Bitsy woke with a snarl in her hair and an itch in her
belly. Mamma would say that she’d gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, but
she put her feet down on the same piece of floor as every other morning. It was
her only option. The opposite side of the bed was snug against the wall to make
space for her baby sister’s crib on the other side of the room. She grumbled
her way down the hall and to the kitchen table.
It was dark so Bitsy sat down to wait. The hard chair
bothered her bottom and the itch in her belly grew. The clock above the stove
showed 12:20 am, but since she could not yet tell time, she had no idea that breakfast
was a long wait away. No matter, Bitsy was not renowned for her abiding
patience and after five minutes of excruciating inactivity, she decided to get
it herself.
She scraped her chair across the floor. Next, she monkeyed
up to stand on the seat and reached for the box of Sugar Bombs perched on the
fridge. She stretched every inch of her 5-year-old body, but her fingers merely
grazed the edge of the elusive box and pushed it further from her grasp. It was
now wedged against Mamma’s favorite candlesticks that lived atop the fridge to
keep them from harm’s way.
“OK Bitsy,” she said to herself. “Think. How can you make
yourself taller?”
A flush of pride rose through her as the solution became
apparent.
Bitsy rose up and onto the very tips of her toes like the
ballerinas she saw in Cinderella at the Grand Theater last week. Still not tall
enough.
She began to bounce. Not quite. She executed a small leap
reaching far enough to knock the box of breakfast delight into the candlesticks
sending them all flipping off the edge of the fridge. Cereal rained down like
confetti, light and colorful. Unfortunately, Bitsy did not have time to enjoy
the view or imagine that she was a hero in a parade because the candlesticks,
made of heavy crystal, fell faster than the cereal and whacked her on the head.
This triggered the backward descent of the chair on which Bitsy landed heavily,
smashing the candlesticks into even smaller pieces.
Heavy steps hurried from Mamma and Pappa’s bedroom just as
Bitsy, now covered in blood and breakfast cereal, realized it was not really
the time for breakfast after all.
