Self-Isolation: Day 6

Ye Olde Fairy Tale for Pandemic Times

This unnerving virus seems to be just the beginning of the story that is about to unfold.

And maybe the American president will be the anti-hero of this tale.

“Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a fleshy man with orange skin and the strangest yellowish hair lay flat on his head, as if it were very, very frightened.”

(Haha haha..Mommy, hair cannot be afraid of things.)

“Oh, but it can. You see the orange-skinned man thought hideous thoughts and his flat hair heard them all day. The flat hair wanted to leap off the bad man’s head and land on a fluffy cat who would spirit him away. But he couldn’t.”

(But he should! He should jump! Jump, Flat Hair!”)

“The orange-skinned man used a sticky, smelly glue to keep the flat hair in place. The wretched flat hair could barely squirm, and certainly not jump.

(Horrified look.)

One dark morning when the stars were still twinkling in the sky, the flat hair woke up with a start. The orange-skinned man was grinning, like a gargoyle, and he was having the worst thought the flat hair could imagine. The flat hair squirmed but then felt a small thick hand pressing down on him. He lay still.

(EWwwww. What was the bad man thinking?)

First, you must understand that the orange-skinned man loved gold.

When he was a little boy, before he trapped the flat hair in an ancient bamboo forest, he would stomp around saying that he was bored. Everyone was so boooooring.

Sure, he would chase anxious chipmunks until they quivered in their tiny rain boots and, on occasion, step on a red-bellied snake, but his days were long.

Such an unpleasant boy did not have many friends.

(Who wants to hang out with a snake murderer?)

(Right?)

One last afternoon, the orange-skinned boy’s father gave him a present: a gold chest filled with coins. These magnificent coins glittered in the sun, and the orange-skinned boy lunged at the riches, grunting, “More, more, more.”

The orange-skinned boy’s father laughed: “That’s my boy!” and took his son to live in a city where people with gold coins were given more gold coins and those who had none were given none.

(That is so not cool.)

And suddenly, on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, a virus began tap dancing on people’s toes, making them gravely ill. Tap, tap, tapping.

Everyone was so frightened, but then the virus made an announcement. The mayor read it from a gigantic scroll of paper, unrolling it slowly.

The virus said it just might stop hurting people if the orange-skinned man with the flat hair would give him half of his gold. The crowd roared with delight and cried with relief.

The flat hair knew before everyone else that the orange-skinned man was going to keep all of his gold coins. After all, he did not care about the people without gold coins -not one bit.

The flat hair let a large tear drop on that dark morning when he heard that the orange-skinned man wouldn’t stop the virus.

And the orange-skinned man? Why, he pretended that the tear was his, so that maybe someone would like him. Finally.

The End