Once upon a time, two young girls found themselves in a land far far away, called Bosnia. This mysterious land was foreign and unfamiliar, but that is not what disturbed them. Neither were they very upset by the rubble around them, the constant threat of land mines or the bullet holes in the side of their apartment building, for these girls knew that there had been a war recently in the land called Bosnia, and that these were all expected side effects. No, what disturbed the two small girls in the far away land was that they had no friends.
Not speaking the language of the local people of this mysterious foreign land the two girls had no choice but to be each other’s friends. This proved difficult because the two girls were sisters, and we all know that sisters are not meant to be friends, right? Wrong! When each other is all you have each other start to seem pretty damn great. But that never lasts very long.
These two girls, more specifically my elder sister and myself, took to collecting little plastic toys from the centre of Kinder Bueno chocolate eggs. I never actually ate the chocolate so my sister always got double, in hind sight that might be why we were such good friends at the time. In any event, these toys in the centre of the chocolates were our only source of entertainment. We collected every toy imaginable and created our own toy world where they were all somehow connected. The lead characters of our made up toy land were two elephants, because naturally if my cool older sister chose an elephant I wanted an elephant too. The thing is, we had absolutely no say in what we found in the centre of the chocolate, as one would imagine, so we had quite a spread. Everything from our two staring elephants to rolled up pieces of paper with secret messages and some monkeys and aliens I believe. We didn’t mind; all the toys in our toy world were happy.
Every now and then the washing machine in our small apartment would rebel. The door would burst open and all of the almost clean clothes would be spat out along with all of the almost dirty water that they were soaking in. The washing machine was in a little room of it’s own so when this happened that sacred room became a magical flooded kingdom. It was our favourite time. We would grab our little plastic elephants (I think mine was named Ellie because I was so astoundingly original back then) and run into the room before my mother could attempt to mop up the mess. We were so eager to abuse this rare treat that we would even offer to clean up for her if she would just give us some time in there with our toys. I should say at this point that I was already about 8 years old and my sister was pushing 11 I believe. Not the height of maturity but old enough to be expected to have a life beyond little plastic toys…
One day, in such a magical adventure, the water was a little higher than usual so instead of splashing around in exuberant folly our elephants actually began to drown a little bit. This was about when my ‘cool older’ sister decided that her elephant was magical. That’s right. HER elephant got to ride on a magic carpet and cast spells and use magic and never drown and her elephant made my elephant it’s bitch. My elephant was the dumb little shit that had to help her dismount from her magic carpet or clean up if she messed up a spell or something equally unglamorous and unexciting. I then decided that I wanted my elephant to be magical too, so we could be equal once more and be magical together. My sister’s elephant, that autocratic little shit, deemed that unacceptable. I did not fully understand that my sister’s elephant was really just a puppet in her cruel selfish attempt to assert her authority over me, probably fearing that I was growing cooler and more imaginative than her and that she had to squash it before it started (mighty foreshadowing I might add, she never did squash the fact that I AM in fact cooler than her). Not realising this at the time however I appealed to my older sister to please have her elephant allow my elephant to have magic powers. No such luck. Eventually the game lost it’s joy and when the washing machine exploded we just let my mum clean it up. I think I’ve had a subliminal resentment for little plastic elephants ever since.
After the phase of the magical autocratic elephant and its subjects my sister and I ventured out into the world and actually made some real, life sized, flesh and blood friends. But that is a story for another day.
