TumbleDweeeb

The Tallest of Talls: A Story of Aydee the Grand
By: Emmitt Owens
(Index #02172026)

In the town of Wee-Wumble, on Shrinkle-Down Street,
Lived a woman named Aydee with remarkably big feet.
Not big in a bad way — oh no, not at all!
Her feet were just proof that she was built very tall.

Her laugh was like thunder, her heart like a sun,
Her ideas were mountains, and her spirit — oh, fun!
She could see past the treetops! She could reach past the clouds!
She was Aydee the Grand, and she stood out in crowds.

But the men of Wee-Wumble, they sputtered and frowned.
They said, “Aydee, dear Aydee, you must come back down.”
First came Gerald McSmall with his clipboard and rules.
He handed her Shrinking Shoes — tiny, tight tools.

“You’re too loud,” Gerald muttered, “too bright and too wide.
A woman your size should step carefully aside.”
And so — oh, oh, oh — Aydee started to shrink.
She shrunk half an inch, maybe more, do you think?

She folded her laugh into something quite small.
She tippy-toe walked so she wouldn’t seem tall.

Then came Barnaby Bluster with slick-parted hair,
Who said, “Aydee, your dreams take up too much air.”
He handed her Dimmer Drops — one, two, and three —
“Shine less,” Barnaby whispered, “so I can shine, see?”

And so Aydee dimmed. And she shrunk some more still.
She was down to half-Aydee — her spark nearly nil.
Her mountains of ideas? Flattened to hills.
Her thunderous laugh? Traded in for soft trills.

Then came Timothy Tight with a tape measure long,
Who measured her feelings and said they were wrong.
“Too much,” Timothy tutted, “too here and too there.
You ought to take up just a small bit of air.”

Shrink, shrink, shrink, SHRINK —
she was shrinking, oh my!
She could no longer see the tops of trees, let alone sky.
She had become Aydee-the-Quite-Rather-Small,
Barely a shadow of Grand Aydee at all.

Then one rainy Tuesday on Springle-Top Road,
She bumped into someone while carrying her load —
A man with kind eyes and laugh lines worn deep,
Whose pockets held wonder and stories to keep.

His name was just Eeoh. No title. No fuss.
He said, “Aydee, good gracious, what’s happened to us?
You’re walking all crumpled, all folded and thin —
But I saw something enormous just under your skin.”
“Enormous?” said Aydee. “Oh, surely you’re wrong.
I’m not very much. I have not been for long.”
But Eeoh just smiled and pulled out a chair.
“Tell me,” he said,
“all your too-much — I want all of it there.”

So Aydee — small, cautious, unsure of herself —
took one single story she’d left on a shelf.
She whispered it first. Eeoh leaned himself in.
Then her voice found its thunder and let the tale spin!
And something quite wondrous and wild came to pass —
Aydee grew an inch taller, right there on the grass.
She told him her dreams — all the big ones, the grand!
And Eeoh just nodded and held her big hand.
She told him the mountains she wanted to climb,
The oceans of laughter, the rhythms and rhyme!
Two inches. Then four. Then a foot. Then a mile!
Aydee was growing with every new smile.
Not because Eeoh had made her feel tall —
But because in his presence, she remembered it all.

She grew past the rooftops of Shrinkle-Down Street!
She grew past the clouds and the birds in their fleet!
Her laugh rolled like thunder all over the land,
Her heart beat like drums, and she rose — she stood GRAND!
The tallest of talls! The most Aydee of all!
No longer the woman who answered the call
To fold herself small for a man with a frown —
She was AYDEE THE GRAND,
and she’d never shrink down.

Eeoh looked up from the ground far below,
His eyes bright with wonder, his whole face aglow.
“I knew it!” he hollered, “I knew what was there!”
And she laughed so tremendously — rearranging the air.
She reached down her hand and she lifted him high,
And together they lived at the level of sky.

Not him making her big. Not her making him tall.
Just two people choosing to give it their all.

So if ever you find yourself shrinking, my dear,
From a Barnaby, Gerald, or Timothy Fear —
Remember that Aydee was always that tall.
She just needed someone
who could see it —
that’s all.

The End.
(Or rather — the beginning of something quite Grand.)