Happy Free Rice Friday!

Where you can “totes” improve your vocab while helping the UN World Food Program to end hunger.  Today’s Word is MACE.

Playing Free Rice this afternoon, on our 200th day of rain here in NYC, I was a bit surprised to come across the word MACE and not be quite sure of the answer out of the choices given.  Mace, as I know it, is the pepper spray that I was given by my Mother upon moving to New york.  Actually, it was a cute little can of mini-Mace that you could hang from your key chain.  This was only one of many anti-Rape gifts my Mother has bestowed upon me over the years.

Some highlights being – These little jeweled ornaments to encircle the stem of your wine glass.  They were very cute and I didn’t instantly pick up on the anti-Rape theme until my Mother insisted that I had to bring them with me when I went out to bars.  To mark my wine glass so that I could keep an eye on my drink.  So I wouldn’t end up getting roofied.  I tried to convince her that this wasn’t what these ornamental chotchkies were for, but she wasn’t having it.  We went round and round on the issue until in a burst of Mom-logic I finally countered with,

But if someone wanted to rape me in particular Mom, isn’t this just making it easier by identifying exactly which wine glass is mine?

And that was that.  My all time favorite anti-Rape gift was this large square kind of strobe flashlight that hung around your neck.  It came in this old fashioned cardboard box, taped shut so it was obviously a thrift store item, and the cover featured a picture of a girl in 70s garb running through the park holding the flashing light to alert police officers to her plight.   Opening up this treasure, I was amused to discover that this chunky anti-Rape necklace had a large switch on one side.  If you flip the switch up, a beam of stunningly bright light pulsates forth.  If you flip the switch down, the device emits an ear-splitting siren whistle.  My immediate thought was, why one or the other?  What an immense amount of pressure to put on a woman who is being attacked.

Siren or Light.  Siren or Light? Siren or Light!

Should you really have to choose between the two when the moment comes?  So with this plethora of knowledge behind me, I was surpised to find out that MACE did not mean what I thought.

mace = medieval battle club

At first I mused if this was like a dark ages Fight Club, but it is actually probably exactly what you imagined.  A weapon with a heavy head on a solid shaft used to bludgeon opponents.   The first anti-Rape gift.

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