The Bear Story...

The following is a true story that happened 22 years ago. My Dad has wanted me to tell him the whole story since that day when he picked me up from school. My teacher laughed and told him that she really enjoyed the bear story. I have never given him all the details. This is how it happened:

I HATED her. She was a snotty little twit who enjoyed showing off all the fancy clothes and new things her parents bought for her. She was five or six and already thought that richer meant better. Her family was wealthy and liked to show it off. I sat quietly steaming as she sat in my favorite teacher’s lap going on, and on, and on about how HER Daddy was the BEST Daddy in the world. I wanted to hit her and knock her perfect little pigtails crooked!

“…And MY DADDY took me to Disney World this summer. (She looked down her noses at the rest of us.) That is the BIG one… not the little fake one.” She bragged. “MY DADDY dressed in a tuxedo and my Mommy put on a fancy dress every night for dinner. MY DADDY loves me so much that he bought me a special lunch with Cinderella!”

I couldn’t take it any more! My five-year-old little ego had taken all it could at that point and the lie started to spill out of my mouth with very little consent from my brain. “Oh yeah, Well MY DADDY took me camping this summer and he killed a bear with a pine cone!” I practically shouted it. I KNEW she couldn’t have the best daddy in the world because I did and I just HAD to out do her story.

“Oh really?” said Mrs. Godlevski with a knowing twinkle in her eye. “Why don’t you tell us about your camping trip Melissa.”

I knew I should stop and tell them I was making it all up, but my whole class was mesmerized and Little Miss Better Than You was sitting there with her bottom jaw on the floor. I just couldn't stop myself.

“MY DADDY took me and my cousin Tim camping this summer. One day Tim and me were cooking lunch on the campfire cause MY DADDY taught us how, and a BIG brown bear smelled it and got hungry. The bear came into the camp and started chasing us and me and Tim climbed a pine tree to get away from it, but it started climbing up after us! So me and Tim were in the very top of the tree throwing pine cones at the bear’s head and just then MY DADDY grabbed that mean old bear by his little stubby tail and started pulling him back down the tree away from me and Tim. MY DADDY was so mad that that mean old bear was trying to eat me that he punched that bear right in the nose! When the bear came back at MY DADDY he picked up one of the pine cones up off the ground that me and Tim had been throwing at the bear’s head, and he used it to hit the bear real hard right between his beady little eyes, and that mean old bear just dropped dead! MY DADDY got me and Tim out of the tree and we went back to our camp and had lunch and all the other bears knew that they better not try to eat me and my cousin cause MY DADDY would whoop ‘em just like that bear he killed with a pine cone!”

I ended the story with a flourish and looked around at the amazed and captivated gazes from every one of my classmates. Well, all but one. Little Miss Better Than You just looked jealous.

Mission accomplished!

(I Love you Daddy, and you have always been my hero chasing away the bears and boys in my life that needed to be chased away.)