Never-Never Land was where Peter Pan and the Lost Boys lived. Two stars on the right and straight on until morning.
I find myself using this phrase often as a place that doesn’t exist. (Example: Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen has been living in Never-Never Land.)
But what if we could create our own, preferred Never-Never Land? What would it be like? Yes, this is a tricky question. The more you think about it, the more details you give it, the less it holds together.
Even so, when times are tough, it would be nice to go to Never-Never Land. Take me to yours.
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An aged Peter Pan! What a fine idea. I bet the mom’s name is Wendy. Perfect ending.
Home. My tears made it difficult to put the key into the lock and when I finally got in the door my legs gave out and I dropped to the floor. I pulled my legs to up to my chest and rested my head on my knees. It wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t fair. Yes, no one said it would be, but that didn’t make things any easier. Every second day like clockwork I had been visiting my Mother in the tiny little room that was now her home and she greeted me with a smile as she recognized me as someone she should know; but not today. I knew the confusion was complete now. What had started as a mist floating in and out was now a dense thick fog that suffocated all memories and dulled the colours of life to a single grey.
As I took in a deep breath and let it go I realized that someone else was softly crying. I was alone in the house, or I should have been and looked up to see an old man sitting next to me. I felt a sharp pain of shock and when my eyes met his, a soft calm come over me.
He was old, close to 90. His grey wispy hair was thin and still held a bit of the curl he must have had in his youth. The age spots that marked his face showed he had spent most of his life outdoors and although his mouth was firmly set there were laugh lines at the corners of his tear filled blue eyes.
He spoke quietly, “She is not in any pain.”
“Yes, I know, but life confuses her. There is no past, no future, only the immediate present and even that …”
He said, “What do you want for her?”
“To live out her life with dignity. To feel a purpose to each day.”
“Even if it meant she was not with you?”
“As long as she is happy.”
“I know a place she can go. Her memories will return and she can live the rest of her life on her own terms as long as she stays there.”
“Is that where you are from? Where is this place?”
“Yes, I come from there. Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning. It’s called Neverland.”
This is a clever idea. You might consider fleshing this out into a short story. Very nice.
Never-Never Land
She is pregnant. On purpose, though all the signs suggest that she has chosen exactly the wrong time to get rid of the IUD. He is off, out of state, and she is alone in a farm house heated with wood, canning tomatoes on a propane camp stove.
This is not normal life, she thinks, when events unfold on a schedule that everyone must keep. This is an empty time, a new land, never before encountered, where she has to decide on every single movement of her body. What next? Over and over, this question batters her. What are you going to do now?
She walks the half country mile to a tavern and buys a pack of Marlboros. All the patrons examine her; she is not one of them. She does not look back, but grabs the cigarettes and walks back to her house.
She knows she should not smoke, but goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch, let someone else try to find their way through this heavy fog of life with no one around to help give it meaning.
She knows he is seeing another woman on his trip. It’s her own fault for thinking that flighty, flirty man could be a father. She smokes one cigarette and puts the pack away. Her choices: make a necklace, sew something, take a walk in the dark, sit by the wood stove, try to sleep. It’s Never-Never Land at its worst.
She climbs in bed and discovers that she can rock her way to the second star on the right. At least for one night. Rocking, rocking.
Rhythmic Movement Disorder (RMD) has no cure, so please give generously when our representative comes hopping up to your door. Together, we can stop the annoyance.
Being a children’s story, the Never-Never Landians are simply thrown up in the air and not reduced to the consistency of tomato bisque (which would be excessively violent if properly described). I suppose however that machine gunning parachuting aviators might be a bit extreme, but I was seeking a certain level of “authenticity” in the work. If I were to have Pooh’s trip to Never-Never Land mirror Hitler’s invasion of Poland (and who doesn’t see Adolph Hitler when they think of Winnie the Pooh? At least in the Disney versions of the stories.) they couldn’t just walk in and shake hands all around. There had to be some basic conflict for the characters to resolve. World domination, in my experience, is just one of those things everyone seems to have an opinion about. Like contestants on “The Voice.”
For someone whose picture shows him flashing a peace sign, you are one violent hombre, albeit a creative one. Who would have thought to mix the two epic children’s stories of Peter Pan with Pooh. I am also very taken with the name, “Never-Never Landians.” What murky creative depths have you plumbed here! Flashes of Adams’ Hitch Hikers Guide.
(It appears that Michael Cohen can be blamed for everything.)
“the stripped nuisance” should have been “the striped nuisance.” I blame that on the Trump lawyer reference in the prompt.
