PROMPT RESPONSE
The Magical Spinner
Twirling into Adventure at Brownie Park
When I was a kid, “nice” children didn’t say ‘spew,’ “snot,” or “bum.” Definitely. Not. “BUM”!
Bad language often resulted in a rinsing of mouths with soapy water. It was tough love in those times.
Everything was different back then. We did stuff you probably couldn’t imagine!
There were no digital devices of any kind. But don’t feel bad for us, because we had freedom!
As long as we were in for dinner, we did what we liked. If we stuffed up and our parents found out, we got punished. Let’s say we were fortunate if Mum decided to keep our misdeeds a secret from Dad.
The best part of being a kid, for me, was having a matching set of siblings to play with. I was one of three, all born on the same day — the only set of triplets around.
I was born last but was always the bravest and the bossiest which made me the leader. We were all completely different. I had olive skin and brown hair, Annie was pale and blonde and Bella was a freckled redhead. My name is, Connie.
Yep, A, B, and C. Our parents were weird that way.
Believe it or not, we were often asked if we were identical. I kid you not — stupid has never worried about what decade it is!
Being a triplet meant we never had to look around for friends. We did everything together and kept our secrets within the group.
When Dad moved us to a small rural town, we joined the Brownies. Our parents thought it would keep us out of mischief.
Joke!
Sure, we loved tying knots and working for badges and stuff but the little park where the Brownie hut was situated was the main attraction.
After our first Brownie meeting the three of us were excited to go back to the park.
It was the summer school holidays, our parents had gone to work, and the weather just begged for us to be outdoors. So we grabbed our bikes and cycled furiously down the street, past the blessedly closed school gate to arrive at the little playground. Three little ten-year-olds out for some fun!
We abandoned our bikes recklessly in the unmown grass at the edge of the play area, and as one, we rushed toward the spinner.
“I’ve been dying to get on this!” screamed Annie, her long ponytail flopping wildly.
“Me, too!” yelled Bella.
“Hurry up, slowpokes!” I shouted, already sitting on the spinner, waiting for the fun to begin.
“It’s wonky,” announced Annie.
“Meant to be,” I laughed. “Once I get it going, we can twirl by ourselves.”
I jumped off, held on to the spinner, made a mad dash around and jumped back on.
“Whee,” we all screamed in delight, as we went faster and faster.
“Song! Song!” demanded Bella.
Laughing and screaming, we started our favourite chant, “Spew, spew, snot, snot, bumdidy, bum!”
It made us feel daring to break the rules.
We sang and spun, we twirled and whirled. To this day, I’m not sure if it was the chanting and spinning together that did it, but whatever it was, it was weird and magical.
Perhaps we chanted our song a dozen times before the spinner left the ground and we found ourselves flying, hanging on for dear life, through the sky, above the trees, surrounded by a weird haze.
“Stop chanting!” I demanded, alarm filling my whole body. I felt sick.
The other girls allowed their words to fall silent upon open lips. Bella decided it was a perfect time to scream. Annie thought it was a huge joke and began to giggle hysterically.
“Bum, bum, bum!” I uttered in shock.
“I thought we weren’t chanting,” queried Annie through gulps of over-wrought laughter.
We continued to sail through the stratosphere accompanied by a loud swishing noise. Then just as suddenly as we had begun our journey, we bumped down — hard!
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” we cried in unison.
We were still rubbing at sore bottoms as the mist began to clear.
“Get off! Quickly!” I commanded, hoping we had landed back in Brownie Park. I didn’t trust the spinner to stay put.
We all spilled to the ground, stood up and gazed around.
“Where are we?” whispered Annie.
We were still spinning but this time on a large, colourful orb that floated languidly through the atmosphere. I couldn’t understand why we didn’t fall off. A thought that terrified me — I reached out and pulled my sisters, one to each side.
“We don’t want to cuddle!” the others declared hotly. To be fair, we weren’t a cuddling type of family.
“We’re not hugging. I’m trying to stop us from falling off. It feels really weird when we go around. I can’t tell what is up and what is down.”
“Gravity,” announced, Bella, who loved science. “And you can’t tell down from up ’cause there’s no landmarks. There’s only ground.”
“Still doesn’t make sense,” added Annie. “And there is a landmark. Look over there — is that a sign?”
Releasing the two girls, I marched off towards the sign, my siblings close on my heels.
As we approached, slipping on the deceptively smooth surface of the orb, we were soon close enough to read the sign’s instructions.
“THINK OF AN ADVENTURE YOU WOULD LIKE TO HAVE.”
“Ohh, that sounds like fun,” chirped Bella.
“It does. Doesn’t it, Connie?” Annie chipped in uncertainly.
“It does not!” I snapped, wanting to get back home as soon as possible.
“Look!” shouted Bella. “There’s fine print at the bottom of the sign.”
We edged a little closer, a tight group of Nervous Nellies.
“You can only return home through an adventure.”
“That writing wasn’t there before,” whimpered Annie.
“So, looks like we have to make up an adventure.” Bella was growing impatient.
