Giggles Anderson

Momiji Gari

2011-06-23T22:38:00.000-07:00

By Giggles Anderson

There is nothing more satisfying than Japanese theatre. Performed by a cast of men, the stories are fascinating and full of action. The costumes are complicated and intricately designed. The actors and the stage are one in the same. Watching Kabuki is like watching a movie. Not surprisingly, Momiji Gari was the performance chosen for Japan's first full-length narrative film.

Momiji Gari, which means maple trees in English, is a play about so much more. It explores the role of a Japanese officer, courtships between members of Japan's higher class, and illustrates the way in which opposite sexes communicate. The courtship between the high-ranking Officer and the Princess is displayed through the crafty communications of her servants and his men. The interaction between each character is very formal, very respectful, yet seductive.

A pleasure for viewers of all ages and cultures, this play explores many social themes in a way that provokes discussion and thought, but does not openly force the viewer to choose one interpretation over another. The pair do not spend any time alone nor do they do touch each other in a sexually charged manner. Their associates, however, serve liquor, communicate openly, and lay the groundwork as to what is to come from the courtship.

In order to encourage the courtship, the servants dance, as requested. The musicians blend into the background like musical shrubs under a large tree. The music and the actors become one. The difficult choreography is well rehearsed. Each movement is precise and could be viewed as a snapshot, if frozen. At times, it is difficult to believe that a cast of men in heavy makeup, heavier clothing, and neatly heeled shoes could move so gracefully. Soon, the Officer and his men fall asleep as the Princess nears the end of her seductive dance. Disappointed, she leaves with her entourage in tow. A messenger appears in an attempt to wake them before danger arrives, but despite his best efforts, the trio continues to sleep. Later, the trio awaken on their own and they are convinced that the princess is a demon! The Officer, a hero at heart, decides he must fight the demon with his sword. His underlings, aware that fighting is the role of a hero, run off in the other direction.

The Demon and the Officer find each other and each begins to circle his opponent. The Demon is adorned with a long thick mane of hair and is cloaked in an immaculately spotted costume. A beautiful fight ensues as both characters dance for their lives. Eventually, it is the Demon who retreats as the peace is restored.

In the end, we are taught many lessons. The seasons come and they go. Love is won and sometimes lost. It is better to let your friends speak. If one falls asleep as while a princess is dancing, a demon may appear. Heroes must fight, even if abandoned. It may be better to chase away what one need not kill. No matter the choice, the maple trees will tell the tale.

Coried Goat

2009-02-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

By Giggles Anderson

When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up.

Looking back, I was right to want adulthood. My life as a child sucked. Try as I might, and I even sat through a few sessions of regression therapy, I don't remember ever asking to be here. Seriously, I would have preferred hanging out on a fluffy cloud, stumming a harp, and drinking peppermint ambrosia.

Michael Moore made a great argument for universal health care and I want Bill Gates to bring back Windows 95. As far as I can tell, neither wish will be granted in this lifetime.

Tell me why I am here again?

Okay, okay. My childlife didn't suck all the time. A couple of cool things happened. I learned to run and hide for one. Two, I stopped lying and thieving long enough to engineer the acquisition of my driver’s license. High school graduation was the third…the coup de grace.

There is one major highlight that I choose to remember.

There was that time my Dad brought a goat home and put him in our backyard. He kept calling the goat Corey. I would often rush home from elementary school to feed the goat vegetable scraps.

I really loved Corey.

I would sit about three feet from him and he’d watch me do my homework. I asked him if he thought that Katie could spell better than I. He said, “Naaah.” She couldn’t. I asked if he thought the boys could beat me at chess. He said, “Naaah.” It was if he was the only person in the world who truly understood who I was.

As with many of my subsequent relationships, the romance was short-lived. About three weeks later, the love of my life was killed and skinned behind my back. Then he was seasoned, cooked, and ladled onto a bed of white rice.

I sat crying into an obnoxious salad as the rest of my family mocked my misplaced affections and ate Coried Goat.

Way to go, Dad.

