Once upon a time, there lived a fair maiden named Leslie who loved to rub
garlic on her fingers. She also delighted in hearing foreign accents so that
she could run home and try them out herself. Her big talent: getting lost.
She had a unique sense of direction – it’s as if her inner compass
occasionally said “Whee!” and spun itself like a top, resulting in the
maiden turning the wrong way and winding up at unanticipated coordinates.
One Tuesday, or maybe it was a Wednesday, the pretty lass was traipsing
through the forest when she spotted a trail of breadcrumbs. “Aha!” she said.
“I must throw caution to the wind and follow these crumbs.” Luckily, she was
wearing her Reeboks so her feet didn’t get tired despite the many hours she
wandered. “I wonder where I am,” she said finally, bending to taste a
breadcrumb since her stomach was rumbling.
Peering at her unfamiliar surroundings, she clucked her tongue. “Lost again.
Well, maybe there’s a Starbucks nearby. Or a McDonalds. I could use a Diet
Coke.” Suddenly her eyes landed on a peculiar sight. A giant beanstalk
loomed in the distance! Leslie ran toward it, making a mental note to spend
more time on the treadmill so she wouldn’t lose her breath this easily.
Upon reaching the beanstalk, Leslie hesitated. Should she climb it? Instinct
told her to wrap her arms around the plant and shimmy upward. Once in
motion, her climbing became increasingly easy; it felt almost like riding an
elevator. Leslie’s ears popped as she neared the top of the beanstalk, where
puffy white clouds abounded and there was no trace of the ground below.
At last she reached the very tip of the plant. She clung to it, a bit
nervous; well, quite nervous, actually. Just then, the plant lurched to one
side, and Leslie flew off. She landed in a soft pile of leaves and decided
to lie there indefinitely because she didn’t think she could take any more
excitement. But a bugle started blasting nearby and she roused herself to
follow its music.
The bugle led her to the doors of a majestic castle. Two butlers whisked her
inside, and the doors clanged shut.
That was the end of Leslie.
Until about a month later, when she emerged wearing the same clothes – blue
jeans and T-shirt – but a completely different expression. Gone was the
usual pinched look around her mouth and faint crease of worry on her brow.
Her face now radiated joy, bliss, satisfaction. Hey! What had she been doing
in that castle? What had she seen?
Humming, Leslie crouched down to admire a ladybug. Without warning, she
received a big push from behind. Oh no – she was falling! Down, down,
through what can only be compared to a giant pothole in the sky. She flailed
her arms and legs, but this just accelerated her descent. A loud thud marked
her landing. She was back in the forest, at the base of the beanstalk.
“Damn!” she yelled, and immediately prepared to re-climb the plant. No such
luck. Some powerful force at the top of the beanstalk was tugging on it and
managing to rip its roots clear out of the ground. A minute later, the plant
was yanked up into the stratosphere.
Crushed, Leslie raised her arms above her head and let out a wail louder
than Macaulay Culkin’s in “Home Alone” when he slaps on the aftershave. On
autopilot, she trudged through the forest and beyond until she wound up back
at her family’s house. She went straight to bed without even asking for a
Yankee Doodle.
The next few days passed in a blur for the poor lass. How was she supposed
to resume her mundane existence back home after experiencing something so
heavenly and fantastic, that she knew better than to even talk about it lest
she tarnish the memory?
A sea change took place in Leslie. The politeness she had habitually shown
to people was replaced by a scowl and furtive spitballs. The sight of
couples in love especially irked her. Walking through Central Park one day,
she passed a bench where two youngsters sat smooching. “Public displays of
affection make me sick!” she yelled, and smacked the guy on the head with a
rolled up newspaper.
Later she came upon an elderly man and his frail wife, waiting to cross the
street. The wrinkled, sagging skin around their eyes could not conceal the
admiration and tenderness beaming from one to the other. Leslie couldn’t
bear it. She “accidentally” bumped into the old man, causing him to drop his
bag of groceries. “Swell!” Leslie said. “A geriatric couple making goo-goo
eyes at each other in broad daylight – lay off the Viagra, pops!” Cackling
like a banshee, she backed away from her stunned victims.
In the evening, she raced into the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House and
zipped up the marble stairs before the usher could ask for her ticket. She
tiptoed into a private box overlooking the stage set for “Madame Butterfly.”
