Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Once upon a time there was a dull girl with God disease. This meant all she could ever do, think, be was a slave to God. This made her scared. God was so all powerful and bossy with so many bloody rules that were impossible to follow. She needed a cure.
Her parents disagreed. They were scared of God too, but so scared they thought everything about God was good and right and must be followed to the letter. And there are so many letters in God’s bible.
Every day they would start with a prayer. Thank you God for our meals. But the dull girl knew their food was bought from the supermarket with money earned by her parents doing work they hated. Mum as a teacher. Dad in an office. It didn’t have anything to do with God!…well at least she was reasonably confident that was the case. This dull girl was hedging her bets a bit. Just in case.
And please help us to be good and kind as we go out into the world. Dull girl felt that was a bit much to ask, given she went out every day good and kind, only to be picked on mercilessly by the boy down the road.
One day, dull girl decided she would go on an expedition to see if she could find someone to cure her of God disease. Because of that her parents reported her to the police. Children it seems are not allowed to just wander off on expeditions seeking cures for ills. Parents and police, apparently, know best. So now, she not only had God disease, she was a fugitive. Which she was starting to feel ok about, because she suspected that being a fugitive meant she wasn’t perhaps as dull as she used to be.
And because of that, she started opening her eyes and mind wider, and meeting people who had not been struck down by God disease. She found there were many ways of thinking and being that didn’t make her feel so small. She even discovered it was ok for some people to have God disease if that helped them.
She journeyed far and wide until finally she gave herself up to the police, and they took her back to her parents in the back of a divvy van.
It took her parents quite a while to get over that, because Mrs Mulvany next door saw ‘not so dull anymore’ girl climbing out of the cop car, and made it her business to be sure that everyone in the street and at the local shops knew about it.
Overall though her parents were quite happy to have her back, and ‘on her way to being fascinating’ girl was now cured. Her parents weren’t. But that’s ok.
Helen Tobias
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