I promise you that many a boyfriend was treated the exact same way over the years.

And the parentpeople wonder why I haven’t settled down and spawned childfolk of my own.

My mother always said I’d end up alone due to my ungrateful attitude. And like most mothers, she constantly reminded my childself that I had many problems that she would have to eradicate before I would be worthy of wifehood or fiefhood.

I forget which.

[Author’s note: *Shrug.* I was young and I didn’t like listening to her then. Matter of fact, I don’t like listening to her now, but that’s something I discuss at the tune of $150 an hour with my lawyer. He doesn’t understand why I insist on suing her for punitive damages, but he is amazing to look at so I consider each visit money well spent.]

Of all my Mother's children, I was the lazy one. I was the one who complained when I was asked to clean the baseboards. I was the one who complained when I was asked to pick up the backyard leaves by hand. I was the one who dared to complain despite the fact that I didn’t have a job or enough Gary Coleman talent to support the family.

Child please.

The parental units were the lazy ones.

If they worked harder, we could’ve gotten that nice maid I picked out for them. She cleaned our church and for a mere thirty bucks a week, she would’ve had the cleanest baseboards and grass on the block. Further, I could’ve nailed the part of Arnolda Jackson if they would’ve bothered to fly me out to the auditions.

And in case you’re wondering, I did grow out of my alleged laziness. I now have my own maid.

He is neat in an “obsessive-compulsive, needs to control all the dust in the Universe” kind of way. I pay him in hugs.

And like Corey, he too may move on once he figures out I don’t plan to do more than hug him.

What?

I sit through dinner and a show with a man who picks lint off my hair and clothing while correcting my grammar and you all want me to do what exactly?

I will be honest. I like him. I particularly love the fresh scent of lavender Mistolin which lingers in the clean air after he vacates my newly-cleaned premises, but I don’t know if I can stand the constant preening.

As a reminder of his impending journey out of my life, I sprinkle curry powder on the welcome mat right before he comes over to visit. And like clockwork, he kisses me on the cheek, pulls lint from my brow, comments on my lackluster exfoliation technique…all the while shaking the rug contents onto the peonies.

This man is a far cry from the ever-supportive goat I pledged to marry a few years back.

Cooked Rice

2009-01-17T08:25:00.000-08:00

By Giggles Anderson

“You really should speak to your neighbor about the seasonings he keeps spilling on your mat,” He says.

“I know. I know.” I mumble under my breath.

[Mental note to self: Sprinkle cooked rice on the mat next time.]

Now rice is the true opponent of many a childhood.

Forget bad dogs, the boogie monster, the darkness and the weird old guy up the street. Most children fall on one side of the dinner table or the other when it comes to rice.

A child either eats all the rice or none of the rice.

And so the battle for the clean plate begins.

“You will sit here until you finish everything on your plate,” urges the annoyed parentperson charged with the dispensation of nutrition.

I was a rice eater, but what was the deal with chocho, cod liver oil, beets, carrot juice, cassava and mackerel?

What evil lurks in the mind of the people who steal children from heaven and trap us in their single family homes?

You know this is the reason I can’t sit still now-- all those hours spent staring at that hideous orange and white wallpaper wondering when the chunks of insipid food would disappear into tension-filled air.

Back then, all I could do was wonder around the plate for forty years in hopes that I would be the Chosen one.

That may have worked for other curly haired children, but my wondering was futile.

Face it. Yucky warm food is way better than yucky cold food– with all its liquid now frightfully congealed roundabout the edges.

Yes, the adultfolk sucked when they had all the power and the childfolk had none. Maybe I should swing by my lawyer’s office one more time. If he cleans as good as he looks, I may have hit the jackpot.

Turns out, that me, the living room and my welcome mat are a hot, curried mess.

