Just one of the questions regarding this strange custom.

Grade school was a hard place for me. I was THAT girl. The one that everyone thought they could pick on when they felt the need to make themselves feel bigger by making someone else feel small.

There was Matt. The regular tormenter. It seemed every year the Principal’s office got together and placed the students for the next year into classes, and every year, I think they personally said, “If we put Laura and Matt into the same class again, maybe just maybe he will decide not to hit and kick her and call her ugly names just for sport. The fact that he has always done this, and never has stopped, no matter the threat, is irrelevant. She just needs more toughening up, and he just needs more chances to learn to be a person instead of a quarreling dog.” I don’t know how they planned it, but he was in EVERY CLASS from first to sixth grade.

It was not until Jr. High that I had any classes without him. Because in Jr. High you get separated by ability, and I had it, and he did not.

He was not the only one, he could always find someone, boy or girl, to join in, often the entire class.

Somewhere about 4^th grade, Sherill and I landed in the same class, and became fast friends for three years (Jr. High school sent us different directions, and we stayed friends, but were not as close.). It was sheer self-preservation! She and I were both that kind of girl, who just always got picked on and insulted. Daily. Not just sometimes. All the time.

Now, I must take you into my confidence. You must understand the seriousness of what I am about to tell you, and that this MEANT something. Something so deep, I could NEVER confess it in Grade School, or even in Jr. High, or Highschool.

They wrote V.O.E. on their shoes, for US. For Sherill and I.

They didn’t just do it once in a while, they did it REGULARLY. They wrote it again in the same place almost EVERY DAY to make sure they warded off the cooties that we carried. Just to make sure WE KNEW we were that kind of unacceptable!

Now, nobody knew what it meant. V.O.E.? What the heck does that mean? I mean, yeah, you can reason out that it means you are NOT POPULAR. But seriously, nobody knows what it actually means.

But they do it anyway. They do it very determinedly and seriously. Because it is V.O.E..

The girls do it to ward off germs. Unpopular germs. And boy germs. And the boys do it to ward off girl germs. And Unpopular germs. They prioritize it differently.

They also called us the Terrible Twosome. Not because we were mean or bad, but because we stank. They said so. Even if we smelled good, we stank. Because this was Grade School. SOMEBODY had to stink.

Today, this is hysterical. Then, it was just part of the human struggle to grow up and actually live through it. Academically, Grade School was just a slide. It was easy stuff. But socially, it was brutal.

Sherill and I did it too. We wrote it on our shoes. Just to be sure, you know, that if there was anything lower than us, that it could not damage us. We also secretly did it to ward off THEM… The ones who were doing it to us. But you couldn’t say THAT.

Dozens of pairs of tennis shoes with V.O.E. inscribed on the edge of the soles, that I threw down to the dump when I wore them out. Thousands of them in the landfills. You know those canvas deck shoes? Those. Plenty of room to write it. Always on the instep. Because that is where you can reach at recess, and your mother doesn’t notice it as soon. In ink pen. Just so you know it will last until you can do it at recess the next day, all over again.

We asked if anybody knew what it meant, and there was never a satisfactory answer. You could not even MAKE UP your own, with letters like that!

Morrie says he knows what it means. He says it means, “Vox On Everyone.”.

Well, that’s what they said it meant in third grade. But nobody ever believes THAT one!

He says, “Vox means Plague.” I’m not sure if he has any credibility or not!

If it does mean that, I can’t see why writing in on your shoes gives it any particular mystic power!

My father finally confesses that he knows what it means. It is “Vermin”. Still makes no more sense.

My uncle Gerry says, “No, it is ‘Vengeance’.”. We still aren’t getting anywhere.

My father’s friend Ed says, “Vermouth. Pickle them straight up!”.

His wife says, “Pick a word that starts with V, and go for it! It still won’t explain why you write it on your shoes if you hate someone in particular!”.

Kelly says they did it in California. There were kids in California, she insists, who wrote it on their shoes, solely because she persisted in going to school every day. They didn’t know what it meant either!

Boyd says they did it in Seattle, where all the cool kids lived in the state of Washington. He says kids who were not cool were not allowed to live in Seattle, so he doesn’t know what it was they were warding off, and they could never tell him what it actually meant either! But it was trendy. So they had to do it!

Donald says it swept Iowa every year, but only in the third grade. First graders and second graders didn’t do it, even the more precocious of them. But then, in Iowa that is mostly because first graders hadn’t learned their alphabet well enough to get to V yet, and second graders could not yet spell well enough to write V.O.E., so by third grade, they were poxing and plaguing on their shoes. By fourth grade they had to work on writing longer words, so they were writing other things on their shoes.

Ted says his kids are homeschooled, so they don’t pick up things like this. All the really cool and nasty trends seem to pass them by. One of his girls stays overnight with a friend. This friend goes to public school. She comes home with V.O.E. on her shoes. This is about 10 years ago. She doesn’t know what it means, it is just a thing you do when you dislike someone, she says. And it is the brother of her friend, who likes to spit on people’s things, and wipe boogers on them. She is now in college, and this is one of the things in her social coping toolbox that she has taken to college with her. She reports that she’s not weird or anything, she finds shoes everywhere with this on it. Of course, this is an Eastern College, and kids are kinda behind here.

Phil says it is old, and from the time they had schools in Hawaii, they did this in Hawaii. He assures me that Morrie’s translation is correct… For English. It comes out somewhat different in Hawaiian. More like “Look Above the Bugs”. He says, “Whatever, it works either way.” He looks down. “Some days, you run into THOSE people, and you just want a pair of tennis shoes and an ink pen.”

Tracy was one of the popular girls. She doesn’t think it is any big deal to have that written on shoes because of you, personally. She says, her sisters did that to her! I suppose then, she HAD to do it to other people! She became a ringleader, with very much power. In High School, she was a cheerleader. All because of V.O.E., I’m sure.