“I guess,” I was dubious.
“I want to go down the rabbit hole with Alice,” whispered Annie.
“If we have to go there, I want to see if the Queen of Hearts used flamingos for bats, and hedgehogs for croquet balls,” declared Bella.
“I want to be in Brownie Park, playing on the spinner while Mum and Dad set out a picnic lunch’” I declared smugly, confident I had outsmarted the spinner magic.
Our little group stood in a huddle, waiting for something to happen.
Nothing.
“Maybe,” I suggested, “we all have to agree…” and that‘s when a large hole opened beneath us and we slid, screaming, down a dark, slippery slope towards the bowels of the orb.
Down we travelled, hair flying, arms flailing trying to catch anything to slow our descent. We managed to grab onto each other and tumbled even faster, overtaking a golden-haired girl in a blue pinafore and then a large, white rabbit who was muttering about being late.
“Alice!” cried Annie, in excited terror.
Eventually, we dropped to a bone-shaking stop, in a tangle of legs and arms.
“Ooomph! Get off me! You’re squashing my arm!” I crawled from beneath my squirming sisters, grateful to be uninjured.
My next thought was that Alice and a large white bunny would come plummeting out, so I screamed, “Move! Move!”
We all scattered but nothing happened.
“Oh, she’s not coming,” signed Annie in disappointment.
“Of course not, silly,” remarked Bella, arrogantly sauntering back to our landing pad, completely confident in the outcome.
“Why not?” I demanded.
“Because we can’t hijack Lewis Carroll’s story. It was written yonks ago and it didn’t include us, did it?”
“I have to admit, that kind of makes sense.” I shook my head to clear it of recent events.
“Of course, it does,” retorted Bella. “It’s science — sort of.”
We had landed in another park; a large one with pruned hedges and trees with foliage that had been trimmed into balls.
Sounds began to float in from a distance.
At first, it was a series of ‘thwacking’ sounds, followed by cheering, jeering and argumentative voices.
“That sounds like a game of some sort. Maybe those people can show us the way home!” I suggested.
Annie paled visibly and began to murmur, “No, no. I think that’s a game of croquet — you know, the one played by the Queen of Hearts. She is mean. I can’t imagine what she’ll do with us!”
“Nonsense!” retorted Bella, already striding out towards the noise.
Concerned that Bella seemed to be taking the lead, I strode out after her, demanding that Annie keep up.
Pushing ahead, I came to a clearing and a sudden stop. My mouth hung open in surprise.
A portly queen dressed exactly as illustrated in Annie’s storybook was raising a croquet mallet flamingo, readying to strike a poor defensively-curled porcupine.
Several courtiers were in attendance, leaning on flamingo mallets, awaiting their turns to play.
Without thinking of the consequences we all yelled an appalled, “Stop!”
“What was that?” bellowed the queen. “Who dares to interrupt play?” She drew a narrow-eyed bead in our direction and screeched again, “Investigate! Who goes there?”
The tableau suddenly disintegrated into confused action. Court attendees scattered in all directions. Croquet-malleted jesters set off hesitantly in our direction.
“Run!” I screamed, grabbing both my siblings and propelling them ahead, back down the path we had just travelled.
“It’s okay.” Bella was dragging her heels. “They can’t see us for the same reason we couldn’t meet Alice.”
We stopped running. Bella had a point. Soon the confusion of courtiers and queen melted away on the breeze.
I recovered and tried to gather my thoughts, hoping for some inspiration for our next move. And that’s when I saw it!
“Huh?” I rubbed at my eyes, then focused on what was possibly an apparition.
“It’s the spinning wheel!” I squealed, grabbing at the arms of my sisters who were sprawled, recovering in the grass.
They shielded their eyes against a peculiar red sun and stared.
“Come on!” I yelled. “Don’t you see? This is the third part of our adventure. We had Alice and the Queen of Hearts. Now we get my wish for the spinner.”
“I hope you are as clever as you think you are,” quipped Bella, helping Annie to stand.
Together we ran helter-skelter towards the spinner, gleaming in the strange sunlight.
“Jump on board,” I yelled feverishly, “I’ll spin!”
“We should chant,” advised Bella, thinking the chant might have started everything in the first place.
Round and round we twirled, faster and faster. “Spew, spew, snot, snot, bumdidy BUM,” we chanted, over and over.
Before long, we were flying, hanging on for dear life to the spinner, through the sky, above the trees, surrounded by a weird haze.
And then — thump! We landed heavily, still spinning furiously, right back in Brownie Park.
“Spew, spew, snot, snot, bumdidy BUM,” we chanted, still shouting at the top of our voices.
I drew a breath of horror — people were looking our way in disapproval, but the looks on their faces were unparalleled by the glares we were receiving from Mum and Dad who were sitting on a colourful blanket right beside the spinner.
I knew at once that we were in for it the minute we arrived home. For sure, there was going to be soap involved, but I didn’t mind. Whatever happened, there were future spinner adventures to look forward to.
After we changed our chant, of course!
Mark Suroviec, M.Ed., prompted friends’ stories below
