Monday, June 8, 2009

Fairy Tales

When I was a little girl, I loved reading fairy tales. The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, Melisande by E. Nesbit, and the Blue Fairy Book, Green Fairy Book, Japanese Fairy Book, my collection was impressive by any standards as that was what I spent every nickel on, and what I asked for at every birthday and Christmas. My father once said something to me about eventually outgrowing those books, and I was mildly shocked at the thought that they might not always be there for me. "Dad", I scolded him, "I am NEVER going to be too old for fairy tales."

Many of those old fairy tales, pre-Disney, were pretty scary--plenty of blood and guts, and there were often rather harsh punishments, fearsome repercussions, and thorny moral issues. Not the kind of thing we think of today when we think of fairy tales.

There was a fairy tale about a little mermaid, one that bears little if any resemblance to the Disney spectacle. In it the mermaid falls in love with a boy and eventually persuades Poseidon or whoever to allow her to exchange her tail for a pair of human legs and meet with her lover on land, just for one night. Upon coming back to the sea she is surer than ever that life without her lover is pointless and begs the King of the Sea to allow her to make the exchange permanent, which he finally does on one condition: every step she takes on those human legs will feel to her as though she is walking barefoot on jagged shards of broken glass; once human she will never for a moment not be suffering an agony of pain. The mermaid does not hesitate for a moment, and gladly makes the trade  in order to be with the boy she loves. 

There are days when my pain level is pretty spectacular, and on those days, when every step feels as though hot rivets are being shoved into my joints jackhammers are assaulting my spine, my head is caving in  and my muscles are in various stages of charley horse,   someone will invariably ask, "So, how are you feeling?" Sometimes this is a rhetorical question however and a mere simper suffices as an answer, but sometimes when an answer is required I say, "I am having a 'Little Mermaid' day".

I did get the handsome prince, so I guess I have to walk on glass. Could be worse.

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