Flipping It

Hey everyone!

Wow, it's been so busy these last two weeks as we prepare to move back home! Our last holiday, a weekend trip to Berlin, was fun but now there's only 5 days left to pack and prepare everything. Nonetheless, I'm trying my best to catch up with some writing assignments. Here's the Thursday Quick Write assignment from 6/21. Author Miriam Forster posed a fun idea to flip a favorite fairy tale. Let's see if you can guess which one I've chosen!

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There once lived two twin brothers named Jonas and Maxi. Jonas and Maxi lived with their mother and their stepfather in Morristown, NJ, a quiet upper middle class town about an hour by train outside of New York City. Even though the boys lived so close to the city, they had never been there. They were only eight years old and they had no desire to leave the safety and familiarity of Morristown where they could ride their bikes in the street and play football with their friends. Plus, the boys' mother was a corporate lawyer in the city and she just seemed so miserable and tired to the boys when she got home from a long day's work that the boys vowed never to go there.

Their stepfather was a mean and corrupt investment banker who their mother married shortly after their father died serving the country overseas. Although he also worked long days in the city, he dreaded coming home to Jonas and Maxi, who he thought were noisy, messy and annoying. To make matters worse, he was from New York and the boys knew that he hated them. This made them want to go to the city even less.

One day, Jonas and Maxi were setting up a fort in the dining room right next to the tall, glass china cabinet. Jonas, who was a shade sillier than Maxi, was in mid-flail after pretending to be shot on enemy lines when he tripped on the corner of the fort and flew backwards into the china cabinet. The top two shelves of white and pink flowered plates came tumbling down onto the hard pine floor. At that moment, their stepfather came in from work.

"JONAS AND MAXI!!!!!! What have you done?!," he screamed as his face darkened.

"It was an accident!," Maxi cried. "Jonas didn't mean to!"

"I've had enough of you boys," said the stepfather. "Go get your shoes on, we're going for a ride."

Jonas and Maxi ran to their room and got their things. "I don't know what he's up to, but I don't trust this guy. Maxi, bring your coin collection. I don't want that dummy to try and steal it while we're gone. I'll meet you outside," Jonas said.

After the stepfather threw them in the car, he drove and drove and drove. The boys did not recognize anything around them. They were far away from Morristown for sure. Suddenly, they entered a large, dark tunnel. When they came out the other side, the boys' hearts sank. A large sign read "Welcome to New York City".

At this point, Jonas nudged Maxi and mouthed, "Crack open the window. Drop a coin out of the window at every block." Maxi did what his brother asked. The stepfather was so engaged in his bluetooth phone conversation that he didn't notice what the boys were doing. A few minutes later, their father stopped driving.

"Why don't you boys go into that store and see if you can find me today's New York Times. I'll wait out here. I'm waiting for someone from work to call me back," the stepfather said. The boys knew deep down inside that he would leave them but they went anyway, just to get away from him. Sure enough, when they walked outside with the paper, their stepfather was gone.

Jonas and Maxi were nervous. They looked around and all they could see were buildings, people and more buildings that were so tall they touched the sky.

"Let's go try and find my coins. At least then maybe we could get back to the tunnel," Maxi said.

But the boys soon learned that the streets of New York have small change scattered everywhere. Plus, the streets were pretty dirty and they weren't about to start crawling on their hands and knees to try and find the small coins.

"We're never going to get home!", Jonas wailed.