Independent Celia and the Big Party

 Independent Celia and the Big Party

by Justine C. Tajonera

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Celia who was born independent. When she was still a baby, she wouldn’t cry when her Mommy would leave her on the bed or on her mat. She would simply stick her right thumb in her mouth and hold her left ear in her left hand. Doing that would make her feel just fine. 

When she got bigger, she would crawl through and around people if she wanted to go somewhere. She wouldn’t get distracted with blocks, she would just find her way around them. When she learned how to walk, she would open the refrigerator door to look for something yummy or to look for anything to eat. She even climbed a chair onto a table one morning just to get some bread. 

Now, Celia had an older brother, Gerald. Gerald was four years older than Celia. He liked playing all day, getting dirty and having fun. He was very curious and he would make up games and stories all the time. He had a box full of toys and he could spend the whole afternoon just making his dinosaurs destroy cities or making some spaceships blast new kinds of laser beams on the moon. Celia wanted to join in Gerald’s games but she would just wait for him to be tired of one toy before she would play with it. 

Celia was independent. She didn’t like to have to ask her older brother for anything. If he was having fun, then she would have fun too, but in her own way. One afternoon, while Gerald was busy playing, Celia came up to him. 

“Kuya Gerald, are you going to use that yellow block?” she asked him. 

“No.” He replied. 

“Can I have it?”

He thought for a while. Before he could answer, Celia interrupted his thoughts. 

“Well, if you’re not going to use it, why don’t you give it to me?”

“I don’t know if I might use it later.”

“If you’re not using it now, then you can give it to me. I could give it back to you later.”

This made sense. So, Gerald gave Celia one yellow block. 

After two minutes, Celia went up to Gerald and asked him for another block. And then she came up to him again and asked for another block. She did this ten more times and you can guess that she had gathered ten blocks. 

Gerald was getting curious about what his little sister was doing. 

“Celia, what are you making?”

“Oh, just girl stuff. You wouldn’t be interested.” Of course, this got Gerald even more curious. Gerald continued to play but after a while he was just pretending to play and he was now watching what Celia was doing. 

Celia was preparing a very, very big party for her dolls. The biggest part of her party would be the cake. That was why she needed exactly ten blocks. If she had less than that then it wouldn’t exactly be a splendid cake. She made sure that she asked for different kinds of colors because it wouldn’t be any fun if it was just one color. It had to be at least five colors. She had two yellow blocks, two blue blocks, two red blocks, two purple blocks and two green blocks. She was telling her two dolls, one Jamaican lady with black hair and a yellow, green and red bonnet, and one little doll with big eyes and wearing pink pajamas, that this would be the biggest event of the year. 

Gerald, at this point, had abandoned his dinosaurs and space ships because he was really excited about the biggest party of the year. Celia continued her preparations without minding her brother. 

“So, Celia, do you need any help?” Gerald asked little Celia. 

“No, not really.” Celia replied. 

“You might want to have some drinks, you know. A party isn’t a party if no one has juice and iced tea.” Gerald informed Celia. 

“Oh, really?” Celia asked. She considered this for a moment. 

“Well, it doesn’t hurt if Jamba (that was her Jamaican doll) and Lulu (that was her pink pajama doll) could have some juice.”

So, off Gerald went to the kitchen to get some plastic cups. 

When Gerald came back, he put the plastic cups near the cake and then he looked down at his dinosaurs. 

“Uh, Celia, are my dinosaurs invited?”

“Well, no, Kuya. Jamba and Lulu are my guests.”

“But Celia, it’s not a big party if you only have three guests.” Gerald said. He already counted himself as one of the guests even if, technically, Celia hadn’t invited him yet. 

“Well, that’s true, Kuya. How big would a big party be?”

Gerald was also stumped. He remembered that his Mom and Dad did go to parties but he hadn’t counted how many people were there.

“I think we should have ten guests.”

So, Celia and her Kuya Gerald went over the potential guests and decided to ask the dinosaurs and one astronaut to join the party.

That afternoon, both Celia and Kuya Gerald had a grand time. They had eight guests, one big cake and lots of orange juice. After the party, Celia went up to her brother. 

“Kuya, that was really, really fun.”

Gerald just smiled. 

“You know what…we should play together more.”

“Yeah,” her Kuya Gerald said, “that party was fun. And it was nice to talk to Jamba and Lulu.”

After that, independent Celia learned how to be more friendly with her Kuya so they could play the same games. Being independent was great. But having fun with her Kuya was even greater. 

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Image credit: Adi Goldstein of Unsplash

Note: This was part of a fairy tale series that I wrote on 750words.com. 

July 21, 2012