Thursday, June 24, 2021

R's and I's

Artist: Wesley Warren
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Aunt Lorrie said I could be a pirate now, which was pretty cool, I guess. I pictured myself sailing the high seas on an enormous wooden boat, a parrot perched on my shoulder, a giant black hat on my head, and of course the patch…

“Annabelle, stop touching that!” Aunt Lorrie scolded.

I quickly pulled my hand away from my face. The phone rang and Aunt Lorrie went in the other room to answer it. It was my mom; boy was she going to be mad. Not because of the accident, but because of the other thing Aunt Lorrie told me.

I lost my first tooth when I was six years and one month old exactly. My mom told me to put it under my pillow and the Tooth Fairy would come in the middle of the night, sneak into my room, and if it was a really good tooth, that had been brushed properly twice a day and hadn’t been used to eat too many sweets, then the Tooth Fairy would leave me money for it. I couldn’t sleep in my own room after that, until my mom wrote a special letter to the Tooth Fairy, and sent it off with the Easter Bunny, to let her know we would mail my teeth instead to the super-secret address she gave my parents, because I was so scared of the Tooth Fairy coming in my room. But I was just a little baby then, with silly little baby fears. Now I’m all grown up. I just turned eight last week!

So, since I’m practically an adult now, I’m not afraid of the Tooth Fairy anymore. Which is why when Aunt Lorrie told me that there was also an Eye Fairy, who would take the eye I lost when I got too close to the fireworks Uncle Tom was setting off for the 4th of July tonight, I wasn’t at all scared. I didn’t exactly know what the Eye Fairy needed all these extra eyes for. I mean the Tooth Fairy made sense, she would take all those teeth and fashion them into dentures, like the ones my grandma uses. But people don’t get new eyes when they get too old to see right. What I think is the Eye Fairy was born with only one eye, and so one day, when some kid lost his eye, the Eye Fairy found it and was super happy to finally have two eyes. But then he became addicted and now his body was just covered in eyeballs. He could probably see really well though.

I was sitting on the couch, thinking about the Eye Fairy and tugging on the itchy black patch the doctor had taped over the hole in my head where my eye had been, when my mom appeared in Aunt Lorrie’s living room.

“Annabelle” she gasped as her hands flew up to her mouth.

“It’s okay Mom, Aunt Lorrie told me about the Eye Fairy, but don’t be mad because now that I’m eight I’m not afraid of fairies anymore.”

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