way. And then my father said, "Look, you kids seem to think that you're the only ones who hate this war, who think about it every day. You're not. It's a goddamn mess-I know...
...before the President's address, and children romped in the august aisles. Misty-eyed wives of the initiates applauded the elevation of their husbands. Like a schoolboy, Virginia Senator William Spong carved his name in his desk drawer. Warmed by their sense of continuity with an opening-day ritual that has changed little in 182 years, the members of the convening 92nd Congress of the United States momentarily buried their deep differences. They basked in the expansive mood of mutual esteem common to those who know that they are about to influence their nation's history...
...ritual was staged again and again a decade ago. The stadium would fill with cheering Africans. The band would play a tattoo. Schoolchildren would scramble forward to slay papier-mâché dragons representing poverty, ignorance and disease. Fireworks would ignite the southern sky. At midnight a throaty cheer of "Uhuru!" (Swahili for "freedom") or "Kwacha!" ("dawn" in Bemba and Nyanja) would shake the ground as the flag of the colonial power was lowered and the colors of the new nation raised...
...professional baseball and college football, the ritual is called "Oldtimers' Day." In the movies, it is called There Was a Crooked Man. The combined age of the participants is Methuselahistic, and the plot is not much younger. For his game, Director Joseph Mankiewicz chose such veterans as Arthur O'Connell, Burgess Meredith, Hume Cronyn and Martin Gabel. Together, their gray thatches look like a stand of dandelions gone to seed. One good breath and their hair might vanish, two deep ones and the picture itself might be gone-and no one the poorer...
...parents recover Khadija, no longer in negotiable condition, and immediately plunge into hilarious legal struggles to reassert her virginity. To their astonishment, they discover that the girl still has suitors. In fact, by the book's end, Omar is counting up the dowry. The wedding ritual is complete with the virgin's epithalamium-the book's title...