Fairy tales in the olden times can marry off a prince living with his parents, who happens to be the king and queen of course, to a wandering princess. Hans Christian Anderson (HCA), in his time, married off a whiny princess on the account of a pea hidden under a pile of mattresses. My twisted version of the "The Pea and Princess" is for Christine who brought me a pound of gungo ( pronounced as gung-go) peas from Jamaica as a token for trading off my work schedule with her so she make the trip.
Not all fairy tales I know starts with once upon a time so let me tell you about the gungo peas princess. Gungo peas are also known as pigeon peas in the US. It's also called "kardis" in the tongue I was born with, in other words, mother tongue or tongue ina. So let me name my gungo princess Cardice as I am reminded of Candice Anderson Smith who had since moved to Tennesee to live with her brotbers and sisters in Jesus at the Straightway Church with Pastor Dowell.
Princess Kardice did not know she was a real princess untill she was told so by an older couple who claimed they were real royalties of the Gungo Kingdom. King and Queen and their adult unmarried son Prince lived in a huge house they called their castle in a vast ranch somewhere in the Jamaica.
As HCA's story goes, Kardice came knocking on the front door of the huge house called castle one stormy night after she got lost in what she thought was a wetland preserve.
"Poor sweetpea!" Queen exclaimed, feeling sorry for Kardice who looked like shit at the time.
Queen asked his son Prince to find some blankets for Kardice as she led the unexpected guest into the dining room. After Kardice finished the cup of noodle soup hastily heated by Queen on the microwave oven, she was led into one of the guestrooms by Queen. Prince went back to his bedroom as soon as he gave a blanket to Kardice to get back to his videogames.
Queen liked Kardice so much for Prince, and so as the HCA story went, she too got several mattresses and stacked them together putting some gungo peas in between the mattresses. Queen expected to find out if Kardice was a real princess if she could not sleep because of those gungo peas
underneath the mattresses.
In the morning at the breakfast table, Kardice still looked like shit from lack of sleep. She kept stifling a yawn. Prince himself looked tired. Queen was pleased knowing that her search for Prince' would-be bride is over.
"Who me?" Kardice thought Queen was kidding.
Prince who had yet to tell Queen he is gay looked pissed.
The reason why Kardice looked tired was because she stayed up all night playing videogames with two other virtual players in Prince' room. Se had to tell Queen that she had an estranged husband deployed in Afghanistan who happens to be the father of her two beautiful children. Queen was disappointed but had to bid goodbye to Kardice that day as she had to catch a plane back to New York later in the day so she could go back to her job as a licensed vocational nurse at an assisted living facility in Manhattan the following day.
She was actually surpised to find the same gungo pea that Olga asked her to bring back from Jamaica under the mattresses that Queen prepared for her to sleep on. Kardice is familiar with HCA's pea and the princess story find and she finds the the fairy tale corny.
This twisted modern fairy tale is for Christine, one Carribean queen, in her own right.
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