You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible. (Deepak Chopra)
When we last left the little girl named Suzy Bell, and her companions Alfred, the long-nosed dog, and Tennis Shoe, the cat with no tail, they were all in a pickle. Now, in case you don’t know, to be in a “pickle” means we are in a predicament, a not-good place to be that we have to find our way out of — probably sooner rather than later.
And this was certainly true for Suzy Bell, Alfred, and Tennis Shoe. Suzy Bell was experiencing a malfunction of the phoophoonikkee, which up until now had always allowed her to escape from any predicament or pickle in which she found herself. And right now, Suzy Bell, Alfred, and Tennis Shoe needed a boat in a big way because she had cried so many tears that they were being washed away in a flood.
(A note to our dear readers: in case you have been so caught up in the excitement of our story that you haven’t realized it yet, a phoophoonikkee is our imagination. And Suzy Bell’s imagination was so big that it reached the proportions of what we shrinks like to call “dissociation” — a fancy name for a particular kind of day-dreaming. Except that right now, it wasn’t serving her well, and that is what this story has to be about the business of fixing if Suzy Bell, Alfred, and Tennis Shoe are to survive. So — to continue . . .)
Just as all looked lost, Suzy Bell heard a click in her head, and it surprised her so much that she stopped crying, And when she stopped crying, she looked around, and found herself floating down a river in a boat. Now we would like to say this was a beautiful sun-dappled river with lovely flowers and trees on the shores, but . . . uh, oh. It wasn’t. It was a big ole muddy, and kinda nasty-looking river with ugly logs floating along side the shore that could possibly be alligators. Suzy Bell’s phoophoonikkee was obviously still malfunctioning a bit.
So Suzy Bell decided, with urging from Alfred and Tennis Shoe, who didn’t like the looks of this situation at all, to make for shore. And so they all paddled and paddled, until they were finally able to jump out of the boat and wade to dry ground — which they did pretty fast, in case those loggy-looking things actually were alligators.
The land where they found themselves was pretty strange, too. Purple trees with furry tops. Flowers that grew upside down so that the blooms were on the bottom. Hills that went sideways instead of up and down. And they could hear lots of animal-y noises that they didn’t much like the sounds of either.
There was a little voice in Suzy Bell’s head that told her that maybe she had better just sit down in a safe place, and think this whole thing over. And so she did. She found a little sheltered nook in the roots of one of the purple trees, and the three of them nestled in, and even though they were a little scared of this place, they were so tired from all their adventures that they drifted off to sleep.
And Suzy Bell dreamed . . . And what she dreamed was this.
(to be continued)