The Life of a Pearl
And yet another tale written in childhood. . .
My name is Pearly P. Pearl. I live in a modern clam. It has all the latest organs. I think my dad was taken up to the earring store because he never comes to visit me anymore. I wish he would because I am getting very bored. I hope that I too can become a glamorous earring one day. As soon as I thought that, a diver came down and took my clam and me. I could feel the water pressure pop in my ears as we went up.
After a few minutes I was on the surface and my clam and I were seperated. I was taken to an amusement park and put on a roller coaster. The roller coaster was packed with other pearls. They were all beautiful and very shiny as the roller coaster did that to them. When I came out, I looked at myself in the mirror and I was very shiny too.
I was shipped to a little earring shop and had a collar put on me. It was silver and had a part that was shaped like a heart, which you could take on and off. Then I was set on a cushion next to another pearl.
The other pearl turned out to be a handsome male named Mel Gibson. He used to live in a Victorian clam with a lot of antique organs. I found this out later, as we had a lot of time to talk.
Fianlly a woman came to look at earrings. She picked us up and gave us to the sales clerk, who put us in a nice box and closed the door.
It was a long time until she opened the door again. She picked up Mel and put him in her ear. Then she picked up me and put me in her other ear. This was the first time I was in someone’s ear and I knew I would treasure that moment forever.
The woman took us to a party and we danced all night. We had fun with the exception of the drunk driving our owner performed. When we came home she put us in our box and she went to bed. Mel and I talked a bit about the night, then we also went to sleep.
In the morning we were not taken out of our box, so we lost track of time and we just slept. When we didn’t sleep, we talked. I found out that Mel’s mom died from breast cancer because she didn’t have a mammogram. His dad was still alive, but still weeping over the loss. I told him of my life, which was the usual.
After a few days (or what seemed to be) our owner took us out of our box and put us into her ears. She took us to the mall, but she didn’t take us out opf her ears for a long time. We even got rained on, though I found it strange that while we were getting rained on our owner didn’t go anywhere and there were walls all around us. When she took us out, she set us on the counter next to our box. Mel and I didn’t know what to do because we have never been trusted with the choice to do whatever we liked.
“What are you going to do?” Mel asked me.
“I’m going exploring,” I replied.
“Where?”
“Where else? The counter-top.”
“Come on. Just stay here. You might get hurt,” Mel objected.
“I won’t, I’ll be careful,” I said in a mocking voice as I slid past our box. I slid past a big jewlry box and a hairspray can. Then I came to the sink, but that was slippery and I fell down onto the rug.
“I told you, I told you,” Mel repeated in the same mocking voice I had used to him.
“Well, I didn’t get hurt!” I yelled back.
Mel and I never talked again. I just sat there on the rug because I was afraid something else might happen.
In a day or two I was frightened by a loud buzzing noise that was like a tornado. The tornado sucked me up into its storage place. It was fluffy in there, so I was very comfortable for awhile.
Then some people dumped me onto the ground outside. All the fluffy stuff flew away because of the wind. I landed on a rock and my collar broke off.
I sat there for a long time on the wet dirt, just sitting, until one day a monster that was green and whose name was John Deere (it was printed on the front) came by. It was digging the dirt, and I ended up under the ground.
After all the dirt settled an earthworm came up to me. It turned out the earthworm was a male. We went out on a date. He was very nice and asked me out on more dates.
“Will you marry me?” he asked me on our one hundreth date.
“Yes,” I said.
We were happy and our family grew with four children.
Howard City, Michigan
31 March, 1993
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