Julian and the Three Maires
This is installment #18 in my several-part series, Shit I Wrote a While Ago. This story, a variation of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” obviously, is probably my favorite from elementary school. It’s in a really sweet cloth-bound book with fantastic illustrations by me. Fantastic = horrible. From 1997.
Julian and the Three Maires
One fine morning, the Maire family was just sitting down to a breakfast of biscuits and kumquats. Mr. Maire took a big bite out of his biscuit.
“Ptwey!” he exclaimed as he spit it out.
“What’s the matter, George?” Mrs. Maire asked sweetly.
“This biscuit is as hard as a rock. And it’s also very cold,” he complained.
Mrs. Maire raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know why.” She took a bite out of her biscuit and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Mine is very hot and mushy,” she said with no expression.
Little Sally Maire was busily eating her biscuit. “Mine is yummy,” she announced.
“Lucky,” Mr. Maire grumbled.
Mrs. Maire was putting her husband’s biscuit on a tray to be heated in the oven. “Why don’t we go for a little walk while the biscuit is cooking,” she suggested. “Then it will be done when we get back.”
“Perhaps,” Mr. Maire agreed in his pessimistic way.
They left, but forgot to lock the door. As they were walking, it drifted open.
Meanwhile, a delightful young bear named Julian was also walking through the woods. He happened to come upon the cottage where the Maires lived. He smelled the baking biscuit, and, because he loved biscuits, he desperately wanted to get into the house. At first he tried going in through a window. This was useless, because not only were the windows melted into the wall, but they were also very pretty, and it would have been a shame to break them. So he turned to the chimney. It looked rather narrow, but he figured, “Hey, if Santa Claus can do it, so can I.”
Once on the roof, he dove head-first into the chimney. He got stuck about half-way down, but managed to wriggle just low enough to see out of the chimney, and the open front door.
“Oh, I am so stupid!” he groaned. He wiggled free a hand, which he was going to use to slap himself, but instead he fell head-first into a pile of soot.
“Ouch,” he complained as he brushed himself off. He drifted into the kitchen, where he found the oven, the source of the marvelous smell. Yanking the door open, Julian found the huge, crisp biscuit waiting just for him.
He took a big bite out of the other end of the biscuit (the end that Mr. Maire had not taken a bite out of). “Ptwey!” he complained, throwing the biscuit onto a plate. “That biscuit is as hard as a rock! And it is cold, too.” So he tried Mrs. Maire’s biscuit. “Ouch!” he yelped after only a tiny nibble. “That biscuit is burning hot!” Next, because there were no more biscuits, Julian picked up a kumquat. “I wonder what this is,” he wondered out loud. He shrugged, then wandered into the sitting room.
“I think I’ll try this chair,” Julian stated absently as he sat in Mr. Maire’s chair. “Yowee!” he exclaimed, jumping back up. “That chair is ice cold!” So he tried the chair belonging to Mrs. Maire. As soon as he sat down, however, the chair seemed to melt underneath him. “That chair melted,” Julian said with awe. “This house is weird. But this chair appears to be normal.” He sat down in Little Sally Maire’s mini-armchair. But it crumbled like a cracker the moment he was fully situated in it. “This is not my day,” Julian moaned. “First the trouble in the fireplace, then the bad biscuits, and now the only decent looking piece of furniture in the whole house is firewood! I’m going to take a nap.”
Once upstairs, he looked suspiciously around the tiny room. There was a huge, flat bed; a mushy-looking medium-sized bed; and a comfy-looking small bed. Julian obviously chose the small bed. He fell asleep the moment he lay down.
Meanwhile, the Maires were just coming home.
“Oh my!” Mrs. Maire exclaimed as soon as she saw the kitchen.
“Somebody tried to eat my frozen, rock-hard biscuit!” Mr. Maire exclaimed.
“Somebody tried to take a tiny nibble out of my burning hot biscuit!” Mrs. Maire exclaimed.
“Somebody ate all of my biscuit!” Little Sally whined.
“You ate all of your biscuit,” Mrs. Maire reminded her.
“Oh yeah,” Sally realized.
“Let’s go take a look at the sitting room,” Mr. Maire suggested.
“My chair!” Little Sally screamed, running over to the heap of firewood that used to be her armchair.
“There, there,” Mrs. Maire cooed.
“It crumbled like a cracker,” Sally cried. She ran upstairs and mournfully threw herself on her bed.
“Oh no!” Julian yelped. In his excitement and panic, he jumped out the bedroom window and shimmied down the drain pipe. He rain until he was far into the woods. He was out of breath, but managed to exclaim, “All for a biscuit!”
The End
I mean, did I pilfer this entire story from a well-known fairy tale? Absolutely. Is this better written than everything else I produced in elementary school, though? Yes. Cheaters always win. A++++++