Sisterly Tea

2008-12-27T09:05:00.000-08:00

By Giggles Anderson

Historically, I have never had any problems procuring the proverbial supplies needed to read, write and learn.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday my sister and I went to purchase office supplies. Never mind that both of us graduated from high school long ago. Sylvia, now a public school teacher, was on a mission of mercy to buy all the supplies her special ed students would need to survive their sophomore year of high school. And then I saw Him. Loyally surrounded by high stacks of colored two pocket folders, construction paper and three-ringed binders. Crowned by a shelf after shelf of golden file folders. Proudly standing at the triangular apex of two aisles–filled with erasers, pencil sharpeners and cigar boxes–as if to extend his welcoming arms.

It was a majestic sight of fantastic proportions.

Enter HRM Xerox KG2-1732, the newest, most regal manifestation of my childhood fantasy. A Xerox color copier. I lovingly called him King George II. If this machine were a man, I would have married as a teenager and given birth to print resolutions of at least 300 x 300 dpi. When I thought of the book reports and scientific research notes I could have copied, then I finally understood the inspiration for both the colony and the song, Georgia On My Mind.

Let me take you back to 1982.

The parental units would announce that it was time to create our forecasted list of necessary school supplies. The older two really didn’t take much interest. Their list was pretty standard. A Trapper-Keeper, calculator, college-ruled paper, a few blue Erasermate pens and a box of number two pencils.

Sylvia and I were a whole different story. A back-to-school sale was another name for “A” student paradise. Sylvia and I were nerds at heart. We were ages nine and ten, respectively, when we realized that school spending was in truth synonymous with hitting the jackpot because the parental units would spend lavishly on any education-related endeavor.

The key word is any. [You thought I was going to say lavishly, didn’t you?]

Much later in life, as a thirty-two year old attorney, I would soon learn to love and appreciate the words must, shall, and any in the most perverse and precise ways, but any would never again be the sweet respite of honor and hope it represented in my well-spent youth.

Remember, we went back to 1982. Reagan was President, Bartles and James’ Melon Splash was all the rage, and a first-class stamp cost $.20. We said goodbye to Princess Grace and Jim Belushi. Alexander Haig resigned and The Color Purple–already my favorite colored pencil–quickly became my favorite book.

If that didn’t bring you back, I’m not sure anything could.

For two weeks before school started, Sylvia transformed into Sylva Meanie. Already an ever-present and worthy opponent for my parents’ love, attention and annual income, Sylva Meanie became my arch nemesis in the war over 5-subject notebooks, plastic stencils, yellow highlighters, and blue Pilot pens.

Yes. We fought to the near death over Pilot pens of every color!

Show me an 80s student who didn’t own at least one Pilot pen and I will show you a kid who never finished her homework by laying on the floor, pressing her paper against the underbelly of her desk while chewing grape Bubbalicious gum and humming a Megadeath riff.

But, I digress.

The parental units, however partial to the older, slimmer and clearly more manipulative Sylvia, had some limits. If they hadn’t, I might be referring to them with a much icier tone.

Motherpod, hair restrained in a tight bun like a freshly caught felon in handcuffs, decided that a color copier machine was out of the question. Fatherpod, seeming similarly restrained by the strength of her decision, stood stoically at her side while nodding in agreement.

Looking back, I vaguely remember seeing a barn in the background and pitchfork in her hand.

The parental units had spoken. The color copying machine was out of the question. Their reasoning? There was not enough space in the house.

I argued quite persuasively that the machine fit quite nicely on Sylva Meana’s side of our full-sized bed. To my amazement, S’Meana supported my argument by volunteering to sleep on the fluffy yellow mat poised betwixt the bed and the chest of drawers. I had to give it to her. She was mean, but she had nothing but respect for the crystal clarity and razor precision representing the Monolith that was 80s Xerox, complete with color cartridges and up to 500 dpi.

Alas, there would be no copier. Not even next to the laundry basket, the alternate space that I suggested. Looking back, that was the day my dream of becoming a world famous neurologist went up in smoke and my career as a paper peddler began.

Peddler. Pilfer. Whatever.

