"What are you doing up there, Pippa?" Mariah called up from where she was standing by the bathroom door.
Pippa peeked over the edge of the counter. "I'm checking out what's in the cabinets here," she said.
"How did you get up there?" Mariah called up to her.
"Right here," Pippa said, pointing to the drawers in the lower cabinet. "I used the drawers and their handles to climb up. It was easy."
Mariah looked at how Pippa had climbed up. "You little monkey!" she exclaimed. "I don't know if I can get up there from here."
Mariah is not very big, but she's bigger than Pippa. She had to pull out each drawer a bit to climb on.
"It turns out," Pippa said, when Mariah had reached the top of the counter, "I'm pretty good at climbing."
"I thought you must have sprouted wings," Mariah said. "Now, tell me, what are you doing in the cabinets?"
"Well," Pippa began, "I remembered how Emil said that sometimes you look in the drawers and cabinets when the old people are away. I thought this cabinet on the wall looked interesting."
Mariah looked up where Pippa was pointing. "That's the medicine cabinet," she said.
"Well," Pippa said again, "I decided to check out what's in it. I found lots of interesting bottles and things."
Pippa pointed to an assortment of bottles on the countertop. "I found all this!" she explained.
Mariah looked at all the things Pippa had pulled out of the cabinet. "You know," she said, "these things are mostly medicines."
"Yes!" Pippa agreed. "They're interesting! Smell this!" Pippa took the cap off of a bottle of blue liquid. "This stuff smells yummy!"
Mariah took a sniff of what was in the bottle. "Yes," she said. "It does smell yummy, but we have to be very careful with these things."
"I know!" Pippa said. "They don't belong to us! I'm going to put them all back." She put the cap back on the bottle.
"It isn't just that," Mariah said. "We shouldn't mess with things that don't belong to us, but some of these things could make a child very sick. Children should not take things from the medicine cabinet, and especially they shouldn't eat or drink any of it. Not only that, but this stuff is mouthwash. People rinse their mouths with it after they brush their teeth, and then they spit it out. You're not supposed to drink it!"
"I didn't think about eating or drinking any of it," Pippa said. "Not even to pretend to!"
"Well," agreed Mariah, as the two dolls sat down on the edge of the counter, "we're dolls, so pretending to eat medicines wouldn't hurt us, except just make us pretend to be sick, but we have to set a good example for the children who read our stories."
"Why do they have these things," Pippa wanted to know, "if they can make them sick?"
"It all depends on what it's for," Mariah said, as Pippa picked up one of the bottles,"but grownup humans know to read the labels. If it says to take two every four hours, for a headache or a tummy ache, that's what they do. If it says not to take it if you're taking some other kind of medicine, they don't."
"Many children know how to read directions," Pippa said, holding out the bottle. "They would know how many pills to take," she added, as Mariah took the bottle from her.
"That's true," agreed Mariah, "but human children have smaller bodies than human grownups. What is safe for a grownup to take might not be safe for a child. Besides, small children might have trouble reading this. The print is very tiny!"
"Children have smaller bodies, like mine?" Pippa asked.
"Not that small," Mariah said. "Even human babies are bigger than you are, Pippa."
Just then, both dolls heard something.
"It's the garage door!" Mariah exclaimed. "The Writer and her husband are back!"
"What do we do?" whispered Pippa.
"Let's just hurry and put everything back where it was," Mariah said.
The dolls worked quickly. Pippa climbed up to where she could reach the medicine cabinet. Mariah handed the bottles up to her, and she put each one away.
Then they climbed down and closed the drawers, just as they heard the door to the house open.
They ran to The Writer's workroom and got back to their places on the windowsill, where they had been when the old people left to go out.
After she put away her hat and coat, The Writer went upstairs and into the bathroom to comb her hair. "Sweetie?" she called to her husband. "Did you take my mouthwash out and leave it on the counter?"
She was sure she had put it away before they left. Hmmmm....sometimes it seemed as if they weren't alone in the house, she thought, as she put the mouthwash away where it belonged. They often found things out of place when they had been out or when they got up in the morning.
The Writer went to the workroom to check on the dolls. Everyone was right where she had left them, but Mariah and Pippa seemed to be looking at the ceiling.
"I wonder what they think about all day," she said to herself as she slowly closed the door to the workroom.
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
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Copyright © 2020, 2023 by Peggy Stuart
Great story! I love the pictures and the Little Happy Kidz are just perfect in this smaller kid interpretation!
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