SYW: Do you suffer from freckles?

Once upon a time… really, this again? I’m sorry, you’re mostly right, I was being unimaginative… Pray tell me, how would you like for me to start this tale?

In a magical and mysterious kingdom called Blogging, there reigns a queen…

She is witty, wise, and she does not need a king or any kind of consort for she has her trusted Hunydog by her side to fill her heart with diamonds and pearls, and advise her on all things kingdomy and queendomy.

Some say she is immortal…

(how that occurred is a tale for her to tell as I do not know and it is only a rumour, but… and you didn’t hear this from me in an overly loud whisper… they say that it involved something known as a shite ton of sugar)

She is immensely kind and generous to her subjects, always considerate of their needs… and greeds to be fed lots of delicious tasty treats known as Writing Prompts and Questions.

It isn’t easy, you know, to do what she does, but she makes it look like effortless peasie-pie… so no one will feel the slightest bitty weight of the burden she bears with such regal grace.

Her name is…

Melanie of Sparks from a Combustible Mind: Share Your World 11-26-18

 

   

And here is this week’s quest…

If your five year old self woke up in your current body, what would happen, what would you say?

My five year old self was a lot like Pippi Longstocking, in looks, attitude and behaviour.

See featured image at the top of this post – sourced from Astrud Lindgren Memorial Award: Ingrid Vang Nyman on Millesgården

The Pippi books, written by Astrud Lindgren and illustrated by Ingrid Vang Nyman, filled my little life with big joy. Pippi was me and I was Pippi. We were both very weird, strange and crazy, for we spent much time alone and understood things in our own peculiar and distinctive way.

  

A wonderful story by Vera Brosgol which you can read and see in its entirety on Verabee

  

The excerpt from Pippi below is actually very similar to a conversation I had as a young (awkward, shy, with self-esteem issues in large part due to people constantly pointing out what was wrong with me) adult at the beauty counter of a department store in Florida.

I was trying not to be seen (I was there with a friend for that friend) but the woman working there spotted a spotted goldmine. She decided that I needed to get rid of all of my freckles (I have hundreds and thousands of them all over and they get more visible in a sunny place) and she had just the stuff for me – Vanishing cream, in an extra super large and expensive tub (I was tempted to buy it then use it all right away on her to see if it worked on other types of blemishes).

The children came to a perfume shop. In the show window was a large jar of freckle salve, and beside the jar was a sign, which read: DO YOU SUFFER FROM FRECKLES?

‘What does the sign say?’ asked Pippi. She couldn’t read very well because she didn’t want to go to school as other children did.

‘It says, “Do you suffer from freckles?”‘ said Annika.

‘Does it indeed?’ said Pippi thoughtfully. ‘Well, a civil question deserves a civil answer. Let’s go in.’

She opened the door and entered the shop, closely followed by Tommy and Annika. An elderly lady stood behind the counter. Pippi went right up to her. ‘No!’ she said decidedly.

‘What is it you want?’ asked the lady.

‘No,’ said Pippi once more.

‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ said the lady.

‘No, I don’t suffer from freckles,’ said Pippi.

Then the lady understood, but she took one look at Pippi and burst out, ‘But, my dear child, your whole face is covered with freckles!’

‘I know it,’ said Pippi, ‘but I don’t suffer from them. I love them. Good morning.’

She turned to leave, but when she got to the door she looked back and cried, ‘But if you should happen to get in any salve that gives people more freckles, then you can send me seven or eight jars.”

― Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking

YAY!!! Pippi!!!

Anyway if little me found herself inside of big me, she’d probably conclude that she was having another very vivid dream. She wouldn’t say anything but instead would enjoy the escapist experience of not being a tiny almost invisible thing in a land of fee fi fo fuming giants.

What is a relationship deal breaker for you?  Whether you are talking about a romantic one, a friendship or a related to sort of relationship?

Unnecessary drama and its complications…

Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one’s Eyes;
Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her,
And would have done so, had not She
Discovered this Infirmity.
For once, towards the Close of Day,
Matilda, growing tired of play,
And finding she was left alone,
Went tiptoe to the Telephone
And summoned the Immediate Aid
Of London’s Noble Fire-Brigade.
Within an hour the Gallant Band
Were pouring in on every hand,
From Putney, Hackney Downs, and Bow.
With Courage high and Hearts a-glow,
They galloped, roaring through the Town,
‘Matilda’s House is Burning Down! ‘
Inspired by British Cheers and Loud
Proceeding from the Frenzied Crowd,
They ran their ladders through a score
Of windows on the Ball Room Floor;
And took Peculiar Pains to Souse
The Pictures up and down the House,
Until Matilda’s Aunt succeeded
In showing them they were not needed;
And even then she had to pay
To get the Men to go away,
It happened that a few Weeks later
Her Aunt was off to the Theatre
To see that Interesting Play
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.
She had refused to take her Niece
To hear this Entertaining Piece:
A Deprivation Just and Wise
To Punish her for Telling Lies.
That Night a Fire did break out-
You should have heard Matilda Shout!
You should have heard her Scream and Bawl,
And throw the window up and call
To People passing in the Street-
(The rapidly increasing Heat
Encouraging her to obtain
Their confidence) – but all in vain!
For every time she shouted ‘Fire! ‘
They only answered ‘Little Liar! ‘
And therefore when her Aunt returned,
Matilda, and the House, were Burned.

