My Origin Story
“Fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living.” —Ursula K. Le Guin
My Planet is a planet in outer space about the size of three large watermelons, if you bundled them together. At one time a princess called, The Little Princess, inhabited it. As her name indicates, she herself was also very tiny, about the size of a tall Smurf. She wasn’t blue like a Smurf but she might have been purple or an ever-changing display of colors that reflected her mood. She lived inside of a round house with a rounded roof embedded into a hillside, with a garden at the back. A trail led from the garden to a forest full of plants and animals, and inside of the forest was a lake. For The Little Princess, this was her sanctuary and a beloved place dear to her heart.
The Little Princess was a respected and much loved member of an advanced and peaceful people, comparable to creatures on Earth like elephants or whales. Even so, a few among them were less than wise. In fact, there were a few very awful people known as the Veriborans. They smelled and had large rotten teeth and when they walked, all of their bones seemed to be rubbing against each other and crackled and creaked in a sound that set most members of The Little Princess's community on edge. For some reason, the Veriborans felt threatened by The Little Princess and did not want her around. First, they tried to claim that she'd committed a BHC for “big heinous crime," but they couldn't prove anything. After all, everyone who knew her, knew that the worst things she'd done like jaywalking or eating too much chocolate and smearing it on her shirt, while improper were still not criminal offenses. Left with no way to get rid of this thorn in their side, the group hatched a plan to not only banish the Little Princess, but inflict upon her great suffering. They arranged for her to be kidnapped by space bandits, her soul transported to Earth where she would be entrapped in a body and forced to live out the duration of a human life.
There on the new planet, in a small hospital, Jennie, a tall waif-like nurse, with long dark hair pinned back, carried a warm McDonald's meal to the bedside of a man she was drawn to for reason's she was as yet unsure of (aside from the fact that he was handsome).
As they shared burgers and fries over moony glances, Jennie realized they did share several things in common, including the hard life of a farming childhood.
Stan, not feeling well after his back operation, was touched by this gesture of generosity. Of all of her patients, Jennie had brought him McDonald’s. The old adage that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, turned out to be true. The two consummated their love soon after in what can be considered a fast-food love story, not just for the fine all American cuisine that set them off, but for the speed with which a child was created.
That is how I came to be born. I believed this story with every fiber of my being until with time it became ever more distant, and pieces of it were lost like tattered threads to a wind.
