Past Deadline: A Cinderella Story

Good times. Lots of powder. Published in The Perth Courier on Tuesday, March 17/09.

A Cinderella story

We rented Cinderella from the library the other day. Considering last week’s column about too much screen time, this pretty much makes me a complete hypocrite, but we knew that already so I won’t bother flogging around in that shallow water.

I could delve into literary criticism of the Cinderella story and embark upon some sort of feminist rant, but I actually like the story. It’s not because in the end the prince comes along and swoops the poor girl away to live out her dreams in a castle with people who do all the dishes and so on, although I could live with that. I like the story because it’s a great example of how treating other people the way you would want to be treated reaps benefits in the long run.

My favourite part of the movie comes just after the wicked stepmother trips the fellow who is eagerly carrying the glass slipper over to Cinderella so she can try it on. The slipper shatters into teeny tiny bits, the Grand Duke starts to weep and the stepmother smiles darkly. Then voila! Cinderella produces the matching slipper from her pocket. When we see the look of utter horror on the stepmother’s face, I always yell, “Aha!” I’ve done so about 672 times because, not surprisingly, Girlchild loves this movie. After all, it features princesses and singing mice and birds.

I hadn’t seen Cinderella for a long time and had forgotten many details, but I was definitely already familiar with “The Work Song,” You know, “Cinderella! Cinderella! All I hear is Cinderella….” Now it is more meaningful to the short people in the house who are always asking me to “Fetch this!” and “Fix that!”

As if we say “fetch.”

Nevertheless, I felt like Cinderella on Saturday morning because I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing a floor early in the morning. Usually I can sleep in a little on Saturdays and was attempting to do so when I decided to get a glass of water. I could hear Girlchild clattering around in her room, which isn’t unusual.

What was unusual, however, was the amount of baby powder that greeted me when I wandered down the hall.

Her majesty had spread almost a full 250-gram bottle of it on nearly every square inch of her bedroom floor (hardwood) and there was an alarmingly large pile of it on the carpet at the top of the stairs.

Aaaaaaaaaah!

The good news is:

a) The carpet is light coloured, so the remnants of half a bottle of baby powder blend in fairly well.

b) It smells quite lovely upstairs and baby powder, when dumped near the litter box, helps to hide unpleasant kitty stinkies.

The bad news is:

a) Regular vacuum cleaners are not big fans of talc. It sends their sensors into a tizzy and leads them to believe empty vacuum bags are full long before they actually are.

b) Mopping will do you no good – you’ll just spend quality time pushing soggy powder across the floor. If your goal is to let your three-year-old troublemaker – I mean daughter – wander across the wet, powdery floor in bare feet to create a charming artistic effect, then go to it.

c) You’ll have to face the Cinderella music and drop to your knees with a bucket of water and a cloth. You’ll also need a good set of fingernails or a scrub brush to scrape the soggy powder out of the cracks between the hardwood. Some fun, huh Bambi? Oops, wrong Disney flick.

d) I didn’t get a picture. I wasn’t really awake when this happened and didn’t dare let this Sahara sandstorm of powder spread to the rest of the house while I waxed nostalgic. Still, I wish I’d thought to get a picture because it is eerily similar to an experiment wee Groom-boy conducted about 40 years ago in the bathroom. I think it involved powdered laundry detergent.

So is this whole thing an example of life imitating art? Maybe. We’ve moved on to watching The Little Mermaid, so I’m hoping it will mean more seafood in my life – or maybe a cruise.