– Hilaire Belloc, Matilda who told lies and was burned to death, Cautionary Tales for Children

In this human world, drama and its complications happen to all of us, and when it does we may fan the flames due to pain, anxiety, fear and despair.

We may scream and shout, our issues may shake us and others all about, we may cry and wish to die… and many years later we may think back and sigh at who we were and what we did, what we said which regret may want unsaid…

Humans must be who they must be and go through what they must go through to become who they become and get to where they eventually get…

I have been and still can be very dramatic and complicated, but these days I try to simplify… and not bother others any more than I do.

Some drama and complication is necessary…

However there is also unnecessary drama and its complications. I’ve been sucked into, chewed up, swallowed, spat out then eaten up by it again and again and around on that merry-go-round again and again. So when it offers me another ride… No, thank you, I’m done.

  

Oedipus Redux by Winston Rowntree

 

Is there something out there, a thought, an idea, a current event, or a fear that you find deeply unsettling?

That there are great long red-legged scissor-men whose mission it is to fulfill threats parents make to their children to get them to stop doing something which bothers the parents…

  

The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb from Struwwelpeter

  

My answer can be interpreted in several different ways… just as most stories can. One of the things I love about tales for children is… that they grow up with us and become tales for adults about the adult human world.

If you were arrested with no explanation, what would your friends and family assume you had done?

Turning a witch into milk and drinking her…

  

The Adventures of Isabel by Ogden Nash

  

I spend quite a bit of time thinking about myself, and babbling about myself on my blog, trying to figure myself out. However offline and in person, when I am with others, with strangers, with friends, with family, with people in social situations, I don’t tend to think about myself.

And that includes not thinking about what other people are thinking about me, as it’s none of my business unless they choose to make it my business.

Most of the people I know, from what I can gather based on what they’ve shared of their thoughts about me – try not to think about me at all if they can help it. When they do it is usually to wonder what I am thinking of them, sometimes they decide for me what I’m thinking… and usually get it wrong.

It’s my face… it seems to make people paranoid.

“Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.”

― Hans Christian Andersen

There’s something about me which seems to make people think that I’m not only thinking about them I’m judging them and have found them to be very guilty of whatever it is which I know nothing about (but they do).

Every now and then someone confronts me about all those thoughts they’ve imagined that I’m thinking about them…

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

…and I have this annoying tendency to inform them that I wasn’t thinking about them at all (I usually leave out the part about my having forgotten they existed until they reminded me they did, because that would be rude, selfish and solipsistic of me).

They’re certain that is a lie because they’ve been thinking about me thinking about them and that must be the truth – the awful truth because they’ve been thinking that I’ve been thinking very terrible things about them.

  

The Evil Queen and the Magic Mirror by Gustaf Tenggren

  

When that type of confrontation occurs… let’s just say that whatever terrible things they thought I was thinking about them before (which I wasn’t, but screw that because that was then and this is now…) would pale in comparison to the actual thoughts they’ve just inspired.

So, my friends and family would probably think that I’d finally been caught in the act of committing a thought-crime.

What were you grateful for this week?  Something that brought some joy into your world?

I spent some time with a friend who accepts me as I am…

   

The Necklace of Raindrops by Joan Aiken, illustrated by Jan Pienkowski

   

As a child, while I didn’t have a conventional ‘imaginary friend’, I did create many friends for myself.

At one point I used to play with several brothers and sisters, all of whom loved me and I loved them even though we sometimes fought…

  

Anansi the Spider by Gerald McDermott

  

Any person watching me play would have seen a little girl talking to the air around her, gesticulating, laughing, running away, chasing, sword-fighting, wrestling, ducking for cover when a bullet was fired, getting hit, dying, getting back up…

…and jumping into the pool to become a sea-nymph who could breathe underwater and never had to come up except when she was trying to save a friend from a fisherman’s net and got caught instead.

“Why do we want to have alternate worlds? It’s a way of making progress. You have to imagine something before you do it. ”

― Joan Aiken

Any person watching me play all alone, all by myself, would have felt perhaps pity for the only lonely child… because they couldn’t hear or see all the wonders and wonderful beings which I could.

  

There’s a Wocket in my Pocket by Dr. Seuss

  

And they lived happily ever after getting up to whatevers whenevers in the wherevers…

That’s it from me…

Thank you for sharing, Queen Melanie, may you continue to gently rule, sprinkling the sparks from your kaleidoscopic combustible mind all over the land and the magical mysterious beings who live here like fairy dust made from unicorn rainbow-poop…

  

Unicorns are Jerks colouring book by Theo Nicole Lorenz

  

Over to you!