A New Story

As I asked my daughter C as to why she ruined her sparkling new white t-shirt with forty nine perfectly done imperfect blue, green and red stars, she gave me a grave look, complete with the afterthought spelling why-the-fuss, and said, 'I have forty nine nu fends'. Alright, I agreed, so what happened to Mr Fifty? 'Tucks bite it'. Ok. Poor Tucks is always at the long and short end of any blame from her. After this she turned to have an eye-to-eye talk with me and complained that I no longer tell her any new stories. There I had it, a new one was thus due.

Once upon a time there were two, too good friends. Their names were Good Girl and Bad Boy. Good Girl had a natural inclination towards the bad and the Bad Boy was very good. They had a friend by the name of General Ghost. This ghost, you see, had lived for generations in the neighbourhood that they both had come to. 

One day in the evening as they went cycling, Good Girl, quite naturally up to no good, slyly put a pin in Bad Boy's tyre for the fun of seeing it burst. As they were going uphill, the tyre gave away and our poor little Bad Boy fell off. He was about to roll down the entire length of the slope and hurt his back were it not for General Ghost, who appeared in the nick of time, out of nowhere, in a whoosh movement, and scooped him up in his arms to save him from the bad fall.

He then took the two of them, by their ears, to Little Person. Little Person lived by the woods, away from Others and was a great one. She was the wisest, for she thought not much. Instead she spoke fearlessly and did what felt right. Others could not accept her courage and hence isolated her, all the while secretly wishing to be so, and thus paying her a visit when out of their own wisdom. 

Little Person looks a lot like you. Why, she even has eyes as deep as the forest she lives in. Now, Little Person listened to the entire Ghost story and got very angry with him. Who on earth decided that Good Girl could not be a tad inch naughty? Or that Bad Boy could not cry because he hurt himself? This was outrageously inhuman, she screamed, and only appropriate of Ghosts. General then largely disagreed and went to assure Little Person of his doing things the human-way only.

'In that case', grumbled Little Person, 'they ought to learn a lesson or two and let the Girls and Boys be. Let us go and scare them out of their wits whenever they perform such acts of miscalculations and misappropriations'. Good Girl and Bad Boy could not believe the conversation they just overheard and convinced of the Little Person's great wisdom, went their way. General Ghost got to do what he liked best, have the last laugh.

It might take her a little while to see the newness of the story, but I am quite sure for someone who makes friends with scribbled stars, it would neither be too difficult, nor, too late. And I hope she takes to the sentence "Little Person looks a lot like you" the most.  She needs to have the confidence mommy never had. And then she will embrace the new stories and the old hugs.