THE FLOWER by MARK SHAPIRO

THE FLOWER
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Tina, and she grew up in a world of hate and anger and she always played alone for the other kids made fun of her for she was born with a bad leg and couldn’t walk good. Tina would play alone and had an imaginary friend she made up and talked to when she played. Tina would always talk to her friend and kids would laugh at her and poke fun at her disability. Tina would ask her made up friend that if one day she would truly be happy as other kids and her friend told her that if she did one good deed in life, she would, but never told her what that would be.

So as Tina approached six,,, she still was a loner and still talked with her friend she had made up and would sit alone during lunch and play alone and watch other kids play, yet always wondered what she had to do to be like other kids and what this made up friend had in mind. So Tina spent her life at that time being nice and considerate and ignoring all the laughing and making fun that kids will do knowing that maybe one day she will be just like them as her friend said she would. Tina would still smile and do well and not complain or be angry at those who would not do so to her, and would turn the other cheek so to speak.

Then one day, Tina met a woman in her nineties and stopped to talk with her.
This woman was in a wheel chair and had the same leg problem Tina had, and immediately, Tina and her struck up a friendship. Tina would see her now and then on her way home and Tina would always bring flowers to her. Tina told the woman of her imaginary friend and the woman said that she too had one when she grew up and that she always had that as her way of coping with hate and anger in the world.
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This went on for months as they became closer the woman told Tina that she too had been told that one day she would find happiness and that she never gave up,,, despite being in a wheel chair and her handicap. Each day when Tina got home, she would also place a flower in her house and that represented her and the woman she met and her imaginary friend. Tina never missed a day of placing a single flower, a rose in a crystal class at home by her bed.


Then one day, Tina and the woman were talking and were by the roadside.....and a car went speeding towards them and Tina saw it coming and the car skidded and Tina placed her body in front of the woman and the car slammed into Tina and the woman, and swerved away. As Tina and the woman lay sprawled on the street, Tina held a rose and reached over to the woman, out of her chair a few feet from her and Tina looked at her and the woman looked at Tina, and Tina placed the rose in her hand and held it and both smiled and suddenly a warm glow appeared and a sudden flash. When the flash came and went, there was no sign of Tina and the woman, just the chair and the rose.

To this day nobody knows where they are or what happened, but each month at the time of the day they got hit,, there are stories of Tina and her seen in the sky,,, with wings,,, venturing to places that only angels could see and that, in fact,Tina and the woman had found happiness in that life is never ending and that by turning your cheek against those who would put you down in life, for they will never experience ever lasting life,,,

and Tina and the woman finally found what their imagination told them all along,,, That love is within and to forgive and live for the moment and always reach for the stars with your feet on the ground and that the greatest successes in life came from the biggest mistakes.