Sylvia and I, now happy, well-adjusted, and childless adults, push our way through the mob of parents, students, teachers and employees in an attempt to pay for the school supplies. We get along well. The failed attempt at the acquisition of King George II forever bonded two sworn blood enemies. As paper pushing professionals, we use the copiers at work all the time and would never dream of bringing one home.

Well, not unless that model I just saw in Office Depot is available online. And in case you’re wondering, Sylvia can use it anytime. In exchange for a small fee: a huge slice of her homemade banana pumpkin bread, and a vat of her addictive Cranberry Apple Zinger tea sweetened with no less than a quarter cup of sugar. It sounds hazardous, but it is the most nectareous way for a peppermint sprig and a chunk of ginger root to carelessly float without a lifejacket.

For the record, King George’s distant cousin would’ve been just as welcome in my bedroom…

Alphabet Soup

2008-11-27T09:10:00.000-08:00

By Giggles Anderson

My friend Amber called with an irresistible invitation. They were going to the annual Herald Hunt and she wanted to know if I wanted in.

I always want in. Amber is one of the greatest human beings alive and the thought of hunting for Herald haunted me as I began to traipse thru my closet in search of Herald-hunting wear. Eventually, I unearthed a pair of jeans and a large heather grey tee. I would wear these clothes in hopes that the ever-hunted Herald might be soothed and reassured that his dark-haired rescuer was kind and harmless.

I *so* did not know what a mind boggler the Herald Hunt was and I would soon come to regret my choice of clothing.

The Herald Hunt is, as described on www.heraldhunt.com, is “a unique urban adventure where players attempt to solve a series of bizarre clues sprinkled around South Beach.” These people lie. The Herald Hunt is four HOT hours of misery and confusion. The clues are simple yet difficult. Very tricky. Everything is a number and if you have to ask you probably can’t afford to waste valuable brain cells on it.

Unique and bizarre doesn’t even begin to describe our vagabondage. Try torturous, treacherous and twisted.

First, we gather at Amber’s house. Amber and Austin are married so once I arrived, we had 75% of our group accounted for. I was early. I was early because well, I spent the last five years being ridiculously late for every single event, and in 2007, I swore on my maltese, Mr. Luck E. Persaud, that my days of strolling in fifteen minutes before the end, were over. So I sit in Amber’s parking lot and I make phone calls and chit-chat with the commonfolk for about forty-five minutes.

Greg shows up. He parks in back. I dont know what’s up with that, but he’s parked in the back. At some point, I spot him lurking about and I jump out of the SUV (hereafter referred to as “the soove”) with a 10 pound bag of supplies on my back.

I *so* did not know what a test of endurance the Herald Hunt was and I would soon come to regret choosing to carry a ten-pound sack of bricks on my back.

I know this is Miami, but I wasn’t really carrying bricks. It was a hot Saturday afternoon on South Beach. Cops were everywhere trying to keep car-toting residents and tourists from mowing down Hunters. This was not the time to unload fifty bags of heroin. Everyone knows that what you do in Downtown Miami on a Friday night. Anyhoo, I was loaded down with a 20oz bottle of Sam’s Choice water, an Oprah magazine, two pens, one mechanical pencil, a compass, a sundial, a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, a purse full of whatever crap women are encouraged to carry on their shoulders, a hat, sunglasses, and a cell phone.

We all meet in the center of the parking lot and pull out our Herald inserts. The other three members of our group talk about the five opening questions and compare answers. We all mark our maps. I volunteer to drive and off we go into the scorching Miami sun. I must admit, this was odd. I was accustomed to driving to The Beach with a good friend or a hot guy, scantily clad with a large towel and a bottle of Patron.

These people didn’t have Patron or Kettel One and I was really starting to wonder if I was going to need that jar of pimento olives I threw into my backbag. Apparently not. This was a dry run.

We jump on the Florida Turnpike and we are at The Beach in about 35 minutes. We get great underground parking for a flat $8 fee and head towards the Jackie Gleason theatre.

It was like walking through warm split-pea soup and when I bumped into the Ham onstage singing our Anthem, I was tempted to pull the pepper grinder out of my bag.

