A Fairy Tale

Posted September 13th, 2006 by Michelle

Once upon a time, in a land 3000 miles away, there was a bar wench. This bar wench aspired to being much more than a bar wench, and in time, a prince or two came by and tried to jam a slipper on a foot, or invited her to sleep on a bed stacked with a hundred mattresses, or some other strange thing, but none of it felt right. Then, one day, a cavalry came by and gave her the scepter to rule her very own kingdom. The kingdom was small and fraught with problems, but the former bar wench worked hard and soon there was running water and neighbors helping each other and almost enough for everyone to eat. But the bar wench knew there was still more- that she wanted to be more than master of this little kingdom, that she had other work to do in the world. She also had a terrible habit of taking on far too much work, in an attempt to help every single citizen of her land, whether or not she had the capacity to do so. So she worked far too hard, and far too many hours, to the point where if people showed up at her castle with even humble requests, say, for instance, a request for a special needs art teacher, sometimes she just didn’t have enough space in her heart to really try to help. She was too buried by all of the commitments she’d made to other tradespeople & craftspeople, or by the conflicts she’d chosen to resolve, or by easing tensions between rulers in other lands.

This one day, though, the humble citizen who showed up looking for special needs art teachers was sitting near the bar wench’s throne, looking through some of the printed publications that the bar wench had created to help her citizens. And the bar wench, because she hadn’t another minute to devote to this humble citizen, suggested that she use a passenger pidgeon to relay any further information. And it was at that time that the humble citizen, a grandmother dressed in curious, wicking garb, said, “That would be wonderful, but I am an INTERNATIONAL DISASTER RELIEF WORKER and I’ll be flying to Darfur in two weeks, so anything you could get me beforehand would be great.”

(“scratching of record” noise)

The end of the story has the bar wench not only shamefacedly helping the grandmother find the right art teachers, but also giving her the names and numbers of the rulers of the “health and human services” kingdoms, who the bar wench knows very well, so the grandmother could not only get the arts she needed, but also the support services due to her grandson, who is the one with special needs. The grandmother and the bar wench become fast friends and have tea together the very next day, during which the grandmother gives the bar wench names and numbers of rulers back in her own kingdom of disaster relief. At the end of their tea, the grandmother also extends an open invitation for the bar wench to join the grandmother in a new program she is starting in South America, so the bar wench can “get her feet wet in international relief”.

Moral of the story? The bar wench should NOT WORK SO DAMN HARD OR LONG. And she should be ready to accept with an open heart every last damn person who walks through the door and needs her help, no matter how “buried” she feels. And she should also be extremely grateful that the world is responding to her determination to change.