With Disney’s new release of a live-action Cinderella, the announcement of a Beauty and the Beast remake and rumors of a new Mulan, I’ve been thinking a lot about fairytales. The University of Texas at Austin has always been sold as a place for dreamers, though it’s not particularly dreamy like the stories of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. Prince Charming can be hard to find and is often hidden in Chemistry class or at a frat party. Also, kissing a girl in her sleep can be a federal offense. However, as I was watching the new Cinderella and thinking it was all too good to be true, I was reminded of one fateful day when I was 11, fat, and not at all Cinderella like.
I remember the best day of my middle school existence played out, like Shakespeare’s Macbeth or all 23 Godfathers, in a three-act structure. At 7:04 AM, the curtain opens to a rather unfortunate looking girl, playing the part of me. With dirty white flats, which often served as a canvas for my cursive practice, I step onto the school bus with girlish anticipation. My stop was the last out of three neighborhoods and now, there was a full house. The entrance was the most important part, for sitting first row were the eight grade male athletes,the critics for whom I mostly performed. My cat walk was very short; only about three bus seats deep, with lines of two boys on each side. Though surely the frizz atop my head came into view before I did, I never-the-less carried on in determined fashion and emerged from the steps into the view of the San Antonio’s Northside elite. Now enter in a dynamic character who we will call Hair, for surely that was the most spectacular thing about him. With the perfect amount of shine and a violent middle part, (see: Blonde Hottie from the Princess Diaries) he was my greatest muse during this walk. A not-so-subtle attempt to make eye contact with him and an awkward hand lingering on the brown, sticky seat he sat in were my best moves. I did my normal routine, then passed him, and was all too quickly out of his sight. I took my space in the back of the bus with the rest of the Untouchables. I was surrounded by people who I thought to be utterly unsophisticated, but I didn’t complain. If I sat with both of my legs curled beneath me, I could catch of glimpse of the back of Hair’s head.
If there were to be any antagonist in this story, it would be humidity and Phil Armsworth. Humidity because of the ballooning effect it had on my hair throughout the day and Phil because he was a boy whose life was lived in a perpetual state of snickering. Though I would like to think my neighborhood only produced men of the highest caliber, like Hair, Phil was a constant reminder at the back of the bus that someone on Grants Lake Drive had seriously ruined everything. Act two begins with Phil’s slimy head sticking out of the bus window at the end of the day, while I was trying to find our bus to get back home.
“Over here, stupid!” I heard his shrill voice coming from an abyss of yellow and began to run toward him, knowing I was the only student not yet boarded and kids were getting testy. In my plight towards our bus, I suddenly tripped over the gravel and harshly fell to the ground, the Tamagotchi clipped to my side fatally injured in the process and one of my white flats strewn to the side. This was, of course, all to Phil’s great amusement. I sat there, pathetic, lifeless, looking up toward a blue sky, hoping the cloud of gas emitted from these great big buses around me would take me from this cruel world. If I just breathed in…
“Wait!” This voice was octaves lower than Phil’s, and had a mature sound, almost silky-like. Silky like…really good Hair.
“Let me help you.” Before I knew it, the boy of my dreams was standing over me, a white flat in his hand. At the stroke of a very loud bus honk, Hair slid my flat onto my foot slowly. On the top of the flat, a quote was doodled so I could practice my capital L’s, “Love.”
The Third Act begins with the same girl entering the same bus, though her audience was a bit different. They were quiet, and my entrance was finally noticed. I would like to say that Hair and I had our happily ever after, but the fact was we went to our rightful spots, separated by the seventh graders between us and eventually torn apart by high school. However, I rode off at 3:15pm, alone in the back, in a carriage unglamorous as a pumpkin, thinking that wherever you are, the slightest fairytales are possible.