“It’s our first clue,” said Amber as she furiously scribbled onto her paper. “He keeps saying that he isnt doing anything and that he has nothing to do. What do you think it means?”

I wonder if he wants me to hand him a cheddar biscuit, you know, to go with the split pea weather and his ham.

With my outside voice I say, “Francis Scott Key. The author of the Star Spangled Banner is Francis Scott Key.” We all write this down and decide it’s time to hit our primary cooridinates. On the way to those coordinates, we get distracted by the hundreds of Hunters heading to the beach. We join them in watching a volleyball game. An odd game where inflatable numbered zoo animals are used as a ball. We write the numbers down.

Amber and I both regret wearing jeans. I regret toting the supersack which now contained all of my team’s handheld stuff.

We see a few items that were well-placed in the sand. A slide, a house, a boat, a girlchild playing. We count the number of umbrellas as we wonder if any of it bears any significance on the Hunt for Red Heraldo.

We leave the beach and head to our chosen coordinates. Here we find six people in blonde wigs, and hideous beachwear. Each wears a sash stating, “Count on the Red Stripe girl.” We count them. One is passing out red-striped candy canes. I pass. No candy canes for me. I am so locating my abs so I too can frequent the beach wearing a blonde wig and a red sash. Besides, if I put one more item into my bag, I would be the Hunchback of Notre Dame de Miami for Halloween. Nosiree, I wasnt about to add back hump to my ever-growing list of body flaws.

Confident in our interpretation, we move to the next coordinate. We are handed a white golf tee with FORE printed on it. We decide the answer is forty and keep it moving. As we move, we discover the four sandwich board people are circling Lincoln Road like a hungry cat near Sushi Samba’s back door. Quickly, we make out a key, a chain link, an ice cream cone and a picture of a white hair, white moustached man–we think its Albert Einstein.

We notice that other Hunters went to the end of the block and came back with purple flags with white flower petals printed on it. We write that down and thank all the split peas in the world that we dont actually have to walk to get that clue. It was then that we saw the picture of the man and realized it was Mark Twain.

Slowly, but quietly like a fog rolling down a hill, Greg says, “It’s Link Cone Mark Key.”

We look at him and in unison rush towards the Lincoln Theatre like a quartet of pigeons who smell yeast in the air and hope that bread will fall from the moist sky. We look at the marquis. “In the tre,” were the only lights lit. We check the trees. Nothing. We sit. We dripped our salts and nutrients onto the disapproving sidewalk. We decide we need to get food and talk. As we head to the nearby Burger King, I unscramble “In the tre.”

It’s “Thirteen.”

The team is hopeful. Hungry, but hopeful. Hope faded into dispair as we discussed the clues. Something wasnt clicking. We were hopeless. Helplessly conned and cornered by Dave Barry and Tom Shroder. We threw our Whoppers down in disgust. We weren’t going on the Caribbean Cruise for four. At this rate, we probably weren’t welcome at Little Haiti or Little Havana.

We simmered in our sweat as we walked back to the Jackie Gleason theatre. They gave a few more clues, but they were useless to us. We booed as the answers were revealed. Sore-footed losers, we left before the winners were presented with our prize. We crip walked back to the soove. It was a bloodbath this time, but we’d come back next year and try again.

My friends rock!

[Author’s note: You want to turn into Sam Spade, surround yourself with a few thousand strange characters and be pleasantly annoyed by the sick puppies that are Dave Barry and Tom Shroder? Do you want the answers to the 2007 Hunt? Do you want to see the map? Go to http://www.vwtech.com/tropichunt/ Have kids you want to torture in revenge for their acts against adultkind keep occupied? There is a Kid Hunt as well. Check out the rules and regulations at www.heraldhunt.com and see you next year.]

Tea and Communion Crackers

2008-10-27T09:14:00.000-07:00

By Giggles Anderson

I don’t go to church with just anyone.