Of course, there is the day that Tracy finds Sherill writing it on her shoes. “What are you doing that for?” she asks, and Sherill says, “Whaddya mean? It’s VOE.”. And Tracy is all indignant. “You don’t have to do that.” she answers. Sherill is more courageous than most, she’s been at the bottom of the heap far longer and worser. She tells Tracy, “Yes I do.  It’s because of you.” Tracy rolls her eyes and says, “Don’t bother. It isn’t going to work.” But it did. Because Sherill kept writing it. If she had stopped, Tracy would have known Sherill was beaten, and Sherill would have lived in quiet fear, never knowing when the Cold War would go active, and she would be the one stalked, mocked, tormented, and eventually beaten up. Sometimes the only defiance left was VOE.

Another girl from my grade school said she gets home from school one day, and there is her mother, writing V.O.E on the bottom of her father’s shoes. The girl confronts her mother, and asks why she is doing this. “The mill is laying off. I thought it couldn’t hurt.” her mother confesses. Her father is laid off the next day. But in a fortuitous stroke of good luck, they have laid off too many, and they hire him back the following day. The girl finds her mother in the kitchen singing, “Then I saw his shoes… Now I’m a believer!”. (And this is probably why it just won’t go away!)

When Kelly moved to a new school, the kids there picked on him pretty relentlessly. His mother knew, he made no secret of it. He had rickets as an infant and his slightly bowed legs became a daily taunt.  One day he complained again and his mother said, “Well, at least they aren’t writing VOE on their shoes for you.” He informed her that YES! They WERE! She replied, “Well you didn’t tell me THAT. I’d have taken it seriously if you had!”. And thus Kelly was indoctrinated by his mother at too young an age to have any defenses.

Gerry reports that VOE never quite leaves the Kelso schools. Kelso is the bully of a town next door to Longview. It is a little smaller, a little dirtier, a little meaner, and a bit more shabby. It has only ONE highschool, Longview has TWO. (His kids never had VOE for very long, his wife knew about the Potatoes.)

He recounts that VOE swept the Kelso School admin office one year, and traveled to the Mayor’s office from there. Campaign signs on people’s yards sported various colors and styles of VOE during the fall. All of the incumbents won, in spite of news stories involving corruption, and the fact that all four council members (half being re-elected) and the mayor (on the ballot), were indicted on charges of malfeasance and embezzlement, and the County incumbents were 50-50 between already indicted and already convicted. Yes, we know, this makes the half that WERE already convicted and then elected anyway NOT ELIGIBLE to run for office. But this is Kelso. Nobody noticed that. Of those convicted, not one spends a single day in jail – they are all given community service, and every single one claims that since they are elected officials, their jobs in the government qualify as community service. The Judge does not agree, but he lets them count it anyway. It is a sad day for VOE and by the time the crooks take office again it has all but been forgotten.

Sometime early in the New Year the election board for the area is indicted for election fraud. All of the election results are judged fraudulent, and invalid. But as usual this changes nothing, the incumbents go on crooking and corrupting and the residents of the town barely notice. When the three major members of the election board are convicted, VOE appears on signage for various businesses at random within 24 hours, and one of the vandals is arrested for painting a VOE mustache on an Insurance Agent sign for one of the Town Council Members. When asked why he did it, he shrugs and says, “Nothing else worked. I figured it was worth a try.”. The judge (not the same one) dismisses the charges because the man whose image was disfigured says in open court, “I kinda liked it. I think I look pretty good with a mustache.”.

It made it’s way to the elections in Toledo that year also. Toledo, WA, not Toledo, OH. High School Elections mostly, but those kids had signage also, and once they started marking their Student Body they went for broke on the Town, County, and State elections too. VOE was the most popular campaign slogan for all sorts of petty politicians and socialites. Leavenworth picked it up and did it proud in Bavarian embellishments.

I hear it does not work well in Utah schools. Mormons just don’t go in for that kind of cursing of their fellow man. They just shun them, and if they were going to write anything on their shoes, it would be, “God does not approve.”. That is the curse they level at anyone who steps out of the finely crafted box of Mormon acceptability, which is a good deal smaller than God ever intended THAT to be (and some of them would write it on OTHER people’s shoes). (No, I don’t mean transgenderism, or abortion, I mean things that have NOTHING to do with whether you are righteous or not, like homeschooling, herbal medicine, personal revelation, home business, and other things that God certainly DOES inspire people to do, but which Mormons, especially Utah Mormons, despise and criticize for.)

It apparently does not get far in Idaho either, but that is because of Potatoes. Every mother knows that if you cut off a piece of potato, and scrub the shoe with the potato, it will remove the ink, no matter what kind of ink. Sometimes you have to use other things with the potato, but the potato always works if you scrub it hard enough. Kid puts V.O.E. on their shoes, and they spend two hours that night scrubbing the shoes with a potato. (It is on account of Potatoes, incidentally, that my father never wrote V.O.E. on HIS shoes more than once, and he didn’t even live in Idaho!)

There is an exception to the Utah Mormon thing, and it is BYU (apparently they are late bloomers). They credit this to the unhealthy influence of Mormon students who come from states that are less refined Mormonically than Utah. It makes the round on BYU campuses every 20 years or so, frequently when a batch of teachers retires, and a group of younger teachers are hired. Administration reports that V.O.E. never gets a foothold on campus unless there are immature teachers involved in fomenting it. BYU Admin is certain though, that they hold the record for most creative use of V.O.E., in part due to the sarcastic response of the more responsible members of the student body. For a short time in the 1940s, V.O.E. was a popular Halloween Costume, and when a Performing Arts Event was particularly bad, someone would write V.O.E. on the advertising posters around the campus. When the water failed a water test in the middle of summer, someone wrote it on the water tower, in letters 3 ft high. In actual John Deere Green. It also made the rounds in Valentine’s Bouquets for about a decade in the 50s to 60s. Valentines On Everyone. Bet that never occurred to you either!

And then, when George Albert Smith was President of the LDS Church, a member of the DUP became very angry with him. She was responsible for writing educational pamphlets regarding Mormon and Utah history. She had borrowed several items of his mother’s, to photograph and document. He asked for them back, and she said they had been stolen. When he visited her home, he found his mother’s items in her livingroom, and her husband threw him out before he could collect more than a few. He looked them over good, to be sure they were his mother’s (which had been marked), and found that the woman had painted V.O.E. in red fingernail polish over his mother’s initials. She was removed from the DUP, sued for the rest of the belongings (all similarly marked). He got them back, and sent her a note with a single word on it. “Victory.”

