Princess

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived on a farm with her parents and brothers.  This little girl was rather obsessed with princesses.  I believe at one point or another I managed to act out one scene or another of every single Disney princess show I was privy to.

Cinderella
Cinderella was one of the first princesses that I decided to copy.  As a two or three year old at family parties I would run up to every single relative I could find and assign them a part in the story—they could be the prince.  I would promptly run away and then "lose" my shoe as I went.  They would then have to pick up my shoe, chase after me, and then allow me to direct them to every other person at the party to discover that my shoe did not fit anyone else who was there (convenient and surprising for a two year old's shoe).  Then they would have to fit my shoe on me and declare me the princess.  Then I would go and find my next victim and relive the scenario again.

My second phase of Cinderella obsession was when I decided to clean the fireplace every single day.  My mother was not opposed to this stage of my obsession and even provided rags and cleaner to assist me in my cleaning.  I slaved away for at least three or four days in perfect bliss before I got bored.  After that I decided it was a much better idea to sleep next to the fireplace instead of clean it (thank goodness I did not decide to befriend and sew clothing for mice).  My mother was a little less encoraging with this idea, but still provided me with blankets for my endeavor—which as a very thoughtful child I rejected because they weren't authentic enough.  I also decided that I wanted to make an authentic dress for myself to wear out of real rags—fortunately my mother was able to talk me out of that particular idea before I acted upon it.




Sleeping Beauty
For Halloween I had a very hard time deciding what color my beautiful ball gown should be.  The fairies change Princess Aurora's dress so often that I had to sit through the last part of the movie several times and watch Prince Phillip and Aurora dance before I could decide what color the dress should be.  Although the dress was originally pink, I decided that it ended up being blue—so my dress was blue.  My brother, who is three years younger than me, was Prince Phillip.  At ages six and three there is a large height difference between children.  I believe we made a very awkward couple.

Perhaps the most awkward part of this story is the fact that my mother wanted to get a picture of Prince Phillip kissing Aurora awake.  I was not opposed to this idea, until I realized that my three year old brother could not kiss me properly.  My mother liked my solution to this problem so much that I now have a picture of myself, dressed up in a blue princess dress, leaning over my brother, kissing him awake.   Yes, I did this.

Beauty and the Beast
There are two things about this movie that stuck permanently in my mind.  The first was wolves with red eyes and a thirst for my blood.  I had nightmares that involved wolves for years after I watched this movie.

The other thing that stuck in my mind was dandelion blowing.  There is one particular scene where Bell is singing on a hill and blowing white dandelion fluff across the meadow.  I promptly went about populating our entire farm with dandelion seeds.  Our yard is still covered in beautiful bright yellow dandelions in the summer and my family willingly accuses me for each and ever one of them.  However, despite my many attempts and my summer worth of practice I never did accomplish blowing the dandelion tufts into the wind in just the right way to make them dance the way Bell could . . .

Snow White
This may be my mother's favorite princess because I went through another cleaning phase—since that seems to be almost all that Snow White does.  I decided to clean our red brick porch off with a broom.  This was a very short lived phase because by this time I had become a more wise and more normal child and realized that I hated cleaning.

I also went through a phase, which I still sometimes entertain, where I would find the most perfect, round, red apple I could and take a bite out of it.  Then I would pretend to choke and die.  After I got done dramatizing my death I would get up, cut the apple in half and reenact the scene with the half that didn't have a bite taken out of it.  I sometimes did this at lunch in front of my family and now I wonder what my family thought of me because I was constantly chocking on my fruit.

Little Mermaid
Ariel's most prominent feature for me was her hair.  I tried for a very long time to perfect my bangs so that they would loop over my forehead the way hers do—I think the fact that she is a cartoon and lived under water helped her with this.  I could never get my hair even close to hers, although I did go through a phase of trying to blow my bangs out of my face with my lower lip. 

I also remember one day when I spent several hours in the bath tub and used an entire bottle of shampoo in my hair until I could pile it on top of my head in whatever way I pleased.  Only later did I find out that that many suds will completely dry out your hair and leave it unmanageable for days after.  DO NOT WASH YOUR HAIR WITH AN ENTIRE BOTTLE OF SOAP AT ONCE.

Pocahontas
There was one specific rock that looked out over our sunken garden.  I like to pretend it was a large ledge and I would run up onto it and sing at the edge of the "peak."  In my mind I was copying Pocahontas as she sung just before diving down a very large waterfall—in retrospect I probably just looked crazy.

There was also another version of Pocahontas I watched as a little child. In this version Pocahontas would wade out into into a river with a basketful of petals and throw them gently into the water.  Of course I thought this was a lovely idea.  Conveniently for me my mother loves roses and she had lots and lots of roses, which had lots and lots of petals during the summer.  We also had a pond.  What luck!  I would go around and pick off the petals from every rose and collect them in a small plastic basket, then I would run out to the pond and throw all the beautiful petals into the water.  Only later did I find that my mother worried endlessly the summer about her roses because they never bloomed.  —Thinking back on this I do remember trying when I started out to only pick the wilting petals off of the roses and leave the fresher petals—unfortunately for me I have a very weak will and ended up picking every petal I could find anyway.

My Own Imaginings

After a while I got tired of simply reliving the movies I'd already seen and began to make up my own stories.  Since I lived on a farm I had a plethora of different climates to use in my make-believe worlds.  There was a forest to run wild on, and a large plane full of dead weeds to run bare-footed in.  We also had a pond, the beauty of this pond was that it was man-made and didn't hold water effectively.  What a wonderland for a child.

The dry pond provided endless hours of entertainment for me.  The ground would dry up and crack, creating a dessert scene.  I would dress up as a detective and examine different rocks or clumps of dirt.  I would array myself in Native American attire and dance across the "dessert."  Sometimes I would just be myself and go hunting for salamanders. 

In the forest we had aspens.  Aspens are a wonderful tree for forests because they under-root like weeds.  If I had to pick a tree that grew like a weed grows, it would be the aspen.  They have lovely leaves that are round and turn golden in the summer like coins, but they are very hard to get rid of.  After my parents complained about the prevalence of these trees I convinced my brothers that we should help exterminate them.  We went through the forest and cut down all the small nasty aspens we cared for.  We made swords, bows, arrows, and staffs for ourselves, for each other, and even for our grandparents.  I believe that I spent the better part of twelve hours once de-barking and sanding a thicker aspen staff for my grandmother once.

Another favorite past-time was to run across our dry fields.  We had a pasture that we kept cows in, but while they weren't there I would use up the space building up callouses on my feet.  One of my proudest accomplishments as a child was that I didn't wear shoes in the yard for several consecutive months.  I built up thick callouses and had very dirty feet.

What a lovely I life I led.