Now whether or not I should even bother going to church is a whole different story. I have known for years that I am currently booked on a coach flight to Hell. but my departure date is unknown, thus far. For some odd reason, the people around me insist on trying to upgrade my flight to First Class. Not that a warm moist hand towel, warm cookies, an omelette, southern biscuits and a Bloody Mary wouldn’t help calm down my already-damned Soul. And come on, who doesn’t want to plummet to the Underworld while strapped to a leather seat with a 52-inch pitch?

But, there are rules for this kind of thing.

No, I’m not talking about the Rules on those stone tablets Moses escorted down the mountain like a determined Dad accompanying his slutty daughter to her Senior Prom.

I’m talking about those unwritten rules we use every time we are confronted with a church, a steeple and a handful of badly-behaving people.

The Church wedding: I never understood the concept of marriage. You mean to tell me that there is a day that you stop ~~sleeping around with every consenting person you meet with a symmetrical body~~ searching the globe for your soul mate and you decide to settle for less settle down with one person who now impacts every intimate part of your life? I don’t buy it and the results don’t show it. Most of my friends are divorced, contemplating divorce, having a child to avoid a divorce or working longer hours to afford a divorce. A civil divorce would be avoided if everyone paid attention to those uninvited clues that show up on the SS Relation Ship and avoided the wedding in the first place.

What? Cancel the wedding because you have chosen the wrong person? Who the hell does that? Most people don’t, thus necessitating the creation of this long overdue indictment.

Don’t get me wrong, like most women, I LOVE weddings–it’s just that not all weddings should be held in a Church. For example, if either the Bride or Groom is having a sexual affair of any kind with either sex, no church. If either Parent of either the Bride or the Groom has physically assaulted any member of American society within 12 months, no church. If either party has bad credit AND had to steal programs, baby’s breath, and rose petals, no church.

If you stepped on a crack and broke your mother’s back, then no church for you, Buster Backslide!

The Christening: I will never understand the concept of infant baptism no matter how many times I re-read Wikipedia. Baptizing a human baby before it has even experienced the ever-pleasing, all-addictive joy of ~~kinky sex, recreational drugs and hardcore gangster rap~~ sin intrigues me. Please tell me, what is the point of washing ~~the sin~~ off a baby when the tyke is destined to get ~~all sinned up and~~ dirty again? All inappropriate jokes aside, the innocent babies should be christened in a church, but their iniquitous parents should be banned from the premises. If the Parents treats the Grandparents like a lusty band of reprobate roaches racing towards Thanksgiving dinner, no church for the parents. If either Parent is having sexual relations outside the marriage and/or a trip to see Maury’s buccal swab is in order, then no church.

Seriously though.

Don’t these professional sinners know that God doesn’t sleep? Haven’t they been warned that he is all-seeing and all-knowing? Aren’t they afraid of being smote down by an angry God? I know some of you don’t pay any attention to God, but fear the words of a King. It was King David who said, “God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day.” And what words do I have for those of you who now stand appalled at the notion that I, of all people, could portend to know WWGW or “What Would God Want?”

I have no words for you. But, I did notice that NOT ONE OF YOU gave up ~~your life, your job, or~~ your seat on the comfy couch when King George Bush II said, “God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq.”

*blink*

Yes, I went there. If Dubya, who lives in Chocolate City, far away from God, claims to know what the Big Geezy wants forreezy, then I definitely know what God wants too.

Every year, God heads to Miami for the Season. And if you wear an Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie on your head while standing at Concourse D of Miami International Airport, you will hear Him sending special messages to his faithful listeners.

The tin foil hat ROCKS! It eliminates all the evil voices while increasing the signal strength of God’s voice.

That being said, I think that it is more than okay to skip Church when nefarious adults gather within those holy walls despite their licentious behaviors just hours or days before. Hell, it is an unwritten requirement that you refrain from congregating with the diseased venereal. They say birds of a feather flock together. Let’s say you are hanging out in aisle 6; row 3; seat 2 of the local Megachurch with Salacious Sally. She is dressed like a tossed salad and is actually carrying grape jelly in her purse. God has just gotten a brand new laptop with Vista installed. God sees Salacious Sally savoring a sample of sainted snatch and decides to smite her. Alas, he smites you instead.

