fashion

Missing: part three

/ sweetsaraline

This Sunday school is weird and I’m not even supposed to be here. I suppose it’s not really their fault that their van driver accidentally kidnapped me this morning. I don’t know very much about this organization, but when I grow up I’ll learn that they use discrimination to choose which individuals they will help and which ones they won’t. Their name sort of rhymes with “Dalmatian Barmy.”

For now, I can’t put my finger on why I think this Sunday school is weird. I’m so anxious about being in the wrong place, about Carol being sad that I didn’t go to Sunday school with her, and about how I’m going to get home that years later all I can remember are the buttons that they handed out. The buttons are covered with pictures of a smiling cartoon dog with a backwards baseball cap and shiny sunglasses. The dog is telling us to “SAY NO TO DRUGS.”

Meanwhile, Carol and Amelia’s parents are discussing who will pick up which daughter from their respective Sunday schools. My mom says, “Don’t they go to the same Sunday school?”

The pieces start falling into place. My dad and Carol and Amelia’s dad drive to the Dalmatian Barmy to pick Amelia and I up and I never have to go to Sunday school again. THE END.

The long grass

/ sweetsaraline / 1 Comment

I’m eleven and we’ve recently moved to a new house. It’s a farmhouse, but we don’t own the farm, just the house.

I wander and explore until I wander off our property. I pass a barn and some other buildings, and then I see it: a big patch of long grass.

The grass reminds me of the opening theme of Little House on the Prairie where the girls are running through a meadow, their wholesome sun bonnets bouncing lazily behind them. I can hear the theme song as I look at it. I want to run through that grass.

I suppose that this is a good place in the story to tell you that I’m wearing flip-flops.

After checking to make sure that nobody is watching, I dive into the grass and run through it while bringing my knees up high. My arms are out to the sides, palms dancing forward. The theme song from Little House on the Prairie plays through my head blissfully and clearly.

My joyfulness is cut short when I feel a thick, long, legless body covered in scales brush roughly and quickly against my ankle and out of my way. I know exactly what it is, and neither of us is happy in that moment.

The Ingalls girls probably never felt the snakes rubbing against their ankles when they ran through the meadow. They were wearing leather boots and thick woollen stockings. (The girls, I mean. Not the snakes.)