In Myth & Archetype class the other day, Stephen and Mary assigned the class to read the chapter in The Classic Fairy Tales dedicated to "Cinderella." We were told to pick three things that marked the Cinderella story type and then to write our own Cinderella story. Mine was by no stretch of the imagination the best of the class, but here it is for, for what it's worth.
Cindy and the Browns
(written in a 20 minute flourish right before class J)
A long time ago when kids still played baseball all afternoon, all summer long, unlike now when they sit around in air-conditioned basements playing stupid video games getting grotesquely fat, there was a certain group of friends in a neighborhood not far from where you now sit who were a ferociously competitive bunch. They played baseball all afternoon, all summer long. There were enough of them to have a team, nothing like little league today— no umpires, no parental consent forms, no fundraisers. Just a bunch kids who played baseball.
Everyday they would play against their arch rivals, whom they called “Nine Dwarves” just to hack them off, since most of them were short and stubby. Really though, the Dwarves dominated the action on the field. The nine dwarves called their rivals “Charlie Brown and friends.” It wasn’t quite that bad. Charlie Brown and friends really weren’t as bad as the real Charlie Brown and friends, but they lost an awful lot more than they won, and being so ferociously competitive, this really got their blood boiling.
Little did any of them know that all their games were being watched from an attic window overlooking the park field. In that attic, there lived a young girl named Cindy. She was small and tiny and thin and lovely, but because her mean old step-mother locked her in the attic every day while she went off to shop and flirt with boys half her age at the public pool, she was rather filthy and pale for lack of fresh air.
You see where this is headed, don’t you?
Of course you do. One day in the middle of that season the star shortstop for the “Charlie Browns” crashed his bicycle on the way to the game and broke his leg, and now the team was not only without a shortstop, but without even a complete team—they’d have no chance at all against the nine dwarves if they only fielded eight players.
They sat under a tree just beyond the right field fence and within earshot of Cindy who listened from her window.
“What’re we gonna do?” “Who’ll play short and lead-off”? “We’re done, there goes the summer.” All that sort of thing.
Meanwhile, Cindy, who had long ago discovered an old baseball glove in a trunk of stuff belonging to her dead mother as well as a set of cleats, a jersey, and a hat that fit perfectly, had sprung into action. She tucked her long hair under the cap, rubbed a little attic dust under her eyes to make it look like the eye-black a lot major leaguers wear, and shimmied her way very quietly down the chimney just outside her window.
“Hey kid,” said one of the Charlie Browns as he spotted her strolling toward their whine-fest under the tree. “You play ball.”
Cindy said, “I play short stop.”
This had a kind of enchanting effect on the whining Browns.
You know the rest of course. They inserted her into the line-up, she went 4 for 5 that day and made several dazzling plays at short, and they won in the bottom of the ninth when she took away a hit from the Dwarves clean-up hitter that would have tied the game and turned it into a game ending double play.
But before they could carry her off the field in jubilation, she was sprinting toward right field, hopping the fence, disappearing in the shadows.
“Aw man, we forgot to ask him his name. I hope he comes back.”
The clever twist here is that, of course, the nitwits never even noticed that Cindy was a girl, for she had so carefully disguised herself with the hat and the eye-black and her… well, how should I say it…she didn’t exactly throw like a girl.
Cindy did come back the next day. And this time, with the game tied in the bottom of the ninth, she hit a screamer into the right field corner.
And she ran.
She ran like the wind.
You’ve seen Ichiro run? It was like that.
Rounding third and heading for home she lost her hat, and her hair flowed blond and dazzlingly behind her as she crossed the plate to the ecstatic delight, stunned surprise, and stirred pre-pubescent hormones of the other eight Charlie Browns.
But she kept right on running, hopping the fence, disappearing in the shadows.
“I guess her name probably isn’t actually Bart, eh?” said one of the more observant Charlie Browns.
Cindy didn’t show the next day, and the Browns got smashed 21 to 3, having to pick up an old wino to stand in right field and bat ninth.
The following day they decided they’d be better off just playing with only eight players and lost 17-2.
They needed to find that girl. And besides, they still had her hat.
The search was on. They knocked on every door in the neighborhood with that hat and told the story about the most amazing ball player they’d ever seen, and a few mothers even let their young daughters try on the hat, but it was too small for any of them.
They knocked at Cindy’s house and the mean step-mom answered, still (very inappropriately) in her bikini from her day of flirting at the public pool. Evil as she was, these eleven year olds were a bit young for her, and when she heard their story she flew into a rage.
“Cindy, get down here before I skin you.”
And there she was, in uniform, minus the hat.
Acting fast, the Browns whisked Cindy away, called Child Protective Services, and Cindy was placed in foster care with the family of the Browns team captain. They played baseball everyday that summer, and though they didn’t win every game the rest of the season, it was clear that the tide had turned. The former star shortstop with the broken leg had lost his position for good, and Cindy had found a new home at shortstop, at least until these pre-pubescent boys became post-pubescent and would be utterly unable to function with a drop dead hottie for a shortstop.
But heck, by then, they wouldn’t probably care much about baseball anymore. So we might as well just say that Cindy and the Browns lived happy ever after.
The end.