The Catholic Church (this is the Vatican) is reputed to claim credit for V.O.E.. They joke that it originally meant “Vatican On Everyone”, but of course, it was in Latin, not in English. In truth, there are those in the Catholic church who say that the curse originated in the Abbeys and Monasteries, and the designation of “everyone” applied to those outside the Cloisters. They also say it was not “everyone” at all, but “enemy”. It was a curse they sent OUT, not a curse they delivered in person, hence, writing it on your shoes meant it applied when you were GOING somewhere. I can’t say I buy into this, but it is as plausible as anything else regarding V.O.E.. (For the record, the Vatican has always spoken Italian and English as base languages, with French as the backup, and German only when forced to. Latin was only a scholarly language that wasn’t actually spoken, only read.) Cursing was a big deal in the Middle Ages, and the Catholic Church did teach how to do so, and how to give “blessings”. So if V.O.E. really did start with them, one wonders what other treasures of malice have been lost to the ages.

Recent reports from Catholic Social Services indicate that cursing is alive and well among the disgruntled, and V.O.E. has reared it’s ambiguous head there as well. Apparently if you apply to adopt and get turned down, it means you forgot to put VOE on your shoes before you sent in your application. You can’t write it ON the application though, because if you did, someone would know, and they’d tell all the others and you’d lose your advantage.

Long ago, someone started V.O.E. in Subway. When Admin would send out Company Bulletins, some of the Store Owners and Consultants would send back venomous or outraged replies, and they’d sign their name, and put V.O.E. below it. (It never occurred to me to use it as part of my sig line. I’ve been an Online Business Consultant and Webmaster for more than 20 years, and it never crossed my mind that I’ve cheated my clients and followers out of a powerful tool for conquering an online domain!) One of the owners of Subway got tired of it, and emailed all the people who had done that, and she put V.O.E. at the bottom of hers as a joke. Fully half of them wrote back, saying something to the effect of, “We thought you were more mature than that.”. “You can’t do that to me.” was another popular reply.

The latest update from Subway is that, as they go about making brand changes, that both Franchisees and former Consultants are throwing tantrums that include V.O.E..

A publisher I know tells of an author who submitted a manuscript for a book. It was not readable, the writing skills of the author were not up to the task of conveying a story that was interesting or actually WENT anywhere, not to mention actually READABLE (too many spelling and grammar errors). The publisher sent it back, with a curt letter explaining that if your spelling and grammar are so bad it gives the editor a headache to try to figure out what you are saying, you aren’t going to get published. She then writes, “I do give you full marks for spelling V.O.E. correctly on 2/3 of the pages that you wrote it on the bottom of. The other third, I’m not sure it WAS actually V.O.E..” (This publisher is NOT overly picky, she also says, “Dangling participles happen. I came to terms with that half a century ago, I’m sure you can too.”)

I have heard that it is alive and well on some Army Bases. Beverly reports that there were girls in her class in Basic, who wrote this on their shoes, in black ink. Black ink, on black shoes, just impressed in. Their drill Sergeant had to get really mean about it, but they still would not quit, like this was third grade. So Beverly used white roller ball paint pens to write it on the soles of their shoes when they were sleeping.

Norman Swartzkopf reports that V.O.E. makes the rounds regularly in the Military, especially among elite troops. It carries the same intimidation factor as a death threat. Somehow VOE on the shoes was not ever part of my vision of a Seal donning his mission gear.

Four years after the publishing of this post Norman updates us with these details. (Of course he is not dead, don’t be silly… you can’t believe every obit you read.) VOE broke out in 2023 in Afghanistan. 24 Battalions stationed across the Middle East were reprimanded for being out of Uniform by reason of having white ink on their black shoes. “VOE Taliban” inscribed on the insoles. Two weeks later we find Afghani rebels with VOE written on the soles of their sandals (only the higher officers have boots). When asked in interrogations why they have this, they tell the officers that they must not think that Americansk is the only people who know how to curse the ground so someone else may not take it.

Mary Kay had this sweep through just after the turn of the 21^st Century. It began in Corporate just below the level of the illustrious head of the company, and swept through the distributorships, so hard and maliciously that she had to release a Corporate Bulletin to disconnect the writing of curses on shoes with the image of Mary Kay products. Not less than 143 women, with no pattern for age of the woman, had distributorships revoked, and 13 fully grown women, and 12 older men were fired from Corporate Employment. Apparently there were several versions of vile phrases running around, but V.O.E. was once again the champion.

Two years after this post was made Mary Kay endures the worst outbreak of VOE ever. Executive assistants are capturing each other, taking them into the bathrooms, and writing VOE on each other’s bodies.  This escalates to cigarette burns and razor blades to write VOE. Screams from the bathrooms give away the terrorism, and Federal Marshals bust an Asian Gang that has made inroads in through the Call Center. Further investigation traces a large body of crime to the same Gang, and they are ousted from the company, and hauled off to Federal Prison, where 16 Gang members are charged and found guilty of Capital Crimes and given the death sentence, and 35 more are found guilty and sentenced to 20 years or more each. Another 84 are sentenced to 15 years or more. In the next six months, two more gangs try to replace the one that was busted, but Mary Kay reports that as long as they keep VOE out of the Central Offices, Organized crime can’t quite get a foothold. This is reported with a shake of the head… Company officials just can’t figure out why VOE is still a thing at all, or why Gangs coming in insist that it be the thing to identify themselves. They report they find that there is ALWAYS a way that you can identify a Gang during a takeover, and often it is something that has been associated with a former Gang or former Company behaviors as the new Gang tries to find a way to go unnoticed. This time they just chose a thing that the company was already on alert for. VOE now takes the stage for criminal profiling in a big way.

