Story time!

I have such a treat for you guys today (I’m saying that rather sarcastically – run. Run now while you have the chance…) It was about a year and a half ago that I was up in New Jersey for the last time, helping my parents pack up their house for their move to Texas. My main concentration was Eric’s room – Eric hadn’t actually lived at home for years, so going through the stuff in his room was like embarking on some sort of archaeological dig. Interestingly enough, I actually DID unearth a couple Egyptian coins in his room – they were buried near the brontosaurus bones, just across from the Incan pottery… No, seriously – I found Egyptian coins in Eric’s room, and for some reason I’ve been carrying them around in my wallet ever since then. I’m not sure why, because try as I might, I can’t seem to convince any American merchants to accept them as payment…

In addition to the Egyptian coins, I found all sorts of long-forgotten items in Eric’s room. Old baseball cards, books I could remember reading when I was in high school, ticket stubs from shows and baseball games, pictures from Eric’s class trip to Washington D.C. where he and his friends went looking for “Ed” (that’s a funny story… albeit a story that doesn’t make much sense… another time perhaps…). And somewhere in the piles of old paper and books, I ran across something of my own – a story I’d written when I was a kid. And not only did I WRITE this story, but apparently I felt compelled to illustrate it, as well. I sat on the floor of Eric’s room and read it, laughing at how silly the whole thing seemed to the “grown-up” me. But I also carefully packed it into my carry-on for my flight home, and brought it back to Texas with me. But once again, the silly little story ended up buried underneath something or other, and I forgot about it for a while. I just re-re-discovered it yesterday, as I was going through some old short stories I keep on my bookshelf.

I scanned each page into my computer, and even though the whole thing is starting to get yellow and faded, I think some of the pictures came out okay. I’ll have to type in the story itself, because the words were too faint and small to come out clearly when I scanned everything. So here’s my illustrated fairy tale, “Armand and the Princess.” (Don’t ask me how I came up with the name “Armand.” I have no idea…)

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who owned the ugliest dog in the world. Every day, she would look at him and say, “Boy are you ugly,” and every day, she would wonder if there was anything she could do to make him as beautiful as she was.

One day as she was eating oatmeal cookies (her favorite kind) she had an inspiration. “I will kiss the ugly dog,” she decided. “That is what the princess down the street did when she found that ugly toad, and he turned into a handsome prince!”

So the princess went to find the ugly dog, who was sleeping in a lounge chair by the pool. Very carefully, so as not to wake him, the princess kissed the ugly dog. “It worked!” the princess said with joy as a puff of smoke rose from the chair. But then a cry of anguish escaped the princess’ lips. For in front of her stood the ugliest man she had ever seen!

He was clothed in rags, and was covered with dirt, but in her infinite charity, the princess invited him into the castle. The man (whose name turned out to be Armand) gratefully accepted, and they walked over the drawbridge to the humongous front gate.

The princess started to show Armand around, but he stopped her. “I have lived here as long as you have,” he said. The princess laughed out of embarrassment. “That is right,” she quipped, “then you must also know where the bathtub is.” Armand only smiled as he headed upstairs toward the bathroom.

That night over supper, Armand told the princess and her father how he had been turned into an ugly dog. “My family and I lived by an evil sorcerer,” he began. “He didn’t like us living in the woods by his house. He gave us three chances to leave. My father knew nothing of the sorcerer’s power and ignored his threats. But on the third day he turned me into an ugly dog.” The princess noticed that after his bath, Armand looked just slightly better than he had before.

Over the next few months, Armand and the princess did many things together. She showed him the royal riding stables, and laughed when Armand fell off an old mare on his first ride in the meadow with the princess.

She took him to the open markets where they bought fresh fruits and vegetables.

They sat in the meadow under the trees and read books by Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Locke. And every day the princess could see Armand getting more handsome, until one day he was proclaimed the most handsome man in the land.

“I don’t understand,” the princess said one day. “You were once so ugly!” “Don’t you see?” said Armand. “It is your kindness that has made me the most handsome man in the land!”

And then came the inevitable day when Armand asked the princess to marry him. Of course she said yes, and of course they lived happily ever after. The end.

So that’s my silly story. I can’t remember how old I was when I wrote that, but I’m hoping I wasn’t TOO old. I mean, why was my princess so worried about having a dog who was “as beautiful as she was”?? And then she goes and laughs at the poor guy when he falls off a horse (what if he’d broken his arm or something?), and then at the end reminds him that he used to be ugly. I’m not sure what point I was trying to get across with this story – was it that looks DON’T matter, or looks DO matter? Sure, I make a point of mentioning that the princess was kind, but her kindness made the ugly guy LOOK better. Or maybe he didn’t REALLY look any different at all – it was only her perception that had changed?

Then again, seeing as I'm talking about a story that I wrote eons ago with colored pencils on construction paper, I could be analyzing this whole thing way too much… :)