Oz Mudflats

Once a time upon…

Oh we did that already? Of course, of course. Now. Where was I? Oh yes. The name of Mr. & Mrs. Toad Charming’s fifth child. Well quite honestly, in order to tell you his name, you’ll first need to understand just how this little miracle baby came to be…

After the birth of Jello, Princess Lara became restless. Having babies and naming them is one thing. People pretty much pamper you for several months and all you have to endure is a couple of hours of pain, then you get pampered again for about another year. But once the newness wears off and you’re stuck at home, the routine of changing diapers (no no she’s not born yet – the other diapers) all day long and wiping snot off doorknobs and TV screens while your handsome Prince is off managing a few hookers stable kingdom gets old fast. Really fast.

And besides, you don’t want to stay a princess forever, no! You want to be queen one day! So you might as well nose around the kingdom and pick a position that will eventually help you realise your dream. You know, not a job that requires rocket science college degree smarts – just running some little hick town where the people aren’t bright enough to know you’re only pretending to work when you’re actually home in bed eating a Super Moose Crunch Wrap and watching afternoon soaps.

And so it was that Princess Lara finagled her way into the hearts of the good (albeit a little slow) citizens of LaWissa, a small town just a stone’s throw from the castle. Princess Lara would pack up Traffic and Thorn and Jello and take them to school and day care, respectively, then meet friends at the local coffee house for breakfast. After a leisurely walk to the office she would spend an hour chatting up other town big-wigs and making lunch dates with visiting dignitaries. She would stay in the office just long enough to give the impression she knew what she was doing, toss a few important-sounding chores to her minions and then announce it was time for lunch.

After a leisurely lunch at a posh restaurant (with or without a dignitary) Lara would again drop by the office to see that the man she hired (with the town’s money, of course) to actually do her job was actually – you know – doing it.  She would then announce it was time to pick up her children and take them home. This meant she was home every day by 3pm. (Who knew that jam-fingered anklebiters would turn out to provide such brilliant excuses for showing up late and leaving early from work!)

And so it was that after a hard day of managing to do hardly anything at all, our little Princess Lara would tuck herself neatly into her warm bed while the children and Daddy Toad were left to their alone time. So they could bond. No really, that was it. So they could bond.

But even this sweet arrangement became tedious after a time and Lara found herself longing for the days when people fell over themselves for the privilege of pampering her.

Thus was born the child she called Diaper.

Unfortunately, this time the pregnancy didn’t go to plan. There’s no maxim that says the older a woman gets the easier a pregnancy becomes and Princess Lara, now in her late thirties didn’t derive the same pleasures with her fourth pregnancy that she’d enjoyed during the first three. On the contrary, this time her ankles swelled, her back hurt, she had Braxton-Hicks pains for two full months and the baby kicked at her bladder non-stop in the third trimester. This was pretty much a sign of game over for Princess Lara the Baby Maker. She arranged to have her tubes tied once the baby was born.

If you’re keeping Traffic track, this is an important bit of information. Princess Lara had a tubal ligation after the birth of her fourth child.

And people knew.

(Sorry… Someone’s at the door. We’ll need to resume tomorrow!)

Once a time upon…

…in a land far, far away lived a beautiful princess named Lara and her husband, Prince Charming. The prince was a mere toad before Princess Lara kissed him, turning him from a simple pond-skimming toad into a handsome prince. In fact, Princess Lara continued to call her husband Toad, even after they married. It was like a sentimental secret that only they shared. The kiss, you see, had been an accidental one, occurring when she fell into a pond face first just as a fat toad was jumping up to catch a fly. But they told no one. It was their little secret and it always made them smile.

Prince Toad and Princess Lara went on to have a beautiful family but the first thing Princess Lara discovered about becoming a parent was how difficult it was to select baby names, especially ones that would please all her relatives and husband. There were just too many ideas and names from which to choose. So from the beginning, the Princess decided since she couldn’t please everyone she wouldn’t even try and each time she found herself pregnant, she would wander the kingdom looking about until some inanimate object Tripped her Trig made her giggle and that’s the name she would pick. And of course any name sure to raise eyebrows made her giggle with added glee.

For instance, after pulling off the road to watch a beautiful sunset she became distracted by a long line of cars on the horizon. The cars were all lit up with bright red taillights. So shiny and flashy was the parade of vehicles that careened past her that evening, she clapped her hands and thought perfect! And so it was, Princess Lara named her first child Traffic.

The second child became known as Thorn after the princess reached for a beautiful pink rose in the Royal Garden but pricked her finger on the bristly bush instead. (She’d wanted to name the baby Bristle, actually, but Toad put his foot down as there was a shanty in town called The Bristly Bear Bar & Grill and he adamantly didn’t want people mixing up his soon-to-be daughter with the local whore house, honky-tonk, dive, bar & grill where cheap women served even cheaper booze and greasy bear burgers. So Bristle became Thorn and Thorn grew up to appreciate her briery name.

The third child was called Jello. You see, Traffic, as a young lad would eat little else. It was his favourite dessert and he craved it morning and night, day in and day out. Princess Lara thought this cute at first, but when she was with-child again, she grew weary of the gelatinous goo. One day Princess Lara was forced to hire a cook so her son would stop nagging her. After all,  her young offspring couldn’t possibly appreciate how difficult a task making Jello was for our delicate princess.

The fourth child was simply named Diaper and after watching Princess Lara chase after her other three children I’m guessing one needs no further explanation. Toad would have objected but after working hard all day at his massage parlor, in the kingdom, he was just too puckered tuckered out to care.

And while it’s nice to know the history of  Traffic, Thorn, Jello and Diaper, this story isn’t about them. No, this story is about Lara and Toad’s fifth child, a magical baby the world would come to know as Little…

(to be continued)

[Jump to Part 2]