Short Folk #29 Millionaires

Note: Still running out of steam and now on a juice cleanse, so I'm grumpy and running out of steam. One more day after today! Haven't written it yet, but I'm semi-excited for this idea.

Short Folk #29: Millionaires

When I was a kid I spent most of my time at my friend John's house. It was about a mile away from my house and there were patches of white flowers, dandelions I think, along the road all the way to his house. I'm the type of person who is always picking things up and absentmindedly taking them apart. Not out of any malice, but still. I would take apart dandelions the whole way to his house. First the white petals, methodically, never more than one at a time. I don't know, that's just the way I would do it. Then the yellow center. You can pick that off like a bottle-cap and get to the real inside of the flower around the stem. There's this fuzziness there on the real inside, you'd know what I was talking about if you ever saw it. Little tendrils of white fuzz that feel to your fingertips like the softest thing on earth. I was fascinated by this stuff. I thought it was the most secret substance. I think I've probably taken apart a thousand dandelions just to feel it between my fingers

I thought too, that I could make millions off of it. Back when I was a kid. I thought about all the geese that die to make down pillows, and how much people in this world value softness. And here I was, a curious boy who had found the softest substance on earth in the heart of a dandelion. I wondered if anyone else out there knew about what you could find when you took off the yellow bottle-cap of a dandelion. I decided to trust John with my secret. We were at his house playing home run derby with tennis balls, hitting the balls high into his neighbors yard. He hit a home run and it landed next to a random dandelion in the neighbor's grass. I picked it and brought it to him with the ball. "Timeout" I said, and then I showed him the dandelion. I peeled off the petals. I twisted off the piece above the fuzz. I showed it to him and made him feel the softness between his fingers, on his face.

In my child's mind I imagined fields and fields of dandelions and I was there too, in overalls, rubbing sweat off my face with a forearm. My imagined self, grown all the way to 6'4, muscular, shining, perfect. John was there, looking confident like he always looked, some beauty queen on his arm. It was a boy's dream of the perfect life. I looked at John holding the dandelion in his hand and it all seemed possible. "We can do this John. You and me, millionaires".