Four-Eyes and the Little Princess
A Tale of Yestermorrow, Inspired by Shania Twain’s “Forever and For Always”
A bunch of us kids were seated at a long table for our 3rd grade graduation party. I, Robbie (I went by Robb but spelled it with two Bs so people would know that the two-syllable version of my name was Robbie, not Robert), got up from the table and walked around to the other side of it, to where Charlotte was.
She had turned the color of tomato paste, and had buried her face in her left elbow and was holding her right hand up, palm out, in a pleading gesture. The other kids had been teasing her, calling her a four-eyed spider (because of the book Charlotte’s Web, which we had read in class, and because she wore thick glasses).
I put my right arm around Charlotte and gave her a reassuring hug. She lifted her head and peeked over the top of her elbow to see who it was that had come to stand beside her. The shy smile she gave me repaid me many times over for my efforts.
I knew that half of the kids had joined in the teasing only because the first half had started it, and I also knew that, for most of them, there was no malice behind the teasing—in fact, for many of them, it was nothing other than an awkward display of affection for Charlotte, who was probably the nicest kid in our class, but painfully shy when made the center of attention.
When she noticed there were tears on her glasses, Charlotte chuckled embarassedly, and tried to wipe them off with the cuff of her blouse, but only succeeded in smudging them. I gently took them from her, got out my handkerchief, and—
All of the kids suddenly gasped, as if they had just seen the eighth wonder of the world. The boys were struck speechless; the instigators of the teasing—whose motives had not been without malice—turned green as the sepal of a tomato. Not literally, of course, but they crossed their arms and glared at Charlotte when they saw how beautiful she was.
We had never before seen Charlotte without her glasses. Her spectacles had magnified her eyes so much that all we saw were those seemingly outsized peepers of hers. Her lips, nose, hair, ears, chin, cheeks had never really registered before. We knew her eyes were blue-gray, but had never paid attention to her strawberry-blonde hair, dimples, barely-perceptible freckles, or anything else.
I echoed the awed gasps of the boys, but was angered by the exasperated gasps of the jealous girls, who seemed to think that Charlotte’s striking beauty was an unfair trick played on them. Some of the prettier girls had formed an informal club, but now considered Charlotte an upstart and an intruder and had no intention of allowing her into their clique. They resumed the chant of “Four-eyed Spider!” A few others took it up at first, but when their neighbors gave them a dirty look and scooted their chairs away from them, they abruptly stopped. The pretty girls looked around, angered that their lead was not being followed. When they saw the daggers being defiantly shot at them, they gradually left off the teasing, crossed their arms, and pouted.
I finished cleaning Charlotte’s glasses, and started to hand them back to her. I then thought better of it, and put them in my shirt pocket for safekeeping. She would need them later, but for now I wanted everyone to remember just how beautiful she was.
I smiled down at her and gave her another squeeze with my right arm around her shoulders. One of the “pretty” girls sneered at me and sarcastically said, “So Robbie is her knight in shining armor, now, huh?”
Our teacher, along with some of the parents, came into the room to see what was going on. Everyone was looking at me now, to see what my reaction to this taunt was going to be.
“If I’m Charlotte’s knight in shining armor,” I said, “That means she’s my little princess.”
Charlotte looked up at me and smiled. And it wasn’t just a shy smile this time. Nor was it a half-smile, or a fleeting smile. It was an uninhibited, whole-hearted, sparkling, bright-eyed smile.
That was the first day of our lives together.