That’s right. You are sent on the road to perdition, by accident.

Don’t look at me like that, we ALL know how Vista hates when you move, copy or delete files. And so now you’re *stuck* like Corrupted File Chuck.

Oh well. Sucks for you. Good luck with working all that out with the Angry Deity who denies making mistakes. I may not be versed in Roman Architecture or Creationism, but I know villainy when I see it. And if Devon Debauchery is walking through the doors of a Church, I will wait outside.

After all, I’ve got a plane to catch and I don’t know when it’s leaving.

Ashley's Birthday

2008-04-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

By Giggles Anderson

I was in the store and I saw two little girls. Ashley and Courtney. Both about three or four years old. Courtney says “Look Ashley, scissors” referring to the pair in her hand and alternately, her mouth.

Ashley said, ‘Cut Courtney hair.’

I stopped dead.

Would she actually cut Courtney’s hair or is she one of those bottom feeding humans who never follows thru on the goals they set for themselves?

I stop my cart and I stare.

Now in the back of my mind, I’m wondering how come these two little girls weren’t the least bit concerned about the giant Black woman towering over them. I’m thinking on the side of my mind, “…like little lambs to the slaughter, the way children live in their own world in complete ignorance of wolves and scissor toting siblings. And I’m thinking in the frontal Homer lobe of my brain, “Mmmm, Lamb.”

The hell, I hadn’t eaten all morning.

So I watch Ashley search the aisle for a larger, perhaps even sharper, pair of scissors.

She found them.

She smiled and said “Cut. Courtney. Hair.”

I’m placing bets and secretly hoping that she lops off Courtney’s entire ponytail. Heck, I’d settle for a bald bang area as Ashley puts her fingers inside the scissors. I wonder if I should stop her. I look for a Mom. Mom is nearby. In fact, Mom is standing behind her, but facing the other aisle. Glad to get that offa my conscience. No need to step in with parental unit so close.

Besides, I didn’t want to be intrusive by interfering w/ that delicate Parent/Child relationship.

My guilt assuaged, Ashley reached over and snipped off about two inches of Courtney’s hair. The two inch end of Courtney’s hair fell to the middle of the Crafts aisle.

Ashley screamed, “All Gone!”, as if she had finally finished a plate of green peas placed in front of her. “All Gone!”

I smiled. Her mother, a medium height French woman in her late thirties, turned to see what had gotten Ashley so excited. Her curiosity turned to panic as she saw her 4 yr old with a pair of scissors, panic turned to sheer horror when she saw Courtney’s hair on the floor.

The woman, the nerve of her, looked at me with part suspicion. I think she was wondering why I didn’t stop Ashley. Why I didn’t alert her to the fact that one of her daughters was being given a “Jenny Jones makeover” by the other.

I gave her a blank stare. As she began berating Ashley in French and in some English, I smiled, behind her back of course, as I walked away knowing that I had made the right decision by not alerting the nearest adult of Ashley perceived intentions.

It’s not fair to convict someone of thought crimes. Not even a child. Well, apparently you can under the Patriot Act. But, I seriously doubt that even John Ashcroft would be willing to construe Ashley’s intent to “deprive her sister of her hair” as an act of terrorism. So, if I had tattle-taled, then Ashley might have been punished for an act she might never have completed.

And nobody wants that…not here at Michaels: Arts, Crafts & More…or anywhere in America.

I was happy. Ashley set a goal, voiced it, searched for and acquired the proper tools, considered how best to achieve her goal, voiced her goal again (almost as both a warning to Courtney and an affirmation of her proposed act) and executed a powerful snipping action to complete her goal.

As an enterprising young woman myself, I was proud of her and beamed at the thought of all her unbridled ambitions realized.

If her Mother didn’t crush her spirit first.

The Mother grabbed each child by their now scissorless hands and escorted them both from the store in a huff. Apparently, there would be no spirit crushing today.

After all, it was Ashley’s birthday.