There a gentleman sat with his arm around an elegant lady, enjoying the
performance in hushed silence. Seeing that the woman’s coiffed head rested
every so lightly against her date’s shoulder, Leslie actually growled. Then
she tapped the man’s free shoulder. “What’s next, buddy? Crème brulee at a
five-star restaurant? Or are you guys headed straight for the jacuzzi?”
Four security guards escorted a thrashing Leslie out of the building. That
night, she cried into her pillow.
She didn’t want to get up in the morning. Finally she threw some clothes on,
grabbed her knapsack, and headed for the forest. There she wandered in
circles, hoping against hope that the towering beanstalk would magically
reappear.
“Looks like I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.” From her knapsack,
she pulled out a pair of glittery red shoes and stepped into them. Clicking
her heels together, she also began rubbing a brass lamp that she’d fished
from the bag. “Here, genie genie genie.” No genie appeared, and the lamp
remained smudged. A patch of glitter fell off one shoe. Leslie flung herself
onto the ground and wept like there was no tomorrow.
A tinkling chime reverberated through the forest just as a cool breeze made
leaves rustle on their branches. Leslie looked up and couldn’t believe her
eyes. In front of her stood a kindly woman in a silver gown, holding a
sparkling wand. “Child, you mustn’t cry,” she gently admonished.
“Are you my fairy godmother?” Leslie whispered. She noticed that the woman
bore a slight resemblance to Zsa Zsa Gabor.
“Call me Esmerelda,” the woman said. “And seriously, you mustn’t cry. You’re
flooding us upstairs.” She nodded toward the sky. “Your tears last night
caused our rivers to swell, and our houses to loosen from their
foundations.”
Drying her nose with her sleeve, Leslie said, “Huh?”
“You are the girl who climbed the beanstalk, are you not?” said Esmerelda in
a tone suggesting she already knew the answer. At Leslie’s nod, the fairy
continued. “Ever since you visited our kingdom, things have been topsy turvy
for us. Some kind of link has been established between you and my people. No
one knows exactly why. But when you’re upset, our lives are affected as
well.”
“Oh, I’ve been getting by all right,” Leslie said, feigning nonchalance.
“We haven’t much time, dear, so I’m going to get right to the point, and I
hope you’ll forgive my directness. But what have you got against people in
love?”
Leslie recoiled as if slapped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Esmerelda smoothed the folds of her shining gown. “Okay, a hypothetical.
Suppose Mr. Bergman in apartment 2G comes home from a hard day’s work. And
he wants to pat his wife on the tuchas, and kiss her neck, and say, ‘Doll,
I’m nuts about you.’”
Leslie shuddered.
“Aha!” said the fairy.
“I don’t like the image.”
“But do people have a right to find happiness in one another’s arms? To
choose to be together with someone who makes them feel good?”
“Yeah, sure.” Leslie shrugged.
“Then why have you been bothering couples on park benches, at the opera, in
tollbooths?”
“You heard about the tollbooth?” Leslie blinked nervously.
Esmerelda pointed her wand at a stray branch on the ground and turned it
into a picnic basket. “You’re probably hungry, dear. Have a little something
while we talk turkey.” As Leslie, mollified, rummaged through the basket,
the fairy thought of more questions.
“Child, how would you like it if you stood on the brink of a romantic
relationship and some meddling person barged in and tried to break it up?”
Leslie’s eyes flashed and Esmerelda, smiling, wagged a warning finger at
her.
Spraying bits of cake, Leslie blurted out, “The man I love is at the top of
that beanstalk. I met him in the castle. And now I’m stuck down here, and I
may never see him again!” She wiped angrily at the tears threatening to run
down her face. “Can’t you use your wand to transport me back?”
Esmerelda enveloped Leslie in a hug and, stroking her hair, spoke as a
grandmother to a sad little girl. “So that’s it, now the truth is out. You
fell in love with the prince and it’s hurting you to be apart.” She lifted
the hand holding the wand. “Not enough magic in this for bringing you back,
I’m afraid. But we may find another solution.”
Leslie pulled away. “You can’t talk me out of my feelings for him.”
“I wasn’t going to try, dear. But tell me, how do you know that what you’re
experiencing isn’t simply an infatuation? Or –” she spoke as gently as
possible – “that the feeling is mutual?”
