Category Archives: TALES

BIG RED

 

url“Owwww, oww, owwwww,” I cried.

“It’s nothing.” said my friend. “It’s just a scrape.”

Meanwhile blood was spilling everywhere in an ever-widening pool around our feet.

Somehow, as I was showing my new friend how to ride a tricycle, which she had never done before, and I held the trike steady for her so it wouldn’t move out from under her as she sidled on, I had my hand precariously gripped tight around the big front wheel. As she got on she pushed the pedals hard, and before I was ready, my index finger caught in the spokes and chopped the top of it off. Blood was gushing out in great big bloops of deep shiny crimson drops everywhere.

I called my trike Big Red because that’s what it was, and my new little friend who had just moved in a couple of houses down from ours had seen me riding really fast down our little San Fernando Valley street in Encino, in those track houses that were built for the soldiers coming home from WW2 and Korea, and I would go tearing down the sidewalk with the white plastic streamers flowing at at least 5 miles an hour. And she wanted to do that too. And even at three and a half, I knew I could teach anybody anything that I knew how to do, so I was showing her.

“Come ooooon,” she complained. “I want to gooooo.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, tears in my eyes, holding the bike steady so she could get back on, blood pouring down the sides of the tire and my jeans.

I held my finger tight to slow down the spurting blood. I was starting to feel dizzy.

But here’s the funny part and what I most remember.  It was how embarrassed I was.

Embarrassed that I had hurt myself.

Shame that she had to stop what she was doing, and that she had noticed.

The stupidity of me that I had done something that I couldn’t hide.

And somehow that I had wrecked her first tricycle riding experience.

So I bit my lip hard and I took my little white t-shirt hem and wrapped it tight around my finger like a tourniquet ,so it would bleed into the t-shirt, and it wouldn’t be so obvious.

And this worked well enough.

She immediately began to pedal with a great big smile on her face.

I let go faster this time.

I remember her laughing and laughing as she rode my Big Red, round and round in big weaving circles in the driveway.

And I was happy she was happy.

I really was.

This is a true story.  The End.

DIANA LANG © 2016

TWO-AND-A-HALF MINUTES – a little story about Concentration

420177_3133879144375_457589213_nHer eyes were riveted on the rim of the glass she was carefully holding, as she practically tiptoed across the living room floor to bring her grandmother the very full glass of the special pink lemonade punch her mother had made and asked her to deliver.  She felt like she was practically hovering over the ground, her concentration was so deep.  “Don’t spill the punch, don’t spill the punch” she chanted as she crept across the snow-white carpet of the living room floor.

One time, last year, at her sister’s birthday party, she had spilled the bright red kool-aid on the carpet as she hurried to quickly across the room in time for the birthday song, and she had gotten in so much trouble.  Her mother had had to call the carpet cleaner, and when her father got home she got in trouble again, she could still feel his disappointment in her.  That was seventy-five dollars they didn’t have to waste.  She was humiliated and embarrassed.  She would be more careful next time, she had promised.

So now, as she made her careful way across the wide expanse of the living room floor, the punch gently swashing from side to side, just edging up to one side of the lip of the glass, then gently to the other, she hoped fervently she would not spill this drink.  But boy, was it full, she thought.

The worst part for her, she was realizing, was that the more she concentrated the more the punch seemed to slosh closer to the brim.  She wondered if she was noticing that it appeared closer to the brim because she was concentrating so hard and so it was magnified, or was she noticing it more because it really was sloshing closer to the brim?  Both, she knew.  She continued to creep her way across the what seemed ever-widening distance between the kitchen and the living room, concentrating with all her might, to where everyone sat laughing and talking.

Don’t spill the punch, don’t spill the punch,” she repeated silently to herself.

The back and forth sloshing of the punch in the glass became greater and greater.  Her hand was practically shivering from the muscular contraction that she held the glass with to hold it still.  The more it moved, the tighter she held it.  The tighter she held it, the more her hand shook from the exertion.  It really was a physical conundrum.

This is not going well, she thought to herself.  Her fear of spilling, the embarrassment, the punishment, flooded her mind, but also equally, the goal of bringing her beloved grandmother the punch created a chaotic condition in her mind that almost had her in tears, which of course, just made the tension greater.

It was just then that her grandmother’s gaze caught her eyes – and held her.

She used her grandmother’s eyes to right herself.  She relaxed her hand.  Her grandmother saw her concentration and she gently smiled.  She relaxed some more.  Okay, okay concentrate, concentrate, she told herself.  I can do this.  She held the glass steady, and looking directly at her grandmother’s eyes, she let her grandmother’s gaze carry her the rest of the way across the white-carpeted floor like a tractor beam.  She never even looked at the glass.  She just concentrated on her grandmother’s soft, knowing smile and aimed for it.  And before she knew it, she was there.  Her grandmother took the glass from her hands.

“Why thank you, darling girl.  My, that’s a full glass.  And you didn’t spill a drop!”  She laughed and took a deep swig of red punch, then put the glass down, and swept me into her lap, where she held me good and deep into her big bazooms (that’s what she called them,) laughing and hugging me hard, and put me back together again.

DIANA LANG © 2016

 

Merry-Go-Round – a little story

Demerry-go-roundlightedly giggling, she whirled and twirled around and around the merry-go-round. She loved the up-and-down of it and the round-and-round of it. She laughed herself silly until she noticed the other little girl, four horses back and behind her, who was crying and holding on for dear life to the swirly, golden pole with her eyes tightly closed shut. She got off her gorgeous turquoise unicorn with the striped silver and gold horn, and wended her way back through the sea of horses to the little girl who sat on a zebra with a bright red saddle and long yellow tail, and said, “Pretty zebra you’re riding.”

The little girl on the zebra unsqueezed her eyes and peeked out of her blurred, tear-filled eyes.

“I just want to get off,” she cried.

The unicorn girl just stood quietly next to her, then softly touched her shoe as she looked up into her eyes and said, “Don’t worry, it will stop soon.” The little girl on the zebra sighed with relief but held on all the tighter.

Before she knew it, the carousel did stop. The grand calliope music stopped, too. The horses stopped going up and down, the merry-go-round stopped going round and round, and the little girl who rode the unicorn still stood next to her.

It wasn’t too soon for the little girl who rode the zebra. She jumped right down off the platform and into the dust and noise, and the parents and children who stood all around. The little unicorn girl jumped right off after her, loving the pink dust that poofed up under her feet when she landed.

They both stood there looking at each other for a moment, and the little zebra girl shyly said to the unicorn girl, “Want to go again?”