Sometimes it reputedly makes its way into the halls of lesser Congresses, and this state or that one will have entire issues decided over which party writes V.O.E on their shoes the most vigorously. Speed limits have been reduced, school lunches revised, and medical care for children has been obliterated and then restored again, entirely on the presence or absence of V.O.E.. One U.S. Congresswoman says, “Don’t assume it happens only at the state level. Immaturity knows no bounds when it comes to the political arena.”. She suspects that V.O.E. makes it so high in the ranks in part because it doesn’t mean anything sensible, and if you use it, maybe you are smart enough to know what it means, giving you an additional layer of superiority over those whom you are cursing. “Poop on you” just can’t equal the mystery and power of V.O.E..

Mia Love reports that the Millenials who hang out in the Congressional Offices pretending to have a purpose there, have caught on to V.O.E.. Something without a real meaning is about all they can get their little brains around, apparently, and she has witnessed two people standing there arguing about just who gave the other V.O.E. first, in a very prolonged and heated argument that eventually swelled to a dozen people on each side screaming at each other. No one hit anyone, they all thought that V.O.E. had more power to damage. She asked what the argument was about, and they all said, “VOE, DUH!”.

My mother says there is just something really vengefully powerful about writing things like that, that gives you that surge of satisfaction when you are really angry. She says they did that when she was in school. It didn’t fade out until you were a Senior in High School. I had completely forgotten it by the time I was in the Eighth grade (because in 7th grade, at the Jr. High School, V.O.E. does not even EXIST anymore), but she still had it going on in the 11^th grade, so by the time she married and had children, it was still fresh enough to have some power, apparently.

She was very mad one day at Ruth, because Ruth had said something inconsiderate, that was so true, my mother had no defenses. She had four small children at home, and one in school, who had been coming home with that on her shoes (She was only in first grade, proving that Longview schools outshone Iowa). So my mother sits down, takes off her shoe, and uses a black pen to write V.O.E. on the bottom of her shoe where nobody will see it. “There! That for Ruth!” she declared, and put the shoe back on, and stomped off to finish her chores, especially hard on THAT foot, confident that nobody need ever know.

(Could it possibly mean “Venom”?)

That evening, she sits in her recliner, and my father walks past, and happens to see the bottom of her shoe. Brown sole with black felt pen on it. He looks at it, and looks at her, and says, “Now, Ellie!”.

She replies, “Sometimes, you just have to do it!”. He laughs, and says, “Well, if that’s what it takes!”.

The next day, Ruth has a stomach ache all day, and can barely keep from throwing up. But so did my mother, and quite a few other ladies in the Ward. Tainted potato salad at a Relief Society Luncheon.

Vox. Who knew? I wonder if it still has a use?

Update: I have been told that 4 hours after publishing my blog, V.O.E. reared it’s head on 4 military bases that had been otherwise peaceful up until that moment. I guess it took V.O.E. to give me the power to influence the world.

This has never been a thing at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii. This is just not how Islanders levy curses – their shoes (if they wear them) don’t accommodate this kind of venomous writing well either. A short 24 hours after this blog was published, V.O.E appeared written on the side of a serving table, right where the suckling pig was supposed to be served. Investigation shows that there are native men on campus there, with V.O.E. written on their FEET. The more abashed of them have it on their soles. The more daring wear it on the instep, or sometimes on the outside edge of their feet. One has written it on his toenails. The first three. He said he wanted to go every other toe with a period in between, but he could not fit the E on the little toenail, and the V would not go either. He has blacked them out, tacit proof of his claim. Three of the women have it written on their kneecaps, and one on the back of her knees. Apparently she did it using a mirror, it is kind of backward. Within another two days it is everywhere, seen and unseen. They brag about having it where you cannot see it. (Take THAT!) On the fourth day, they served up a pig that had not been fully cooked (someone forgot to put it in on time), and it spread intestinal MERSA through the staff and guests. (This will usually give you a yucky stomach ache, but rarely makes you throw up. It just makes you lightly miserable for about six weeks unless you get a good antibiotic or Calendula tea.) A fight broke out the next day, the cook is blaming four other people on campus for the disaster, who have never been near the food. He insists that if they had not written V.O.E. on pictures of a pig, that it would not have happened.

This has reputedly stopped on the grounds of the Polynesian Cultural Center, because they now fear writing it, for fear THEY will become ill themselves! (It resumed after the first installment of the 2026 update to this blog. On the feet, again, but this time in Sparkly Sharpie [don’t they know that is only for High Heels?]. Culturally, this is VERY on the edge! But ONLY because of the Sparkly!)

On day 4, Longview schools once again blew up with V.O.E. It started in the faculty and spread to the Admin building, where not less than 3 secretaries were found at the end of the day with V.O.E. written on their shoes. When asked, they all went sullen, and silent. Finally one sulked, “They did it first.”.

According to one local source, V.O.E. is now at full throttle once again in Longview.

U.S Steel has only about 12% female workers. The rest are male, of all ages. They recently cleaned house, and fired 50% of their unproductive workers, and did NOT rehire. They simply told the rest that the quota was what it was, and they were required to meet it. They did. And 20% of the remaining workers were still found taking standing breaks and talking on their cell phones. They were fired, and things got even MORE productive (now that they were not distracting the actual workers). The day after this blog was published, the General Manager reports that there’s a rumble going down on the casting floor just before lunch time. He goes to investigate, and finds two women down wrestling over a shoe. It is a child’s shoe, and it has been decorated, with flowers, and swirlies, all woven in around multiple instances of V.O.E. It takes a loaded firearm to persuade them to get up and act like adults. One of them has created this for her daughter, multiple pairs, and they are trendy at the grade school, and even in Jr. High in a nearby district. One of the women has tucked it into her pocket to carry with her today, as a potent talisman against we know not what. The other has seen it, and accused the first of having stolen it from HER daughter. Turns out the second one is the one who decorates the shoes, and the first one’s daughter has stolen the shoe from the second one’s daughter. More than 1/3 of the kids at the grade school have this on their shoes, decorated with other things around it, in either felt pen, or raised acrylic paint. It is very popular on the heel. The Manager takes the shoe, and puts it in his office. They are not happy, but they go back to work. At lunch hour, they come to the office and accuse HIM of stealing the shoe. He laughs and says he does not need a child’s shoe. Both of them insist he did it so he would be protected. “Against what? Grade school children with mass insanity? Psychotic Barbie Dolls? Transformers with deadly computers?”. They look at each other, and one shakes her head like you do when someone is about to give away the secret. One takes the shoe, and they walk out of the office. The other one leans over and whispers to the first, “You can’t trust him. He doesn’t get it.”. The Manager follows them, and hands them each a firing notice. The sad thing is, these are people who are now considered to be BETTER workers than average.

An Update on US Steel, six months later, it breaks out again. Once again, two of his workers (new hires) are fighting over a pair of shoes. Turns out these two women are the daughters of the women who were fighting just months earlier. Their OLDER daughters, who have been wearing V.O.E. and hearts and flowers on their shoes every day since they began a week earlier.

Further Update: Two new home businesses in the same town as this US Steel facility sell hand decorated shoes, and both offer a V.O.E. model.

And Once More: The businesses that sell the V.O.E. shoes go out of business. They claim it is because they sold all the V.O.E. and ran out for themselves.

Didja Think That Was All: US Steel has had no instances of V.O.E. in three years. A popular comedian read parts of this post aloud in a performance in Michigan, and within 24 hours V.O.E. appears on the melting pots, rendering them unusable, and causing a major molten spill, because the letters have been engraved with a torch, so deeply that the pots (two of them), rupture. The perpetrators are caught, they are outside picketing, and the signs read, “VOE on US Steel”. When questioned, both men admit to having put it on the pots after they were fired for smoking pot in the facility (You know… Pot tenders…).

Two days after publishing V.O.E. here, Subway has another rash of it going around in emails, and being whispered behind hands behind the counter. Never mind spitting in the sandwich to get revenge on someone, you can just write V.O.E. on the sandwich with the mustard and your triumph is complete.

(All this trouble because of this blog post… Does this make me a Pot Stirrer?)

One Fortune 500 business woman says, “If you knew what V.O.E. really meant, you would not write it on your shoes.”. We aren’t sure if she just means intelligent people don’t do that because it does not make sense, or if we should be really worried.

Southern Virginia University (the Mormon One) reports that 1 year after this blog was published, a teacher read this post to her class, and V.O.E broke out in a campus wide rash. The University has worked hard to ensure that their Honor Code is kept, and so many students are sent home because of serious (often criminal) violations, that they have taken to holding Monday Morning Honor Code Rallies. Really! Rah! Rah! We Can Be GOOD! (Sad that they have to tell THESE kids that.)

The morning after the reading, four girls crash the Rally, and run across the stage wearing Daisy Dukes with V.O.E. written on the outside of their legs. They are expelled from school (they were also drunk as skunks, and one of them lays down and rolls instead of doing the summersault she intended).

The following day, not less than 22 girls, and 1 teacher, have V.O.E on their shoes. The teacher is the one who read the story, and she has it in purple ink, with the rest of the words written vertically between the initials. She has “Victory Over Enteritis”, because MERSA has been found in the Mayonnaise in the Mess Hall. By noon, her version is on the large red bulletin on the Cafeteria Door, along with instructions to report to the Nurse at the Clinic for a prescription of Penicillin and Calendula (Calendula brings faster relief).

The girls with it are oblivious to the alternate wording, saying when they see it, “That’s not what it means!”. (Not one of them can tell you what it DOES mean though.)

It then sweeps the campus, and fights break out, over all kinds of things. Two boys are found fighting over whether one can like the lunch the other one hates, three girls are wrestling over a shoe while their steady dates (they don’t call them boyfriends here) cheer and referee from the sidelines. The office staff all writes guilty curses on their high heeled shoes (on the back of the heels… in sparkly Sharpie), and the Home Ec department teaches the girls how to decorate sneakers with flowers and leaves and sparkly bling, and all of the students (including the boys in the class) use it for embellished V.O.E..

The Administration takes desperate action at the next Rally, giving a flaming address on the evils of Priestcraft. It is not enough. Only 2 students go to their Bishops to ask, tearfully, how does one STOP V.O.E. in their lives?

The Administration quickly releases an invitation to a Campus Sponsored Family Home Evening, in the Rec Hall, where they will be serving reduced priced Ice Cream Floats (any flavor!), which always brings out a strong attendance (they like free better, but they didn’t deserve that, and this University believes in consequences). They deliver a powerfully moving address on Obeying the Commandments, and exactly HOW one does that (by NOT doing things that are DISOBEDIENT To the Commandments…. I know. But these ARE Millenials).

The following day, 4 Bishops report that they have students calling to schedule counseling sessions for repentance, at record numbers, and V.O.E slinks shamefully off the campus. Much of the student body is found wearing shoes for P.E. with lettering picked off and replaced with C.T.R. instead.

Campus Admin threatens to consign any shoes with V.O.E. to the fires of hell if they see them. Within days, there are students running barefoot on campus. (Of course, it is otherwise not permitted to run barefoot so we have to take that with a grain of salt. Who knew Mormons were such opportunists for disobedience?)

And then there is Fred Meyer. The man, not the chain. He reports that V.O.E. spawned in his stores on the West Coast about 9 months after the blog post was published. It starts with the cashiers, and within a day, has swept through Produce, Janitorial, and up through his management structure, all the way to his Regional Execs. It hits his office the following day with ferocity, coming in through emails, packages (one with a small bomb… it just left smoke marks on the envelope), and phone messages left in a whispered voice that was meant to sound sinister. Oh yes, and one goat let loose in the atrium of his office building with VOE shaved in the hair on one side of it’s belly.

The employees just write it on their shoes, per gradeschool tradition, but they get MEAN when they do. Theft from registers soars, and shoplifting increases. Customers are now coming in with it on day 4, on their shoes. He says he’s pretty certain it started in the Longview store, but Seattle wants to claim the credit (we are not surprised at this).

Fred just sends out a Company Bulletin. He says, “Grade school venom on espadrilles is not in keeping with Corporate dress standard.”. That was all. It did not disappear. But it faded. If he sees it on shoes in his stores, he fires the wearer. As a consequence, he finds it on his OWN shoes, written there by his daughter, whom he had to fire when he found her writing V.O.E. on merchandise in his store.

Fred reports, three years later, that VOE has revealed itself to be a profiling marker for dysfunctional workers and thieving employees. Freud never dreamed of this one!

The owner of Safeway Stores had a similar experience, but it stopped after two stores. He hires a grandmother as his regional executive (you do not want to meet HER in a dark alley, she supported four children in San Diego as a Detective, after working her way up from beat Cop). The minute she knows V.O.E. is on the loose in her region she storms the Managers and tells them if they let that happen they’ll be supervising a bunch of cranky toddlers! She drives the point home, and then drives it out of the two stores who’s managers end up fired for letting their workers hurl it across the store at the top of their lungs any time they are annoyed.

A few years after this story appears here, the grandmother uses some of the anecdotes here in a presentation for a women’s business group. Two of the women there get up and tell her she can’t make fun of this, it is real! When she laughs, they attack her, and she is forced to draw on them to get them to stop trying to hit her and knock her down. She stands there, and they back off at the sight of her 9mm. One of them hollers, “You can’t do that to me! I have VOE!”. The other takes out a pen, and writes VOE on her forefinger, and then points it at the woman like a gun, and says, “I’m just as well armed as you!”. Fortunately the grandmother has grandpa with her, and he cuffs the women, and interlinks the cuffs behind their backs, looping them around a support pole in the room. When the cops arrive, they arrest them for assault, and one insists she be arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, because she coulda killed that old *itch with her finger. He tells her she will have to register it first, and hauls her out.

Rawlins Wyoming has a grocery store from a major chain, which has a sudden increase in holdups, register thefts, shoplifting, and shorted orders. Corporate comes in to investigate, and finds that 22 employees are sporting V.O.E. on their shoes, and one has it tattooed on his elbow (it is the only place left for a new tattoo, apparently). He is fresh out of prison, and a former Crips member from L.A,, though he always says Miami. He says it means “Venom Over Easy”. He doesn’t have much imagination, he really wanted “V Means Me”, but it didn’t work.

The agent sent from Corporate unearths a brand new ex-prison gang, and finds that all 22 employees are either former cons, on probation, or have a spouse in the Wyoming Penitentiary. All are fired. 11 new employees show up with it on their shoes on the first day and are refused a clock-in. They do find enough evidence to put the pathetic ringleader away again on charges of embezzlement and grand larceny, and after the third hiring round, the manager just starts asking them what V.O.E. means, and weeds out most of them. He says about every 10th job candidate will tell them it means “V Means Me”. V.O.E. has now apparently become the ultimate weapon in gang warfare. It is more powerful, it appears, than “V Means Me” as a platform for world domination.

Home Depot reports an outbreak of contagious V.O.E about 6 months after the blog was posted. It sweeps through with the ferocity of a vaccination plague, with people lining up to get sick (his words). It is in 22 stores (popular number for V.O.E.). It shows up first as an increase in cash register thefts, and then as I.O.U notes left in place of stolen cash. Investigations are easy. Every single person who does this sports the curse on their shoes. So far NOT ONE OF THEM has been smart enough to not have it there! They can’t resist. After all, if you are a thief like that, you need all the help you can get!

Hobby Lobby has two stores that break out in V.O.E., and they find the curse on merchandise, and in I.O.U.s in the cash registers (most of them signed). They also just trace it by shoes, and it works EVERY TIME.

The company owner puts up signs a year later, which read, “Hard Work Builds Character”, and fully half of his corporate leadership tantrums, complaining that he can’t use words like that about their jobs! He retaliates, “I bet you think I can’t tell you NO either!”. He leaves the signs up, and places a few more. He puts it onto the bottom of certain types of company memos. He fires the people who tantrum – several quit on their own initiative, so offended are they. And VOE evaporates. Hard work threatens it, and Character extinguishes it.

Colt Manufacturing has an increase in ammo thefts from a specific storage bay, and on investigation, they find V.O.E. on Colt business cards (meant for write in names for new agents) left on the boxes. Those cards are pretty closely guarded, so only certain people can get at them. They investigate and find two new sales agents with V.O.E. written on their shoes and on the backs of their ties. Case closed… Slam Dunk.

Browning has a similar issue with sales agents, and the things being stolen are only from the sales office. They track it to two old agents, both of whom have V.O.E. written on their ANKLES. In Sharpie, so it won’t all wash off at once and leave them unprotected.

Ted Cruz tells of three Congressional Aids who are discovered with V.O.E. written on their ankles… is this really a thing? All three are female, and wear short skirts with nylons. (I wonder if anyone ever told them about kneecaps?) They are all fired for trying to write it on various pieces of legislative paperwork before the President signs them.

Donald Trump has a secretary who is behaving strangely. His business is losing money, and it isn’t because sales are down, they are UP. But all the bookwork shows losses. He searches the secretary’s desk one morning and finds a notebook with V.O.E. written on it, with notes on embezzlement. It is very thorough. Enough for him to track the money and pull it back into his own accounts and lock it down.

She comes in the following morning screaming a blue streak, and the thing she can’t understand is how he could read the notebook. “I put V.O.E. on it! Boy are you gonna pay for it!” she screams. She doesn’t seem to notice the two Federal agents on the other side of the room until one has cuffed her. Then she’s really mad. She also has it on HER SHOES! she screams. They are unconcerned with the curse, unaware, it seems of the danger they are courting.

They take her to jail, where she keeps whispering to the officers, “You have to let me go! I have V.O.E.!”. One listens seriously, and says, “Sorry. We can’t get a Doctor for you until you are booked in completely.”. She responds with, “Boy are you stupid.”. (She seems ignorant of her own stupidity, but it costs her. She is found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to 6 years. She has been assigned more than a dozen times in prison, to scrubbing the walls and floors where she has used her pencil to write VOE.)

Another Trump Story, he owns a Subway, and works it himself frequently. He says that the customers in this Subway are decidedly abnormal, and sub-par on intellect. They will tip, but usually it is a malicious one. They’ve taken to tipping with a $1 bill with V.O.E. written on it. One of them assures him that this is a powerful invocation that will cause the tip to return to the pocket of the tipper. So far it hasn’t happened, but the man still insists that it works, and continues to tip regularly… He says things are getting too expensive and he needs more money, so he now tips with $5 bills.

A woman who refuses to tip takes the receipt and writes V.O.E. on it, and insists that it will automatically chargeback. The thing is, this is an all cash business, there IS no chargeback. But she’s pretty sure the money is going to return to her debit card, despite the fact that Donald does not have the access info for the debit card!

Standard Oil is still in operation, supplying refined fuel to many of the major petroleum distributors. V.O.E. breaks out in their distribution yard, and sixteen truckers are found to have it written somewhere inside the cab of their company owned truck. The state Department of Licensing calls the Administration office and reports to the owner that someone has attempted to purchase license plates for 16 trucks owned by Standard Oil, with various permutations of VOE on the plates. She informs him that this sequence of letters is on the banned list, and you simply cannot get plates with profanities in this state!

Standard Oil reports that shortly after Hobby Lobby instituted “Hard Work Builds Character”, they obtain the same signs, and post them prolifically around the company. More than a dozen employees tantrum and try to sue them over the signage. The Judge lumps the lawsuits together and issues a combined ruling. He dismisses the case with prejudice and tells them that for an employer to suggest Hard Work is not an insult that workers are protected against under the Constitution. Four of the employees have to learn the hard way what “with prejudice” means in a court. Standard Oil does a little draining in their swamp, and they fire the grumblers. They do not hire replacements. During the process they find 12 of the complainers are deep in embezzlement, and all 12 are found guilty and sentenced to 10 years or more. VOE has not appeared on their doorstep since then, and the company has been much more peaceful. Don’t for a minute think that the swamp is entirely drained though, the owner thinks perhaps some of the remaining employees have VOE on their feet under their shoes.

A report has come in from the MTC in Provo. For all you non-Mormon ignoramouses (no insult, it just means you don’t know) this means the LDS Missionary Training Center in Provo Utah. Shortly after the MTC banned Vacuum Cleaner Races, and right before they stopped serving lethal Orange Juice, VOE broke out in the MTC. Oddly enough it started with the Elders, not the Sisters. They began by writing VOE after their names on their Scriptures, Handbooks, Pamphlets, and Pass Along Cards. VOE not being Certified Mormon Doctrine, this was frowned upon, and labeled as Priestcraft… Or at the very least, Inappropriate Behavior for a Missionary.

This continues against all warnings, and spreads. But only among the Elders, not the Sisters. The girls, it appears are more clever. They are putting it INSIDE their shoes, where it is not clearly visible. This is not discovered until a Training Center Temple Trip, when the girls take off their shoes in the Temple. Their TEMPLE shoes (white shoes they do not wear outside the Temple – “Earth’s crammed with Heaven, and Every Common Bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes”. It does not refer to this couplet, of course, but to Moses and the Burning Bush where he takes off his shoes in respect. In the Temple it is a moment when shoes are removed and then put back on – an indication that the wearer is now ready to be instructed of God. This information has previously been published for the Public by President George Albert Smith.). They are escorted out of the Temple for the offense of Idolatry (and we find this to be rightly done, and no mockery is made of it).

These girls, once returned to the MTC are sent home dishonorably. Two of them (in different wards) are able to persuade their Bishops that they have repented, and are called to Primary, and this is about a month apart between the two callings. They are teaching Star A, and Valiants. They can’t quite let VOE go. They still have it inside their shoes, and their Bishops never think to ask them to prove they are clean and sober by removing their shoes. They tell the classes that writing VOE on something is the same as crossing your fingers behind your back. It means you didn’t really swear to it, you didn’t really DO it, and you can’t be punished for it. They are passing around a philosophy that you can do whatever you want and it doesn’t count, as long as you have VOE. Now, I’ve been a Mormon all my life, and this one is one I have never heard! In fact I know of NO secret incantation that can save you from the fires of hell if you engage in serious sin! I can promise you that this is IN NO WAY considered to be Mormon Doctrine by ANY source.

These two girls are still living at home, and they are talking to each other long distance about once a month. The mother of one of them picks up the phone one day to make a call and overhears the conversation. They are talking about stealing money from their mother’s purses, borrowing the car when no one knows, sneaking out at night to visit their boyfriends (and just what they do with them), how to lie and not get caught in a Temple Recommend Interview, and where to hide the dirty novels so their parents won’t find them. Mama does not MEAN to eavesdrop, she’s an honorable woman and this is something that is well beneath her standards of integrity, but listen she does. When they get to stealing things and selling them to a friendly pawn shop, and hiding the signs of alcohol and huffing, she slams the phone down, and heads to her daughter’s room. She grabs her by the ear and marches her out the front door. She knows she can’t keep her out, the girl has a key and won’t give it up. But she guards the doors and throws her out again if she comes in, and keeps vigil until Papa comes home, at 10:00 that night. He hears the tale, and confronts the girl. She tells him, “It isn’t like you can DO anything about it! I have VOE!”.  He replies, “That’s for keeping the cootie kids away, it won’t have any effect on ME!”.

Dad stands guard while Mom goes to the late hardware store, and picks up high security locks for all the doors, and dowels for charley bars for the windows. They lock down, and the girl spends all night breaking windows. The police won’t come… probably afraid of VOE or something. It is 7:35 the next morning before a County Sheriff shows (a member of the ward), and hauls the girl off to jail for multiple counts of (confessed) vandalism. She’s hollering and screaming the entire time that they can’t do that to her, she’s protected.