Leslie paused. “If I tell you, you’ll laugh.” Esmerelda shook her head. At
last Leslie said, “His heart sang to mine.”
The words started tumbling out almost on their own. “I looked in his eyes
and I saw the man I want to spend my life with. I want to cook his dinner,
sleep in his bed, raise his children.”
“Because . . .?” asked Esmerelda.
Leslie sighed. “He has a noble spirit.”
A squirrel approached, and the women watched it hurry past.
“He makes me feel beautiful. And he understands me. He did from the
beginning. He’s so perceptive, and he would never use his knowledge to hurt
me.”
“Well, of course not,” said Esmerelda. “Our prince is a kind man.
Unfortunately, he has a third cousin once removed who is terribly jealous
and seeks to do him harm at every turn. It was this cousin who pushed you
back to New York and took away the beanstalk. It’s likely this cousin is
also thwarting the prince’s efforts to renew contact with you.”
Leslie took off her glittery red shoes and hurled them as hard as she
could.
“I would be angry too,” said Esmerelda.
“It’s so wrong!” Leslie fumed. “It’s none of that cousin’s business if I
want to be with the prince. Just like it’s none of my business if Mr. and
Mrs. Bergman in 2G want to rub noses over the lentil soup!”
Esmerelda’s wand gave off a cascade of sparks and shook in her hand. “I
couldn’t have said it better myself.” She waved the wand in Leslie’s
direction and, boom-sha-la-goom, jeans and T-shirt were replaced with a
glamorous pastel evening gown. “Lovely, child. Now the outside reflects the
inside.”
Leslie gaped down at her attire. “Am I going somewhere?”
“I believe so, dear. Listen closely now. The currents of thought and feeling
that travel among your people, if intense enough, can have reverberations
upstairs in my land. If you impart to your family and friends the
earnestness of your desire to marry Prince Mark, the tide of public opinion
in your world – and then mine – will likely turn to support you. And soon
we’ll be hearing wedding bells!”
“Jiminy Cricket!” Leslie yelped.
“Jiminy who?”
“Uh, never mind, when can we get started?”
Esmerelda put her hands on her hips. “Right now. Tell me what you’re going
to share with your folks when you get home, and what you’re going to
announce to every ear bending your way.”
A spot of pink bloomed on Leslie’s cheeks. Shyly, she mumbled it. “I love
Mark.”
“Can’t hear you,” teased Esmerelda.
Leslie threw back her head and roared. “I love him! I’m in love with Mark!”
The news traveled fast. Within days, bumper stickers on every other car
said: “Honk if you heard – Leslie’s sweet on Mark!” Radio stations kept
rebroadcasting the sound bite in which she declared: “It’s as if God read my
mind and created exactly the man I want to marry.” Saturday Night Live even
did a sketch spoofing Leslie in which an unknown named Meg Tilly swooned all
over the stage and spouted lines like, “How do I know he’s the one? I feel
it in the very depths of my soul.”
It got so that Leslie couldn’t go to the supermarket without drawing a heap
of sympathetic looks and shouts of support. “We’re with you, girl! We know
you love ’im.”
In a nutshell, the whole town came to understand that Leslie was head over
heels for some prince named Mark. They hoped she’d get her wish and become
his missus. And they felt annoyed on her behalf that something sinister was
preventing the happiest of outcomes.
One night, Leslie heard a pebble hit the glass of her bedroom window.
Putting on her slippers, she went outside to investigate. Oh, it wasn’t a
pebble she’d heard. It was an M&M. There was an impressive line of them
leading up to the window. Without a second’s hesitation, she began following
the colorful trail of candies, which led down the block and toward the
forest.
In the heart of the forest, she was met by Esmerelda perched atop an
oversized teacup. “Wait’ll you hear what I –” began Leslie, but Esmerelda
shushed her and motioned to climb into the teacup. She did, noticing what
seemed to be mounds of leaves on the bottom. “Oh! I took a class on how to
read tea leaves at the Learning Annex,” she said, and proceeded to decipher
the stuff at her feet.
“Long life, good fortune, marriage to the man of your dreams – holy smoke!”
Grinning, Esmerelda took hold of the steering wheel inside the teacup and
gave it a whirl. Carrying two very happy passengers, the teacup rose
through the air and floated up into the starry sky.
