The Princess and the Pea – By Anna
As a five-year-old, I never fully thought about the things that could result from my decisions. At that age, we’re invincible and everything is fixed with some Neosporin and a band aid. We especially like to do things that we hear older kids talking about. One night at dinner, my older brother Andy was talking about a “funny” thing that happened to his friend. After this night, I learned that I should still do things that I want to, but to just think about it a little more carefully.
I can’t quite remember what we had for dinner, but the one thing that I do remember very well is the side dish–peas. The sight of the peas immediately reminded Andy of the time his friend stuck a pea in almost every hole in his face. I looked down at my peas, wondering why I had never thought of this before. When my family chuckled at this story, I picked up a pea from the pile resting on my plate. I slowly tilted my head to one side, inching the pea closer and closer to my ear. My mom noticed me attempting to reenact my brother’s story and quickly pulled my hand away and told me not to do that. Disappointed, I put the pea back onto the pile and continued listening to my brother’s story. “Then he put one up his nose…” he continued. Now more determined then ever, I quickly picked up another pea and crammed it into my right nostril. Satisfied that nobody noticed me do it this time, I quietly took a few bites of food. When I decided that I wanted it out, I found out that it was stuck. I tried to grip the pea and pull it out. But that only sent it higher up into my nose.
Terrified, I just quietly sat there for a moment, unsure of what to do. I didn’t want to tell my mom after she had already told me not to put the pea in my ear. Having no other options, I started crying. Between the sobs and few words I managed to get out, my family had a very hard time trying to figure out what was wrong with me. When I finally managed to say, “There’s a pea in my nose,” they just started laughing. My parents and siblings did the best they could to free the green ball of doom from my nose. When nothing worked, they had no other choice but to take me to the emergency room.
The nurse sat me down on the examination table and asked me if it was okay for her to use an “instrument” to get the pea out of my nose. To a five-year-old, an instrument is something that produces music, like a guitar of a piano. When the nurse came back, however, she did not have a trumpet or tambourine. She was holding a big, long, set of tweezers that to me looked like it would not even fit in my nose. So I began screaming. After all my fighting, I was surprised when they brought me a cup of my favorite juice a few minutes later. I took a sip of my apple juice and immediately noticed the disgusting and bitter taste. “It tastes funny,” I began to say, but the nurse, completely annoyed with me just yelled at me to drink it. The juice was bitter because they had spiked it with some sort of drug to make me fall asleep. This way they could simply remove the pea while I was passed out and not have to worry about me kicking and screaming. I don’t know how long I was asleep for, but I woke up in a chair sitting in the waiting room. My dad was sitting next to me reading a magazine. I was confused as to what had even happened. All I knew was that I had a pea stuck in my nose, I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was out.
That was good enough for me because my dad took me to McDonalds on the way home.
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