A Fairy Tale Road Trip. Oh, Indulge Me, Will Ya'?

Once upon a time there was a little girl with eyes wide blooms of petunia.

One day this little girl got into a car, an SUV if you must know, and drove drove drove down the coast of California, the theme song of D-D-D-D-D-Dora lilting out the open window like so many Willie Nelson tunes, weaving through San Luis Obispo and on into Del Mar, a tiny hamlet of sand and money by the sea.

The little girl soon realized that being holed up in hotels gave her even more power over her parents, so afraid were they of ruining other travelers' vacations with the gleeful joy of a toddler.

Wheeeeee! she screamed down the hallway at dawn, and was promptly given a cookie for her efforts. (At this rate, in fourteen years you just might see me handing Zoey the keys to a brand new Hummer on a very special Petunia Faced episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen. Kingston Rossdale is rumored to perform.)

On Thursday the little girl and her family arrived in Santa Monica for a wedding. At the rehearsal dinner, she was given her flower girl basket to practice and she quickly took the opportunity to wander through the restaurant tables collecting cash. Dollars flowed like so much wine and somewhere in the Greek Isles the honeymooners are now having a drink courtesy of the little girl and her panhandling Petunia Faced eyes.

Oh, sure, it was not all bills tucked into the tops of bikinis. There were moments of self-doubt. Moments when Mommy had to give the girl a pep talk. You can do this, she said, knowing all along that the best flower girls freeze. The best flower girls don't part with the petals. Instead, the best flower girls shuffle down the aisle, only realizing on the return trip that all eyes are on them. Then and only then the best flower girls stop mid-aisle and face the photographer smiling, tossing petals high overhead, spinning around and around on tippy toed Target glittery slippers like a cheap jewelry box ballerina. In this manner, the little girl was the best flower girl ever.

After the ceremony, emboldened by love, the little girl went out to find her own Prince Charming.

She looked all around but did not find her one true love. When suddenly!

The little girl looked up! And there it was! Her Prince Charming, his Royal Highness the Ferris Wheel, handsomest truss system in all of Carnie-landia.

Alas, the little girl was too small. You must be this tall to ride the ferris wheel, said a sign at the edge of the ride. And the little girl fell short. This fairy tale may well have ended here with a poisoned apple and a tantrum had the seldom-known eighth dwarf not appeared, a carnie named Bored. He allowed the little girl to ride the ferris wheel sandwiched between her parents, a bastion of safety was he.

And ride she did. Over and over and over. The little girl was enrapt.

And oh so happy.

Later, much later, the little girl discovered that there is no such thing as ONE true love when she met the older girls, a gaggle of cousins who fed her steak (the same steak she would not eat with her mother) and blew her bubbles. She was in love many times over, girl crushes galore. Soon the little girl was acting like a pre-teen and would have nothing to do with her parents. She scoffed and tch'ed and no'ed her mother, never once letting her cut in to dance with her.

The next day, clearly hungover from too many bubbles, her feet aching from tripping the light fantastic, the little girl allowed her parents to take her to the Santa Monica Pier where she got to ride yet another ferris wheel. This one had gondola seats and thus did not give the same sense of vertigo in rolling over the top. The little girl was not impressed.

Hmph.

And so it was that the girl who had begun the trip as little had grown just ever so much. A tch here, a ferris wheel there, as a mermaid swimming in pools, a flower girl whose feet never once touched the sand. The girl with the eyes wide blooms of petunia had blossomed on a trip by tossing rose petals high overhead on a ribbon of road studded by Bells of Taco and Big Dels Supreme.

And then we all lived Happily Ever After.

The End.