Mom finds the phone number for the other girl and calls it, and gets the girl’s Dad. He is uninterested in his daughter’s offenses. She asks for Mom. Mom could care less also. She goes for the Bishop of the girl, and that man is all kinds of interested right up until she mentions VOE. “Oh they don’t do that anymore. They repented.” he assures her. “Like heck they did!” Mom tells him. “You don’t seem to understand, they are doing OTHER things, and VOE is just an excuse.” He can’t quite grasp that there IS any other sin to worry about here.

Well, Mom is more determined than that, and goes for the Stake President, who agrees that if VOE is involved there probably ARE other sins but not ones that will ever come to light. He is a tired man and not interested in pursuing the report of unworthiness. Salt Lake is next, and they are only remotely interested in the perfidy of the Bishop and Stake President, and when they learn that this is an episode that began in the MTC with two sisters who were released for misconduct, Mom is dismissed outright because “It has already been taken care of. They were sent home. Such shame will be consequence enough.” Never mind that the behaviors now are more severe and the two girls hold callings teaching the young and impressionable and often rebellious children in Primary.

No one will take action. And then the girl is released after 24 hours in jail. But the girl hitchhikes to a town 75 miles away, two days later, and stays for a few days with the other girl. Then she sets out, screaming drunk, to hitchhike back, and is hit by a car, and dies on the side of the road, bleeding in the bushes. She is 3 months pregnant at her death (which makes her entirely ineligible to teach in Primary). The other girl has taken to walking in dangerous parts of town, and is murdered in a back alley a scant two weeks after the death of the first girl. The second one is fully 6 months pregnant, obviously showing, and no one in her ward was concerned about her teaching in Primary. She was, in fact, showing BEFORE she was called.

Meanwhile, back at the MTC, the boys have erupted again with an outbreak of VOE, this time inside their shoes. The girls, it seems, were onto a good thing. And this time, they are using it as their personal cover for sin. They’ve picked up that evil little lie, that it isn’t really a sin if they cross their fingers with VOE. They go so quickly from Standards Violation to Criminal Behavior, that the MTC is forced to Whitewash, and send all the Missionaries in Training (including 6 older couples) HOME with a ban on returning to the Mission Field (8 other honorable couples are kept through the renovation and sent out to their callings). The MTC stays closed for 6 weeks, during which it is renovated, and the workers keep finding VOE under things, behind things, on top of things, and inside things. The kitchens fairly hum with it, and they send the volunteer staff home as well (they are also Missionaries).

A new Mission President is called for the MTC, and he has a secret weapon. He used to be Catholic, and he knows Priestcraft when he sees it, and he won’t stand for it in the least. His wife is a little whirlwind who sniffs trouble out of the corners and drags it into the light of day to be shamed into oblivion. She assigns them to stand on the front porch to sing ALL THREE VERSES of “I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus”, and then sends them to their Bishop with a full report of their misbehavior. She claims that many a  soul can be saved by appropriate humility, and if they can’t, then they’ll send them home to be someone else’s problem. (She says other songs work too, but that is the one they know all three verses to.)

This new Mission President accidentally orders the Orange Juice, and comes into the cafeteria the morning after it arrives, to find that someone has written VOE in Crayon on the Juice Dispenser. This vandalism is forgiven when the six elders who indulged in a glass of the concoction have brutal stomach aches that afternoon, and another elder confesses to the vandalism. “My brother warned me about that!” he says. This boy recently attended BYU, where VOE is merely a joke he insists, and never Priestcraft, just a dire warning about the orange juice (which is sometimes the same at BYU as it is in the MTC, we learn).

The Provo MTC saga was reported by Paul (not everybody knows Paul, but lots of people do), and by the Mother of one of the two girls. Sadly, she lived in Longview, and I can’t say I’m real happy about this particular episode having roots deep in that town.

A Very Important Person reports that it hit the MTC in England about the same time, but it was mostly just regular garden variety VOE. We wonder… what were they warding off? THAT Companion? The Investigators? Baptists? Tracting? Early morning alarm clocks? Maybe the Orange Juice? Two brutalities that accompanied the lettering caused the MTC to be Whitewashed until the next batch of Missionaries came in. It seems once an absurdity or stupidity is tolerated, someone WILL take advantage and escalate.

This is the first time (Feb, 2026) that the usual absurdity and hilarity of these accountings has crossed into the realm of the seriously distressing in some of the instances. It may have always been there. Or it may be a commentary on the state of the world at this time. Either way, it has taken some of the sparkle out of the Tales of VOE.

We can also now definitively say that ADULTS don’t do VOE. CHILDREN don’t even do VOE (though they do pretend to until they learn understanding). It is a street drug that is used ONLY by Dysfunctional Psychotics who can’t tell the difference between reality and delusion.

And now the effervescent humor of the article is entirely gone, and we are sobered and discouraged.

Be not cast down, a little more levity is still to come.

 

The List…. Just so you can be really worried:

Vox; No, we still don’t know what that means, but everyone says it.

Vengeance: Sounds pretty reasonable.

Venom: Because really mean responses are too much work.

Vascillation: So your enemies can be caught in a state of perpetual indecision.

Vituperation: Just a really cool word meaning something like retaliation.

Vicks: That’s one way to get even!

Vexation: Same to you but more of it.

Vileness:  Since you can’t smear boogers on them.

Varmint: Cats, and rats and elephants, and sure as you’re born… Oh, but elephants aren’t really Varmints.

Varnish: When the whole thing needs a good cover up.

Vacation: Well, that’s one way to get them to go away.

Vittles: Trust me, Vittles ARE a curse for the gourmand.

Vespers: When you pray that they’ll leave by nightfall.

Violence: May the mills of the Gods grind on…

Violets: Overpower them with fluffiness. A powerful curse on teenage boys.

Violins: From the bows of beginners…

Volcanoes: Sacrificing your enemies to the wrath of churning bowels.

Vocations: Maybe they can take up something more productive.

Villainy: Perhaps they already have that one!

Vagabonds: Beggars plucking endlessly at their sleeves.

Vegetables: It works for two-year olds!

Vestibules: Cursed to always be confined to the entryway of everything.

Ventriloquists: Bad ones. Whose lips move.

Volumes: The Neverending Story part 20.

Viacom: Bad cell service isn’t confined to this one.