PENELOPE AND THE MAGICAL POO

 

 

When life gets hum-drum, and nothing more exciting than a soccer-mom spilling coffee on her shirt on the way to a game is par for the course (yes, two different sports are referenced here), fate has a way of sending the unusual to break up the monotony.

Case in point: A sweet little girl named Penelope (yes, this is a nod to “The Twilight Zone”).

In a relatively small town in a not-so-small State lived a typical American family with typical family issues and situations. The father was an insurance agent, the mother a stay-at-home mom who did volunteer work on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the local nursing home. Together, they’d produced three children – Marcus, the oldest, was twelve, freckled-faced, energetic enough to prefer being outside to staying in and playing video games; Jeanine, the middle child, was nine, fragile, obsessed enough with her Barbie Dolls to insist on dressing like one all the time; and…Penelope. Yes. Penelope. The baby of the family. At six, she was, to say the least, a handful. Her piercing blue eyes that glared more often than stared up through a fringe of thick, dark hair were her most memorable feature. The next most-recalled was her never-ending quest for trouble.

Penelope was, in some ways, as unremarkable as the rest of her family, but because none of the rest of them ever actually enjoyed doing disturbing things, her constant and obvious glee at startling everyone with strange statements and breakage of nearly everything she touched gave her a leg up, so to speak, in the field of children-to-keep-a-close-watch-on.

Yet Penelope-The-Otherwise-Unremarkable was deeply dissatisfied with her life. Which, of course, is why she was always looking for ways to spice it up, so to speak. Like the time she wrapped her sister’s entire collection of Barbies in black electrician’s tape, making undeniably punk-like outfits out of it that were both shocking and nearly impossible to remove. Jeanine went hysterical (and not in the laughter kind of way), Marcus went hysterical in the more typical way (he nearly passed out from laughing so hard and being unable to breathe), both parents immediately considered getting therapy for their youngest, while Penelope…well, once the deed was done, she became bored once more.

One summer afternoon, while sitting alone on the swings in their lovely backyard, Penelope looked up into the branches of one of the shade trees nearby. A large yellow bird was sitting among the leaves, but its unusual color had caught both the little girl’s eye and her imagination.

“Ooh! How pretty!” She smiled and began to swing, hoping to get a little closer so she could see the bird better.

The yellow bird cocked its head to one side, clearly focusing its nearest eye on the human swinging up and back, getting a little nearer each time. It chirped once.

“Hello, bird!” Penelope gave it a huge grin. “Never saw you before! Only the robins and blue jays.” Her voice faded in and out as she swung close and away, close and away.

The bird hopped out further onto the branch and clear of the foliage. It chirped a bit louder.

“Do you understand me, bird? Are you magical?”

Suddenly, the yellow bird fluttered out of the tree and began flying in a circle around the swing set. Its chirping changed into something sounded more like “Slow, slow!” than “Cheep! Cheep!”

Startled yet fascinated, Penelope slowed down, eventually coming to a stop. As she watched the bird come to rest on the seat of the swing next to hers, she realized she was suddenly not bored. How wonderful! she thought. “Who are you?”

The bird ruffled its wing feathers and took a step closer. “Watching! Special female!”

Now to most people, this remark might have been considered cryptic. To Penelope, however, it made perfect sense. “You’ve been watching me? Really? I’m special?”

“Special! Need to feed!”

“Feed?” She frowned and kicked at the dirt under her swing. “On what?”

“Female’s energy! Bored Penelope – no energy! Will trade with magic!”

“What do you mean? When I’m not bored, you feed on my energy? Sounds weird, bird.”

“Weird! Yes! Like you! Will do a magic thing for you!”

That sounded better. “Okay. What will you do?”

“Give you magical poo!”

Now that didn’t sound quite right, so Penelope asked the bird to explain.

“Eat one thing, poo another!”

“Yuck!”

“No, not yuck! Not boring!”

“True. But…so…if I eat a hamburger?”

“Nothing magical. Eat money! Make change!”

She scratched her head. “Huh? I have to eat dollar bills?”

“Metal money! Chirp!”

“If I eat a quarter - ”

“Will turn into dimes and nickel in poo! Or pennies!”

“Won’t that be kinda gross?”

“Gross! Yes! Not boring!”

There was no denying that, she thought. “Okay, so when I poo, I won’t be bored about it, and you’ll get some of my energy, right?”

“Yes! Poo for energy! Magic! Feed!”

“Well, why not? Okay! How will you do this?”