♫ THE END ♫
garlic on her fingers. She also delighted in hearing foreign accents so that
she could run home and try them out herself. Her big talent: getting lost.
She had a unique sense of direction – it’s as if her inner compass
occasionally said “Whee!” and spun itself like a top, resulting in the
maiden turning the wrong way and winding up at unanticipated coordinates.
One Tuesday, or maybe it was a Wednesday, the pretty lass was traipsing
through the forest when she spotted a trail of breadcrumbs. “Aha!” she said.
“I must throw caution to the wind and follow these crumbs.” Luckily, she was
wearing her Reeboks so her feet didn’t get tired despite the many hours she
wandered. “I wonder where I am,” she said finally, bending to taste a
breadcrumb since her stomach was rumbling.
Peering at her unfamiliar surroundings, she clucked her tongue. “Lost again.
Well, maybe there’s a Starbucks nearby. Or a McDonalds. I could use a Diet
Coke.” Suddenly her eyes landed on a peculiar sight. A giant beanstalk
loomed in the distance! Leslie ran toward it, making a mental note to spend
more time on the treadmill so she wouldn’t lose her breath this easily.
Upon reaching the beanstalk, Leslie hesitated. Should she climb it? Instinct
told her to wrap her arms around the plant and shimmy upward. Once in
motion, her climbing became increasingly easy; it felt almost like riding an
elevator. Leslie’s ears popped as she neared the top of the beanstalk, where
puffy white clouds abounded and there was no trace of the ground below.
At last she reached the very tip of the plant. She clung to it, a bit
nervous; well, quite nervous, actually. Just then, the plant lurched to one
side, and Leslie flew off. She landed in a soft pile of leaves and decided
to lie there indefinitely because she didn’t think she could take any more
excitement. But a bugle started blasting nearby and she roused herself to
follow its music.
The bugle led her to the doors of a majestic castle. Two butlers whisked her
inside, and the doors clanged shut.
That was the end of Leslie.
Until about a month later, when she emerged wearing the same clothes – blue
jeans and T-shirt – but a completely different expression. Gone was the
usual pinched look around her mouth and faint crease of worry on her brow.
Her face now radiated joy, bliss, satisfaction. Hey! What had she been doing
in that castle? What had she seen?
Humming, Leslie crouched down to admire a ladybug. Without warning, she
received a big push from behind. Oh no – she was falling! Down, down,
through what can only be compared to a giant pothole in the sky. She flailed
her arms and legs, but this just accelerated her descent. A loud thud marked
her landing. She was back in the forest, at the base of the beanstalk.
“Damn!” she yelled, and immediately prepared to re-climb the plant. No such
luck. Some powerful force at the top of the beanstalk was tugging on it and
managing to rip its roots clear out of the ground. A minute later, the plant
was yanked up into the stratosphere.
Crushed, Leslie raised her arms above her head and let out a wail louder
than Macaulay Culkin’s in “Home Alone” when he slaps on the aftershave. On
autopilot, she trudged through the forest and beyond until she wound up back
at her family’s house. She went straight to bed without even asking for a
Yankee Doodle.
The next few days passed in a blur for the poor lass. How was she supposed
to resume her mundane existence back home after experiencing something so
heavenly and fantastic, that she knew better than to even talk about it lest
she tarnish the memory?
A sea change took place in Leslie. The politeness she had habitually shown
to people was replaced by a scowl and furtive spitballs. The sight of
couples in love especially irked her. Walking through Central Park one day,
she passed a bench where two youngsters sat smooching. “Public displays of
affection make me sick!” she yelled, and smacked the guy on the head with a
rolled up newspaper.
Later she came upon an elderly man and his frail wife, waiting to cross the
street. The wrinkled, sagging skin around their eyes could not conceal the
admiration and tenderness beaming from one to the other. Leslie couldn’t
bear it. She “accidentally” bumped into the old man, causing him to drop his
bag of groceries. “Swell!” Leslie said. “A geriatric couple making goo-goo
eyes at each other in broad daylight – lay off the Viagra, pops!” Cackling
like a banshee, she backed away from her stunned victims.
In the evening, she raced into the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House and
zipped up the marble stairs before the usher could ask for her ticket. She
tiptoed into a private box overlooking the stage set for “Madame Butterfly.”
