The Sand Dollar's Destiny

November 2007 - Autobiographical

There once was a girl, of somewhat questionable intelligence, who was walking along the beach in paradise. She noticed something round and orange in the waves and decided to catch it. She splashed and flailed and finally came up with her prize, a perfect sand dollar. Except it wasn't like any perfect sand dollar she'd ever seen. It was fuzzy and covered with little bitty spines. She wondered if it was still alive, saddened by the idea that she should give it up and save its life by throwing it back into the water. Her companions, however, argued that it would not wash up on the beach if it were not already dead or dying.

So the girl formulated a plan. It was a great plan. It was the best plan. It was a plan that would fulfill the poor dead or dying sand dollar's destiny. She would dry it out in the sun, cover it in golden glitter, write the year 2007 on it's lovely side and hang a satin ribbon from it - transforming it into the most beautiful Christmas ornament for her brother and sister-in-law who had been married that very year.

She left the dead or dying sand dollar out in the sun for days while at the beach and carefully, before her departure, folded it into paper for the journey home. A few days passed as the girl returned to her normal life. She left the sand dollar in the paper to continue to dry (for it smelled somewhat less than appealing in this stage of its destiny fulfillment).

Then, one fateful night, (which happens to have been yesterday night), the girl unwrapped the sand dollar to begin its momentous transformation. As the last fold of paper was unwrapped the girl realized the terrible, horrible truth. Not only had the sand dollar broken into many tiny furry pieces, but it was oozing black goo from the inside and smelled like a warm mixture of rotten egg salad and rotten tuna salad.

The poor, dejected girl of somewhat questionable intelligence learned two difficult lessons that night. She learned that somethings are too sacred to be transformed into adornments and, more importantly, she learned that when something smells like that - throw it back!
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Sorry, Ben and Blythe - your present from St. John is fulfilling its destiny on the way to the Dallas City dump.

The Outcast

Once upon a time there was a young woman who lived in a large columned white house on the outskirts of town. She was very poor, living on a small inheritance doled out each year by her parent’s scrawny lawyer, along with an ample dose of sleazy innuendo. She would only get the money as long as she lived in the palatial residence her parents had constructed, so she was tied to the house like a dog on a chain.

Though her parents had died years before, her father’s legacy of quirky outlandishness and her mother’s reputation for condescending snobbishness had relegated her to outsider status with the townspeople, leaving her friendless and alone. She spent her days reading and dreaming of escape. What she wanted most was to leave her prison and explore the wide world, visiting all the places that had captured her imagination in books and meeting people who knew nothing of her family, their ridiculous house and bizarre behavior.