The Doll's Storybook

Friday, December 13, 2019

Emil's Big Problem

Emil woke when his alarm started to shake the bed. He knew it was time to get up. He felt for his glasses, which he had left in the charger the night before. Uh-oh! The charger was empty!

"Now what?" he thought. He couldn't hear without his glasses, because his special hearing aids were in them, and he couldn't see enough to get out of bed without them, either.

Emil knew no one would have taken his glasses. There was no one in the house who would do something mean. He thought and thought about what might have happened. Something must have knocked them out of the charger and onto the floor. "Marmalade!" he thought suddenly.

Cats walk around on tables sometimes. They are careful about where they step, but maybe Marmalade shook the table jumping on or off. They must be on the floor. Emil was afraid to get out of bed when he couldn't see.
"Billy!" Emil called to Billy with his mind. "Billy, I have a problem."
Billy shares the room with Emil. "I'm here, Emil," Billy said. Emil felt a hand on his leg and the mattress move a little bit.

"My special glasses are not in the charger," Emil told Billy. "I think they might have fallen onto the floor."
"I'll look," Billy said, and Emil felt the mattress move again as Billy got down on the floor.

Billy didn't see anything right under the table, but when he looked under the bed, there were Emil's glasses. "Here they are," he said, pulling them out.

Then Billy reached up and put the glasses into Emil's hands.

Emil put his glasses on. Then his face fell. "Oh, no!" he said. "I can't hear anything. I guess the hearing aids didn't charge enough."

"What should we do?" Billy asked.
Emil thought. "Well," he said, "I could put the glasses back into the charger and leave them, but then I won't be able to hear or see. That will take several hours."

Billy nodded. That made sense. "Can you use your glasses the way they are?" he asked. "You could try charging them again tonight, but at least you would be able to see until time for bed again."

Emil thought. That sounded like a good plan. Well, not good, really, but the better choice. "Will you help me today, Billy?" He asked. "There are some things I won't be able to do without hearing," he said.
"I'll help," Billy agreed. "I'm sure the girls will help, too. You just need to tell us what you need to have help with."

"Thanks," Emil said. "I'm glad we can hear each other's voices in our heads. Mandy told me she thinks people used to be able to hear each other in their heads the way we do, but they started being able to make their lips and tongues move, and started to have voice boxes to make sound, so they started talking, and then they forgot how to listen to each other."

"Many people who can't hear have to use sign language to talk," Emil said. "They make different motions with their hands rather than to say words. I can't do that very well, because my wrists don't bend and my fingers don't move much."

"Yes, we all have that problem," Billy pointed out.

It was going to be a long day!

Billy held on to Emil when they walked to school and back, so he could move Emil to the side when a bicycle came by. He would say, "Bicycle" to Emil each time that happened. He stayed next to him on the playground, to get Emil out of the way if there was anything dangerous for someone who couldn't hear.

Emil could hear the teacher's voice in his head, because the teacher is a doll, too, but when the class watched a video, he couldn't hear it. The teacher adjusted the TV so there were words across the bottom of the screen that told what was being said. The teacher put a chair for Emil up at the front of the class, so he could see the words clearly.

After school, it was Emil's turn to help with the laundry. Charlotte offered to do it for him, because he couldn't hear the dryer buzzer go off, but he said it was his job and asked her to let him know when she heard it. "I want to be treated just like everyone else," Emil told her.

All day long, Emil couldn't hear any sounds. There was no music for Emil, no matter how close to the speakers he got. He could feel the music through the chair he was standing on, but it wasn't the same.

He didn't notice when an airplane flew over the house. He didn't hear the train whistle blow. He didn't hear Pierre and Freckles barking at people walking their dogs, although he could hear them talking about it in their heads.
"There's that Mrs. Jones with Fritzi," Pierre said.

At the end of the day, Emil found Marmalade. He asked the cat to please not walk on the table next to the bed at night, and Marmalade agreed.

Emil plugged in his glasses.

Then he went to sleep.

When his shaking mattress woke Emil up the next morning, he reached for his glasses.

They were in the charger! He put them on.

Then Emil waited a moment. He listened. Yes! He could hear the train on the tracks a mile away. He heard the furnace come on in the house. He heard the microwave beep in the kitchen. He heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. He heard the shower running. Then he heard a small crash and a little scream that puzzled him.