There a gentleman sat with his arm around an elegant lady, enjoying the
performance in hushed silence. Seeing that the woman’s coiffed head rested
every so lightly against her date’s shoulder, Leslie actually growled. Then
she tapped the man’s free shoulder. “What’s next, buddy? Crème brulee at a
five-star restaurant? Or are you guys headed straight for the jacuzzi?”
Four security guards escorted a thrashing Leslie out of the building. That
night, she cried into her pillow.
She didn’t want to get up in the morning. Finally she threw some clothes on,
grabbed her knapsack, and headed for the forest. There she wandered in
circles, hoping against hope that the towering beanstalk would magically
reappear.
“Looks like I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.” From her knapsack,
she pulled out a pair of glittery red shoes and stepped into them. Clicking
her heels together, she also began rubbing a brass lamp that she’d fished
from the bag. “Here, genie genie genie.” No genie appeared, and the lamp
remained smudged. A patch of glitter fell off one shoe. Leslie flung herself
onto the ground and wept like there was no tomorrow.
A tinkling chime reverberated through the forest just as a cool breeze made
leaves rustle on their branches. Leslie looked up and couldn’t believe her
eyes. In front of her stood a kindly woman in a silver gown, holding a
sparkling wand. “Child, you mustn’t cry,” she gently admonished.
“Are you my fairy godmother?” Leslie whispered. She noticed that the woman
bore a slight resemblance to Zsa Zsa Gabor.
“Call me Esmerelda,” the woman said. “And seriously, you mustn’t cry. You’re
flooding us upstairs.” She nodded toward the sky. “Your tears last night
caused our rivers to swell, and our houses to loosen from their
foundations.”
Drying her nose with her sleeve, Leslie said, “Huh?”
“You are the girl who climbed the beanstalk, are you not?” said Esmerelda in
a tone suggesting she already knew the answer. At Leslie’s nod, the fairy
continued. “Ever since you visited our kingdom, things have been topsy turvy
for us. Some kind of link has been established between you and my people. No
one knows exactly why. But when you’re upset, our lives are affected as
well.”
“Oh, I’ve been getting by all right,” Leslie said, feigning nonchalance.
“We haven’t much time, dear, so I’m going to get right to the point, and I
hope you’ll forgive my directness. But what have you got against people in
love?”
Leslie recoiled as if slapped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Esmerelda smoothed the folds of her shining gown. “Okay, a hypothetical.
Suppose Mr. Bergman in apartment 2G comes home from a hard day’s work. And
he wants to pat his wife on the tuchas, and kiss her neck, and say, ‘Doll,
I’m nuts about you.’”
Leslie shuddered.
“Aha!” said the fairy.
“I don’t like the image.”
“But do people have a right to find happiness in one another’s arms? To
choose to be together with someone who makes them feel good?”
“Yeah, sure.” Leslie shrugged.
“Then why have you been bothering couples on park benches, at the opera, in
tollbooths?”
“You heard about the tollbooth?” Leslie blinked nervously.
Esmerelda pointed her wand at a stray branch on the ground and turned it
into a picnic basket. “You’re probably hungry, dear. Have a little something
while we talk turkey.” As Leslie, mollified, rummaged through the basket,
the fairy thought of more questions.
“Child, how would you like it if you stood on the brink of a romantic
relationship and some meddling person barged in and tried to break it up?”
Leslie’s eyes flashed and Esmerelda, smiling, wagged a warning finger at
her.
Spraying bits of cake, Leslie blurted out, “The man I love is at the top of
that beanstalk. I met him in the castle. And now I’m stuck down here, and I
may never see him again!” She wiped angrily at the tears threatening to run
down her face. “Can’t you use your wand to transport me back?”
Esmerelda enveloped Leslie in a hug and, stroking her hair, spoke as a
grandmother to a sad little girl. “So that’s it, now the truth is out. You
fell in love with the prince and it’s hurting you to be apart.” She lifted
the hand holding the wand. “Not enough magic in this for bringing you back,
I’m afraid. But we may find another solution.”
Leslie pulled away. “You can’t talk me out of my feelings for him.”
“I wasn’t going to try, dear. But tell me, how do you know that what you’re
experiencing isn’t simply an infatuation? Or –” she spoke as gently as
possible – “that the feeling is mutual?”
Leslie paused. “If I tell you, you’ll laugh.” Esmerelda shook her head. At
last Leslie said, “His heart sang to mine.”
The words started tumbling out almost on their own. “I looked in his eyes
and I saw the man I want to spend my life with. I want to cook his dinner,
sleep in his bed, raise his children.”
“Because . . .?” asked Esmerelda.
Leslie sighed. “He has a noble spirit.”
A squirrel approached, and the women watched it hurry past.
“He makes me feel beautiful. And he understands me. He did from the
beginning. He’s so perceptive, and he would never use his knowledge to hurt
me.”
“Well, of course not,” said Esmerelda. “Our prince is a kind man.
Unfortunately, he has a third cousin once removed who is terribly jealous
and seeks to do him harm at every turn. It was this cousin who pushed you
back to New York and took away the beanstalk. It’s likely this cousin is
also thwarting the prince’s efforts to renew contact with you.”
Leslie took off her glittery red shoes and hurled them as hard as she
could.
“I would be angry too,” said Esmerelda.
“It’s so wrong!” Leslie fumed. “It’s none of that cousin’s business if I
want to be with the prince. Just like it’s none of my business if Mr. and
Mrs. Bergman in 2G want to rub noses over the lentil soup!”
Esmerelda’s wand gave off a cascade of sparks and shook in her hand. “I
couldn’t have said it better myself.” She waved the wand in Leslie’s
direction and, boom-sha-la-goom, jeans and T-shirt were replaced with a
glamorous pastel evening gown. “Lovely, child. Now the outside reflects the
inside.”
Leslie gaped down at her attire. “Am I going somewhere?”
“I believe so, dear. Listen closely now. The currents of thought and feeling
that travel among your people, if intense enough, can have reverberations
upstairs in my land. If you impart to your family and friends the
earnestness of your desire to marry Prince Mark, the tide of public opinion
in your world – and then mine – will likely turn to support you. And soon
we’ll be hearing wedding bells!”
“Jiminy Cricket!” Leslie yelped.
“Jiminy who?”
“Uh, never mind, when can we get started?”
Esmerelda put her hands on her hips. “Right now. Tell me what you’re going
to share with your folks when you get home, and what you’re going to
announce to every ear bending your way.”
A spot of pink bloomed on Leslie’s cheeks. Shyly, she mumbled it. “I love
Mark.”
“Can’t hear you,” teased Esmerelda.
Leslie threw back her head and roared. “I love him! I’m in love with Mark!”
The news traveled fast. Within days, bumper stickers on every other car
said: “Honk if you heard – Leslie’s sweet on Mark!” Radio stations kept
rebroadcasting the sound bite in which she declared: “It’s as if God read my
mind and created exactly the man I want to marry.” Saturday Night Live even
did a sketch spoofing Leslie in which an unknown named Meg Tilly swooned all
over the stage and spouted lines like, “How do I know he’s the one? I feel
it in the very depths of my soul.”
It got so that Leslie couldn’t go to the supermarket without drawing a heap
of sympathetic looks and shouts of support. “We’re with you, girl! We know
you love ’im.”
In a nutshell, the whole town came to understand that Leslie was head over
heels for some prince named Mark. They hoped she’d get her wish and become
his missus. And they felt annoyed on her behalf that something sinister was
preventing the happiest of outcomes.
One night, Leslie heard a pebble hit the glass of her bedroom window.
Putting on her slippers, she went outside to investigate. Oh, it wasn’t a
pebble she’d heard. It was an M&M. There was an impressive line of them
leading up to the window. Without a second’s hesitation, she began following
the colorful trail of candies, which led down the block and toward the
forest.
In the heart of the forest, she was met by Esmerelda perched atop an
oversized teacup. “Wait’ll you hear what I –” began Leslie, but Esmerelda
shushed her and motioned to climb into the teacup. She did, noticing what
seemed to be mounds of leaves on the bottom. “Oh! I took a class on how to
read tea leaves at the Learning Annex,” she said, and proceeded to decipher
the stuff at her feet.
“Long life, good fortune, marriage to the man of your dreams – holy smoke!”
Grinning, Esmerelda took hold of the steering wheel inside the teacup and
gave it a whirl. Carrying two very happy passengers, the teacup rose
through the air and floated up into the starry sky.
♫ THE END ♫