Pooh’s Adventure in Never-Never Land
An early morning fog hung over the Hundred Acre Wood obscuring the tops of all but the shortest oaks. A cold drizzle, almost a mist, covered everything in the wood, but most importantly, Pooh.
“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today,” said the anthropomorphic stuffed bear.
“There, there,” said Piglet, handing his friend a map titled ‘Never-Never Land.’ “Let us march East until you do.”
Pooh had never been to Never-Never Land, but he had heard it was filled with honey trees, and he was getting wet where he was which made his stuffing smell like vomit. “Okay,” he said, trying to locate the morning sun through the fog.
Soon the two friends were off.
Pooh and Piglet encountered very little activity on their march until they were several miles past the eastern frontier of the Hundred Acre Wood. There they encountered small bands of NNL partisans armed with pitchforks and axes.
Pooh turned to piglet and asked him to scurry back to the Wood. “Ask of the Owl, if he’s there, if he might drop bombs from high in the air,” he instructed his friend.
Piglet had hardly been gone an hour when Owl appeared overhead. Instead of flying high however, he flew particularly low, dropping 500-pound incendiary bombs on the NNL fighters. Their pitchforks and axes proved ineffective against the bombs, so the two friends were soon on their way again.
It wasn’t too long however before Pooh heard a rumble much like thunder. Up in the sky, which had now partially cleared, Pooh and Piglet saw hundreds of birds dropping eggs, which Piglet surmised to be aeroplanes dropping bombs. The sight was soon made whimsically colorful as puffs of different colored smoke appeared among the bird-planes.
“Oh, flack,” said Pooh, realizing he had just stepped in a lump of feces of some unknown sort which was clinging tenaciously to one of his furry feet.
“Thistle down,” shouted an agitated Piglet pointing excitedly at the sky. Pooh looked up temporarily to see dozens of puffy white objects descending from the birds, but quickly went back to drawing his foot across a clean rock.
“Parachutes most likely,” said Owl, who had just returned from his own aerial mission.
“Oh bother,” muttered Pooh, cocking the lever on his Maschinengewehr 08 while momentarily ignoring his foul foot. Leaning the gun on fallen tree branch, Pooh began raking the parachutes with machine gun fire.
“I’m beginning to feel just a tiny a bit more like Pooh,” he said somewhat cheerfully after emptying the contents of three boxes of 7.92mm ammunition.
With the current crisis soon averted, the friends ventured further into Never-Never Land. After traveling several miles, the trio came across a concrete bunker. Owl, being stereotypically wise, recognized this as a fixed fortification and urged caution. Sure enough, just as the friends were looking for refuge, Tigger bounced into a clearing causing the concrete bunker to emit a barrage of small arms fire.
“What are you doing,” yelled Piglet.
“Woo-hoo, I’m doing what Tiggers do best,” the stripped nuisance replied as he bounced back into the underbrush away from the ferocious gun fire.
Pooh was almost ready to ask where he had gone when Tigger reemerged wearing an armored suit and carrying a steel pipe.
“I’m a Tigger Tank,” shouted the psychotic cat. And with that, he pointed the steel pipe at the concrete bunker and fired an 88mm armor-piercing shell into it at point-blank range. The concrete bunker naturally exploded, the way most war-story concrete bunkers do, flinging hundreds of Never-Never Landians high into the air.
A dozen more shots from the 88mm Tigger Tank, and thousands more flying Never-Never Landians and the way was clear.
That day Pooh and his friends walked the rest of the way across Never-Never Land. As the stars were coming out and the day was at a close, they encountered a sign that read “Now entering the Soviet Union. A nice place to visit.”
Piglet looked around and wondered aloud, “We’ve wandered much further today than we should, are you sure we can find our way back to the wood?”
“That’s stupid,” said Owl. “Nobody talks like that. Nobody.”
“Since we have come so far, and night is settling in, this is where we shall sleep,” said Pooh to his friends. “Home is always where our friends are.”
The friends agreed, and all were soon sound asleep, dreaming of the wonderful adventure they had enjoyed in Never-Never Land and the large number of Never-Never Landians they had released from their Earthly burdens.
The next morning a fog hung over the Russian frontier obscuring the tops of all but the shortest trees. A cold drizzle, almost a mist, covered everything, but most importantly, Pooh.
“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today,” said Pooh, fastidiously scraping his soiled foot across another small rock.
“There, there,” said Piglet, handing his friend a map that said, ‘AAA Guide to Russia’ “Let us march East until you do.”