Then he heard Veronika's voice in his head, "That's OK," she said. "I'll pick them up."

"Veronika's hairpins!" Emil thought to himself.
Then he thought about how lucky he was that his special glasses could help him see and hear, so he knew what was going on in the house. He lay back on the pillows and smiled to himself.

It was good to feel like a normal kid again.

Cast--
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
Marmalade: Purrrfect Cats from KTL

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Do you have questions or comments for us? Would you like to order an autographed copy of one of our books? You can email us at thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

Note: No dolls were harmed during production of this blog. All dolls shown are Götz Happy Kidz, Classic Kidz or Little Kidz. If you like these stories and are willing, please make a donation of any amount to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or any organization that supports pediatric cancer research and treatment. We are not affiliated with St. Jude in any way other than these donations.

"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.

Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook are available from BookBaby and other booksellers worldwide, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Author's page on Amazon.

Royalties (net proceeds) go to support pediatric cancer research and treatment. If you don't get free shipping elsewhere, buy from Book Baby. Half of the price goes to charity (specific information available upon request). Autographed copies of all three books are available from the author. (Multiple books to the same address have a discount on shipping.) To inquire, email thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

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Friday, December 6, 2019

A Colorful Story

Veronika came into the living room.

She found the other dolls all sitting on the back of the couch.

Billy was reading a book about Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. He was wearing a red shirt.

Charlotte was reading a book about a musician named Mozart. She was wearing an orange sweater.

Mariah was reading what she had written in her journal a year ago. She had a yellow cardigan on.

Mandy was knitting a sock for The Writer for Christmas. She was dressed in green.

Emil was reading a book about dogs, because dogs are one of his favorite kinds of animal. The T-shirt he was wearing was blue.

Jolena was looking at a cookbook to decide what to fix for supper, because she likes to cook almost as much as she likes to do flips in the air on her skis. She was wearing a violet cardigan.

"All of you look just like a rainbow!" Veronika exclaimed. "You're all sitting in a row," she pointed out, "in the same order as the colors you're wearing appear in a rainbow, and you're up high, like a rainbow!"

"Billy," Veronika said, "you are wearing red."

"Charlotte is wearing orange," Veronika went on.

"Mariah is wearing yellow," she said.

"Mandy, you're next, and you're wearing green," Veronika continued.

"Then Emil has a blue shirt on," she told them.

"Jolena is at the end," Veronika said finally, "She's wearing violet, just like the last color in a rainbow."

"There's a real rainbow outside," Veronika told them. "Come and look! It's pretty!"

The dolls went and looked out the window. They saw something that looked like this.

The rainbow was red on the top. Then came the other colors: orange, yellow, green, blue and finally violet.

The dolls came back to the couch and sat down again. They all sat in the same order as the colors in the rainbow. Veronika sat at the end and admired them.
"What makes a rainbow?" Billy asked, looking at Mandy, because he was sure she was the right doll to ask.

"Well," Mandy began, "the light from the sun has all of these colors in it, but they are all mixed together, so most of the time we just see the sunlight, but when there are drops of water in the air and the sun is out at the same time, sometimes the light from the sun hits each drop of water."

"When the light goes through the water, it divides all the colors in the sunlight into separate colors," Mandy explained.

"I read about a rainbow in a story once," Emil said. "A man named Noah took all kinds of animals into a big boat, because God told him there was going to be a flood. He had two of each kind of animal," he continued.

"After the flood, Noah saw a rainbow," Emil said.
"That story is in the Bible," Veronika said. "It's one of my favorites."

"Yes," Charlotte agreed. "The story of Noah and his boat is in the Torah."

"That story is in the Qur'an, too," Mariah said. (She said the name of the book like kuh-RAN.) "It's an interesting story, isn't it?"

"If I'd been on Noah's boat," Emil pointed out, "I would have been a very important person. I could have told Noah what each animal wanted him to know."

"You don't need to be on Noah's boat to be an important person," Jolena pointed out. "You're important right here, with us."

All the other dolls agreed with Jolena.
"You're very important to us," Veronika agreed, "and not just because you can talk to animals."
"You know," said Mariah, thoughtfully, "We're sort of like a rainbow. We're all different, but together we make something bigger."

"We should write down our stories in a book." She said. "Let's get The Writer to help!"

So they did!

Cast--
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia