This is the way it really happened; I know because I was there.
The couple took far longer to decide upon a name for their little bundle of joy than to make the arrangements for her christening ceremony. Deeming engraved invitations through the post to be so 1950s, they put a brief notice in the hometown paper and phoned a few friends and relatives.
The auspicious day dawned as sunny and pleasant as a December Saturday in southeastern Michigan ever does, which is to say not much. Inside the non-descript church hall, the proud parents greeted well-wishers with hugs and hearty handshakes, and the little girl cooed and gurgled obligingly from her bassinette. Three Aunties, resplendent in pastel skirted suits with matching hats and handbags, had just begun the beaming appraisal of their new goddaughter when a shadow fell over the assemblage. Turning to find its source, the parents and guests saw a woman beadily considering them from over a sharply-hooked nose, her black astrakhan cape billowing theatrically in the enthusiastic forced-air heating.
"What a... very ordinary gathering," the newcomer sneered. "Perhaps I shouldn't bother to be insulted that I wasn't invited?"
"But we invited everybody," the bewildered mother said, turning to her husband. "Didn't we invite everybody, honey?" "Yes," the father nodded. "We really did put it out there: everybody is welcome!" He forced a smile. "We're really glad you could make it! We were just --"
The woman in black swept forward, shouldering him aside to strike a brooding pose behind the creche. "You know better," she intoned, regarding him stonily. "You've had nine full months to order the heavy paper and decide on an appropriately formal and yet celebratory font. Even so, no painstakingly hand-lettered envelope was delivered to my door, was it? And therefore I was most definitely NOT invited."
Leaning over the pale swaddle of sugar and spice, the witch continued. "Nonetheless, I brought gifts for your daughter." She smiled nastily. "Don't you want to know what they are?"
The parents' puzzlement gave way to alarm as they realized that this was not a drill. "Now wait just a minute," the father blustered, while his wife held out her hands in supplication.
Laying one silk-gloved hand on the baby's fuzzy head, the crone pronounced her doom: "I give her ungainliness." They winced as, off in the distance, they heard a noise similar to the crash made by a full crate of beer that has been dropped on the sidewalk, the unmistakable sound of catastrophe and disaster (when you're from southeastern Michigan).
They noticed the harpy was still looking them with obvious anticipation.
Friends and family members cocked their heads at one another with furrowed brows and shrugs. "I don't know what 'ungainliness' is," the father admitted. "Is it something good?"
Rolling her eyes, the evil fairy said, "No, it is most definitely bad. She will be clumsy, both in deed and conversation. Her interests and passions will be obscure and singular. She will be the kind of person you absolutely do not want to stand next to at a party. She will always incorrectly identify both the first AND the last step on a staircase. And," she paused dramatically here, fixing her audience with a malevolent gaze, "she will trip over the lines painted into gymnasium floors."
With a cry of despair, the mother, a former all-state basketball forward, collapsed into her husband's arms.
"This is my gift to her, and to you, in return for your lack of consideration." The old woman swirled her cape in the fashion of a true villain and strode toward the doorway as quickly as her practical (yet stylish!) Enna Jetticks permitted.
Cradling his sobbing wife, the man frowned at the auld besom. "Don't be silly, this is all nonsense. I mean, I'm no Ed Sullivan or Jack LaLanne and I've done just fine." The mother raised her head consideringly.
Pausing in her march toward the door, the sorceress turned back to issue one final blow. "Also, no spray bottle will ever work properly in her hand." She proclaimed smugly .
The group stared at her blankly.
"Spray bottle? What's a spray bottle?" a tall man in a fedora queried.
"Oh for pete's sake," said the enchantress. "You know, you squeeze the trigger and it goes 'spshhhh, spshhhh, spshhhh.'" She clenched and unclenched her fist in demonstration. The crowd continued to stare at her, uncomprehending. "Argh!" she cried. "It's like an atomiser, but with a lever instead of a bulb?" "So.... she can't wear perfume?" the mother asked, still confused. "Well, she could, but from a bottle, like, right?" a woman in a plaid sheath dress said, helpfully.
Sensing that she was losing them, the sibyl shook her clenched fist menacingly and gave one last disgusted curl of her lip before stalking from the room.
The three little Aunties stared mournfully at one another. "Oh, dearie, dear," moaned the one whose sky blue straw boater was garnished with a sprig of forget-me-nots. Her sister, in a neat sunshine-yellow bowler festooned with silk daffodils, clutched the amber Bakelite beads of her necklace. But the third Godmother straightened her shoulders and smoothed the jaunty fuchsia feather on her rose-colored cloche.
"Maybe we can help," she told the grieving parents. "We cannot undo what she has done. But we can... mitigate it, perhaps." "That's right," said her sister in blue, with growing excitement. "We can gift her with something compensatory. How about---"
"A facility with language!" finished the blush-clad Fairy Godmother. We will give her a prodigious vocabulary, instinctive grammar, and an intuitive grasp of syntax."
"Well, for the constructs based on Vulgar Latin, in any event," corrected the cerulean-draped Godmother. "But, yes... even if she is a bit awkward in social situations or graceless in movement, she will always have the consolation of reading and the solace of writing."
A magenta gloved hand clasped the baby's right arm and a sapphire gloved hand gripped the left as the two tiny women spoke together: "We give you A Facility With Language!" The third sister stepped forward and cradled the little head in her lemon-colored gloves as she looked into the baby's eyes. "Kristi, you're going to have So. Many. Words." she promised.
If you listened very, very hard, way off in the distance, you could hear the distinct sound of a thesaurus folding inward upon itself until it disappeared altogether.
And that was how it really happened. I know, because I was there.
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