Blanket: The Only Toy a Girl Ever Needs

In “Anecdotal Tales”, stories will be told. Some will be fun, some will not. Some will be great, some will be less so. Some stories are true, some are merely possible. This is one of them.

Blanket: The Only Toy a Girl Ever Needs

Amy was obviously the only one who realized the potential power that this grand object possessed.  Others around her rolled their eyes and asked her to leave her prized item at home.  Some even suggested, in a rather harsh way, that she was being childish.  But Amy was convinced that she was right.  Just because a majority of people believe something, doesn’t make them right.  She told herself that over and over.  She had seen the evidence of what this blanket could do.  Clearly, the adults around her weren’t as clever as this little five year-old girl was.

How else could one explain where all her marvelous treasures disappeared to?  Amy had gotten quite skilled making a pouch out of her blanket.  She would take the fabric (covered on one half by bunnies and the other by ducks) and lay it flat on her bedroom floor.  Then she would take only her most treasured things (her favorite stuffed animal, her jump rope, her second favorite stuffed animal, her watch, a tennis ball, her third favorite stuffed animal, her blue dress, whatever candy she had left, slippers, her sunglasses, and whichever pieces of jewelry seemed sparkliest that day) and place them on the blanket.  Skillfully, she grabbed all four corners of the blanket and lifted them like a fisherman carrying a net full of fish.  Could any blanket accomplish such a feat?  Also, there had to be some sort of secret pockets sewed into the fabric that not even Amy knew about.  How else could one explain that there was always an item or two missing when she got to her destination?

Now the convenient carrying capability of her beloved blanket was hardly the finest of its capabilities.  For instance, it could give her super powers.  All she had to do was pull the blanket over her shoulders and wear it as a cape.  Quick as you like, she could fly.  She kept trying to tell her dad how the roof on their house looked from way up high, but he didn’t really appreciate how truly terrific the view was.  She had thought her friends would be impressed that she could fly over the top of the playground.  However they usually wanted to play hopscotch or tag instead.  (Those games were fine by Amy.  She enjoyed them too.)

If something happened to the blanket’s cape-powers, then it had a built-in safety mechanism.  Amy grabbed the other end of the blanket while she held the first two corners and parachuted herself down to safety.  What airplane seat acted as its own parachute?  Certainly not any that Amy had ever flown on; but to be fair she’d only been on a plane once to visit Grandpa Roger out in Canada.  Happily, she’d had her blanket with her had anything gone wrong.

 When she put her blanket over her head, she turned invisible.  When she rolled and tucked it up in the perfect way, it made a doll.  Folded and twisted two or three times, the blanket made an excellent pillow.  If Amy sat on the blanket and pulled at the front, she had herself a slide that would go down carpeted staircases while brilliantly conforming to the shape of the terrain.  She had never seen anything in the toy catalogs that had such wondrous features as her blanket-sled.  Why, when her younger brother Alan was messing up things in her room, she could throw the blanket over his head and his ability to cause trouble was greatly reduced.  That trait alone made the blanket precious to Amy.

In every other way, Amy got along with her family as happily as anyone.  Sometimes Alan would pull her hair or take her things, but they “managed not to kill each other”, as he dad said.  Amy liked reading and mashing cookie dough between her fingers with her Mom.  Her dad sang to her and told her all about the different things you could see in trees and how fun puzzle books and board games were.  Her cat was as cute as they came, even if he did look at Sir Chirps-and-Flaps with hungry eyes.  Even Alan had his uses.  Amy could talk him into all sorts of adventures, or “trouble”, as her dad said.  Still, her little brother was light enough that she could put him on her shoulders and he could reach the cookies when they were pushed to the back of the kitchen counter.  In return she would grab him around his stomach and swing him around once or twice.  Her parents were not found of either activity, but Amy insisted that he liked it.  Alan was usually too dizzy to speak for himself immediately after.  The dazed smile on his face showed that Amy might be right.  “As long as he isn’t crying, he’s probably okay”, as her dad said.

Yet they just didn’t get what was so special about her blanket.  Amy’s mom would try to hide it, but she wasn’t aware of the secret sound that the blanket made that only Amy could here.  Sometimes it took her a while to hear it, but as soon as Amy found the blanket in its new hiding place, Amy felt it beeping to her loud and clear.  Amy’s dad had tried to swap out the blanket for the opportunity to play a new game, but Amy wanted both.  Why couldn’t she sit on the blanket while playing?  Her bottom was delicate, what with her being a princess and all.  Didn’t her dad want her to be comfortable?

Eventually, her parents felt that there was no harm in her playing with the blanket.  She was content, and they were happy that Amy wasn’t making a habit of watching too much television show or tracking in mud.  Amy hadn’t even revealed her newest trick.  She was waiting until she got it just right.  Because when she put the blanket over her hand, she found out that she could make the blanket talk.

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