Tales from WannaBea Farm

Sneaking into the house so Gramma wouldn’t hear me, I headed towards the fridge, hoping to pour myself a glass of milk and sneak back outside before Gramma caught me. “Joyce Dean” she called, slurring the words together until it sounded like “Justine”. “Is that you? What are you doing?” she asked as she shuffled into the kitchen.

“Oh no”, I thought, “here we go again”. And sure enough, as soon as she saw me she started fussing about my hair.

“My goodness, Child, what on earth have you been doing? You’ve lost all your ribbons again. Now you just come on back here and let me fix your hair, you look just pitiful with it all stringing down in your face”. Turning, she started back towards the bedroom where she took down her bottomless box of ribbons.

Head down and grumbling that I didn’t want any more ribbons, but knowing that it was just no use to protest, I followed her back to her bedroom and climbed up on the bed beside my great grandmother. Parting my short hair into what seemed like dozens of sections, she plaited each section into tiny, pigtails with a different colored ribbon on each one.

Finally finished, she stated that “now I looked like her pretty little girl again”.

“Pretty?” With a dozen tiny pigtails sticking out in all directions like a giant pincushion and my scrawny, toothpick legs sticking out of the bloomer shorts that my Grandmother Sue made for me I must have looked like some kind of clown”.

Where on earth did she get the ribbons? As soon as I was outside I was pulling them out and throwing them away. I threw them in the garbage can, I threw them in the neighbor’s garbage can, I dug holes and buried them, and still the box was always full.

Gramma lived in one side of a duplex and Grandmother Sue and my grandfather lived in the other side with a door between so Grandmother could look after her. Gramma never went anywhere and could hardly walk and I watched every package that came into either side of that house, looking for ribbons, but never found any. So where DID she get them? Finally, I decided that somebody was watching me and returning them to her. “Hah, I’ll fix them” I thought, “I’ll eat them”!

And so I did. I chewed and chewed for most of the day, until it was time to come in for supper and to get ready for bed. That night and the next day I didn’t feel very well and Gramma kept me inside.

After a few days she decided that I was well enough to go outside to play and as I was running for the door she called, “Come back here and let me fix your hair.”

As I turned around I saw her opening the box and it was STILL full of ribbons!