"Little Purple Pony"

***
My kids love playing in the sandbox in the backyard, near the dumpster. Their favorite uncle, my wife's brother, Mehitibub, made it for them with some wood-working tools he purchased from Fingerhut, a mail order company.

One day, after applying a healthy dose of Old Spice after shave to my cheeks, my kids came running in, yelling excitedly.

"Hold on a minute," I said, my face still stinging from the Old Spice. "What's the matter? What's this about an eerie ray?"

"It landed on the sandbox," Velma shouted.

"What landed?" I asked.

"The ray," she replied.

"What ray?" I asked, because, to be honest, it sounded like they wanted me to do something about it.

"A pink ray shot down from a pink cloud hovering in the air, right above the sandbox," my neighbor Stan said, as he entered my house with a worried look. "Probably some 20 or 25 feet above it. There was a loud crackling sound. How could you not have heard it?"

"Hi, Stan," I said. I felt like I was being badgered into doing something, and this angered me greatly. I resented it when my disability was ignored by people who were very familiar with it. I spent many hours explaining it, answering questions about it, and describing its devastating and convenient effects.

"You saw it, too? Are you sure? What am I supposed to do about it? If a law's been broken, I can't deal with it, because I'm not a police officer."

"I think you better step outside anyway," he answered gruffly. He was always trying to get me to do things, as though he wanted to prove that my crippling disability was psychosomatic, all "in my head".

Due to my medical disability, CWA Syndrome, it took me quite a while to muster the motivation and strength to get up and go look. By the time I finally got to the sandbox, there was no pink cloud floating over it.

I made some annoyed remarks, and went back inside to watch television. One of my favorite shows was on. I turned the volume up. Watching television helps me get my mind off my problems. Like my being unemployed for the past sixteen years.

I have a psychological-medical impediment called Chronic Work Avoidance Syndrome. I can't help it. My condition is something I personally cannot control, nor is it my fault. This devastating hereditary disease prevents me from lifting a finger when there's anything that needs to be done.

A few days later, the kids came running in again.

"Come look at what we found," they exclaimed in unison.

I grudgingly went with them to the sandbox.

There it was: a little purple pony.

I mean, it wasn't actually a pony, but it bore a slight resemblance to what we call ponies here on Earth. This thing was weird and ugly and clearly not of this world. I started calling it a pony to make my kids calm down and not be unduly frightened of it.

"A little purple pony! That's really cute. How long has this little purple pony been here?" I asked them. My kids were acting like they weren't sure if the little monstrosity was so cute at all.

"Since that ray came down from the pink cloud," the youngest one answered. That meant they had been playing with it, or whatever they were doing with it, for about four days.

"When we write a word on a piece of paper, and feed the paper to the little purple pony, it eats it, and then whatever was written on the paper just disappears," Velma explained. "We made Josilita's bicycle disappear this morning."

She continued: "And yesterday, I wrote the word 'tree' on a piece of paper, fed it to the pony, and a tree disappeared, the one in Brixy's back yard. I wrote 'Jimmy's turtle' on a piece of paper, and the turtle disappeared, too. It's fun...but scary."

I demanded that they stop feeding the little purple pony slips of paper with things written on them. This sounded like witchcraft or a totalitarian regime or something. Things and beings vanishing instantly. I didn't like it.

So a few hours later, I looked up from the newspaper I was reading, and asked how that pony was doing.

I was thinking hard about how I could make money with that weird little purple pony. In fact, I had dreamed up several iron-clad schemes, legal, moral, and pure genius. I could make millions of dollars in a very short time.

"Oh, it's gone," Velma said sadly.

Billy started crying.

"What do you mean it's gone? Where did it go?" I asked as I got up to make a honey-baked ham sandwich with mayo, sliced jalapeno peppers, basil, romaine lettuce, chipotle Tabasco sauce, and a thin slice of white onion, between two slices of oatmeal bread.

"She..." Billy began. "Velma fed it a slip of paper again."

"I told you to stop doing that. What did she write on it?" I replied, but I had already figured out what probably happened, to my grim dismay.

"It had the words 'little purple pony' written on it, " Billy whimpered. You could tell that he really missed the dreadful purple mini-dragon. For some reason, he had allowed himself to become emotionally attached to it.

"I'm sure another pink cloud will come by and zap the sandbox," I remarked, in an effort to comfort them. "Then you'll have another little purple pony, and everything will be fine."

I sure hoped I was right. I needed to use it to make some money.



THE END