In reply, the yellow bird rose into the air, hovered over Penelope’s head, and…pooed. “Wash hair! Magic will start! Chirp!” And it flew off.

“Uh, ew?” She began to touch the top of her head where she could feel the wetness, but thought better of it and went inside.

“Penelope! What’s in your hair?” Her mother, not surprised but unquestionably horrified, could see what it was, but wondered how her little girl had managed to provoke some bird so badly that it had targeted her.

“Bird poo. I have to go wash it out.”

“Yes, you do. Go take a nice, hot shower. I’ll have a snack for you when you’re done.”

The next day, Penelope’s mother found her in the master bedroom going through the pockets of a discarded pair of work pants her father had left on a chair. “What are you doing, dear?” Even though she hadn’t said it, the word “now” seemed to be hovering in the air between “doing” and “dear.”

Normally an honest child, Penelope held up a dime. “Looking for  change.”

“Penelope! That’s stealing!”

“Oh.” She turned away and popped the coin into her mouth.

“You’d better put that back, young lady,” her mother said, assuming – incorrectly – that the girl was returning the coin to her father’s pocket. “Don’t let me catch you doing something like that again!”

Penelope swallowed and turned around. “Okay. I won’t.”

Not until the child was out of the room did her mother realize the subterfuge of her daughter’s response, but was suddenly too tired to argue about it. Instead, she picked up the pants, planning to take the coin from the pocket, put it on the dresser, and bring the pants to the laundry basket in the hall. When she couldn’t find it, her brows came together in an angry scowl.

Penelope was in her room, coloring, and her mother stomped in, prepared to issue a severe grounding. “Where is that dime?”

“I ate it.”

“You what?”

“I ate it. I want to see if it will still be a dime when I go to the bathroom.”

The woman was shocked, speechless, in fact, for several moments. “W-wh-what – that’s disgusting, Penelope!” she finally spluttered.

“I guess.” With a shrug, the girl put down the blue crayon she’d been using and picked up a green one. “I’ll give it back then.”

Therapy. That was the first word that occurred to the distraught mother as she trailed out of the room, desperately worried about her youngest child.

A few hours later, Penelope felt the urge to use the bathroom. Without getting too graphic about it, let it be said only that what appeared in the toilet was not a dime, but a nickel and five shiny pennies. Ignoring the “ick” factor, Penelope pulled the coins out of the toilet, brought them to the sink, and washed them all carefully with hand soap and warm water. Then she dried them off on toilet paper and took them to her mother. By this time, the rest of the family was home as well, so she figured it was as good a time as any to announce her new ability.

“Here’s the money,” she said, approaching her mother, hand open and holding the newly-cleaned coins. “See? It changed into, er, change.”

“What is she talking about, dear?” asked her father.

“Are you being whack-a-doo again, Pen?” asked her brother.

“Again? She never stops!” her sister muttered.

“I met a cool yellow bird today,” said Penelope, looking unusually solemn. “In exchange for the energy I have when I’m not bored, it gave me magical poo. If I eat a coin, it comes out as change. Cool, huh?”

The therapist, to whom Penelope was brought the very next day, secretly found the girl’s assertions amusing and wondered why parents had to take everything so seriously. Not that she minded – it was, after all, the way she was able to maintain her income. But then, a few sessions later, Penelope challenged the therapist to see for herself. After eating a quarter, followed by a hamburger, fries and a slice of pie, and a couple of hours later, she went to the bathroom and let the therapist gaze into the porcelain throne, as it were.

“How do I know you didn’t eat those two dimes and the nickel earlier?”

“Because I would have pooed them out before now. Besides, where is the quarter, huh?”

Unable to come up with a coherent argument, the therapist conceded that it was possible after all that Penelope had magical poo. Not that she’d tell the girl’s parents this. But she did tell Penelope she was a very special little girl.

“I know,” Penelope replied, and smiled. In of the corner of her eye, she’d seen the flash of yellow feathers passing by the office window.

And so concludes this odd story. Add to this what should be a mystery but only qualifies as such for those who know nothing of Penelope and her “gift.” A few years after this began, some children playing in a local park found the remains of a yellow bird. It was huge, appearing for all the world as if it had been obese. From the looks of things, the chubby avian had been caught on the ground by a local cat. Apparently it hadn’t tasted very good, since the feline left most of it.

Not long after this, Penelope realized her poo was no longer magical. Which was probably just as well; she was almost ten years old by then, and stories of magical poo wouldn’t have done much for her young social life…

Imprint

Publication Date: 10-20-2013

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