I am home for the holidays. One of my habits when I come home is to look through my old bookcase and peruse through books I've already read and yearbooks and random book reports I happened to save.
This afternoon, I found one of my first "short stories." I wrote it when I was seven or eight years old. It's not exactly an exemplary work of fiction, but I thought it'd be interesting to share. If I had a scanner and the requisite patience, I'd have scanned and posted my illustrations here. Suffice it to say I wasn't bad with the Crayola markers and watercolors.
A Pretty Secret, by Yellow Gal
A long, long time ago a poor, poor family had a baby. It was a girl.
Every night something strange would happen. A big star would come. It was a fairy.
The fairy would make kind wishes to the baby girl. The mother named the baby Lisa.
Sixteen years later, Lisa was beautiful. The fairy still came. The fairy told her not to tell anyone she had a fairy visitor.
One day she told everybody that she had a secret. Everybody wanted to know about the secret.
A few years later, somebody asked Lisa about her secret. She disobeyed the fairy. She told the person who asked her.
Then the fairy came and said, "You foolish girl, you." So she put a spell on her that she would never move again. "Someone will have to make you cry," said the fairy.
Lots of years passed and Lisa's parents died.
Lisa was still a girl. Three handsome men came. One thought the girl was so beautiful that he would make her cry. He tried, and tried, and tried, but he could not make her cry.
So the second man tried, and he tried, and he tried, but he could not make her cry.
So the third man tried, and he tried, and he tried.
At last he made her cry.
She was unfrozen. And they lived happily ever after.
Don't ask. I don't know. The explanation I can think of for the randomness of the story is that I read a lot of fairy tales back then, and there was always some beautiful girl disobeying some fairy and being cursed and it always took three tries for some dude to save her.
Like I said, not exactly an exemplary work of fiction.
The third grader within can't help but wonder though. I've been in two long-term relationships thus far. Could this guy be the one who saves me? Is the third time always the charm?
Then the adult in me wonders why we make up these stories and sayings. I guess people would rather hear something fanciful and happy, rather than knowing nothing and feeling like it's all a crapshoot.
I guess we'll all figure that one out in the end.
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