Unprincess Nermine

Unprincess Interrupted

“Paging Nermine Papadopoulos!” said a voice with the impatience that voices have when saying something for the third time. “Please report to the nearest classroom back here on planet Earth, where your teacher and classmates are waiting for you in the arrivals terminal.”

Uh-oh. Daydream officially over. And just when things were getting interesting.

The voice continued. “Young lady, perhaps you could join us in mind and body today!?” Of all the fourth-grade teachers, Miss Ida Franks had a reputation for being anything but subtle.

In her mind, Nermine had been rehearsing her leans, tucks, and straightenings during what would surely be her fastest test run yet down Moonstone Mountain, this time on her father’s latest invention, Rocket-Assisted Zero-gravity Open-Road in-line skates—RAZOR Blades for short. She had been anticipating the moment her blades would leave the small ramp at the base of the mountain, when she would catch a few seconds of glorious air before pulling the ripcord on her drag chute, ending her record-setting run. That’s when Miss Franks’s voice brought her back to reality with a thud.

“Sorry, Miss Franks. Would you please repeat the question?”

“We were discussing the fairy tale Cinderella and why it was so important for her to be home by midnight. Would you care to enlighten us, please?”

“Um … yes … home by midnight …” Nermine said, stalling badly for time.

Nermine remembered reading something about a fairy or an angel warning Cinderella that her evening would take a serious turn for the worse when the clock struck twelve, but she had forgotten the specifics.

Tired of waiting for Nermine to answer, Miss Franks pressed, “Cinderella needed to leave the ball exactly at midnight because if she didn’t, everything she had wished for—her sparkling gown, her horse-drawn carriage, her evening with the handsome prince—would return to ordinary again, and she would appear as the ordinary girl that she was!”

Here we go again with the heaping pile of princess stuff, Nermine thought to herself. Since the fall semester began, Nermine had found herself in several tiresome debates with Miss Franks. The most recent had been over the talking, magic mirror in the fairy tale, Snow White.  The mirror, mirror on the wall. On one hand, Nermine thought the technology of a talking mirror, which could only tell the truth and which knew so much about the outside world, was impressive. She thought it would be useful to have a mirror like this, one you could ask all kinds of questions of and depend on for honest answers.

“On the other hand,” she had told Miss Franks, “I think the magic mirror was really more of a tragic mirror because the only thing it did was tell Snow White’s stepmother how pretty she was compared to others. C’mon, Ida! What was the wicked woman thinking anyway? That she’d keep getting older and stay the fairest forever? Better yet, did she ever think of asking it any more interesting questions? Didn’t she …”