Alice and the Wee Blue-Eyed Monster

by Steven Jon Halasz 

Alice had just finished her homework. The sun was setting as she looked out the window of her room onto the broad grassy lawn of her family's backyard. Everything was quiet and peaceful, just as it should be. But just then she noticed a pair of flashing blue lights. “What on earth?” she asked herself. Her mind raced through all the reasonable explanations she could think of before deciding that the explanation must be something quite unreasonable. She made up her mind to investigate.

Alice went to the back door of her family's house and peeked out. The flashing lights were still there. She studied them closely. They were small and a good distance away, but she could just make out that they belonged to some kind of tiny creature. “How odd,” she thought. “What is that doing in our yard?”

Slowly and carefully she crept out of the house and along some bushes, hoping the creature wouldn't notice her, but as she got close, suddenly it made a sound. “Boo!” it said.

But it was such a tiny little sound that Alice laughed. This seemed to annoy the creature, and it said again, this time in a slightly louder voice, “Boo!”

Alice couldn't help herself. It was such a funny sort of “boo” that it made her laugh even louder. “Is that supposed to be scary?” she asked the thing.

The creature sighed. “Yes,” it said. “Aren't you scared?”

“No,” said Alice. “I'm sorry but I'm really not. What are you, anyway? I'm sure I've never seen anything like you.”

“I'm a wee blue-eyed monster!” it said with its tiny voice.

“Why are you trying to scare people?” asked Alice.

“It's what monsters do,” replied the creature. “We scare people.”

“Well,” said Alice, “I must say you're not very good at it.”

“I know,” said the wee blue-eyed monster. “All the other monsters make fun of me. They sent me away and told me not to come back until I could scare someone.”

Alice was sympathetic. “That's sad,” she said, then added, “But who says you have to scare people? Is it a law?”

“No,” replied the monster, “but what else could I do? That's all that monsters are good for.”

“Is it?” asked Alice. “What if there were some other way to be?”

“Like what?” asked the monster.

Alice thought for a moment, then remembered a word her parents had used. “You could try being agreeable,” she said.

“Agreeable?” wondered the wee blue-eyed monster. “What is that?”

Alice wasn't sure she knew the exact meaning of the word, but it seemed to be made up of two smaller words that she did know--agree, which means to have the same opinion of something as someone else, and able, which means you can do something.

“It means,” explained Alice, “when I say something, you have to say something else that shows you see things the same way as I do.”

“But what if i don't?” asked the wee blue-eyed monster. “What if I see things differently from you?”

”That's the thing,” answered Alice. “You have to find some way to agree, even if you don’t. Shall we try? Suppose I say, it's a beautiful sunny day today, don't you agree?”

The wee blue-eyed monster seemed confused. It looked up at the inky black darkness speckled by a few twinkling stars and said, “I think you are mistaken. It's definitely nighttime.”

“No no no!” cried Alice. “You haven't got the idea at all. Try again.”

The wee blue-eyed monster thought and thought, then said, “Well, when it's nighttime here, it's daytime on the other side of the earth, so I suppose it's a beautiful sunny day--somewhere.”

“There you go!” said Alice. “That wasn't so difficult, was it? So now if I say, and the full moon is just stunning! What do you say?”

The wee blue-eyed monster looked at the moonless sky, then started to say, “But, but…”

But Alice cut him off. No ‘buts’!” she said.

The wee blue-eyed monster closed its eyes and thought as hard as it could. Finally it said, “I've heard that there's a planet called Jupiter that has almost a hundred moons, so I suppose on Jupiter one of them must be full all the time.”

“Brilliant!” cried Alice. “I do believe you've got the hang of it. So why don't you go back to monster land and practice being agreeable with your monster friends?”

“I'm not sure they will like it so much,” said the wee blue-eyed monster.

“They may surprise you,” said Alice. “Now run along.”

“OK,” said the wee blue-eyed monster. “And thank you for your kind consideration.”

“You're most welcome,” replied Alice.

So the wee blue-eyed monster toddled off and Alice went back inside the house, proud that she had helped the creature to find its way in the world.

She found her parents in the living room reading. “What have you been up to?” they asked her.

“I've been in the backyard helping a wee blue-eyed monster to know how to get along in life,” she replied.

“That's nice,” said the parents.

Then Alice wondered about something and said to her parents, “Can I ask you a question? Am I an agreeable person?”

Her parents laughed, put down the books they were reading and opened their arms to hug their daughter, saying, “Alice, darling, to us you are the most agreeable person we could ever imagine.”

So Alice gave her parents two big hugs and went to bed, satisfied that she had been useful to the wee blue-eyed monster and happy to be the object of so much love.

As she lay in bed, she thought about the creature and hoped it would find success with the new skill she had taught it. Helping to make the world a better place seemed to her like a most worthwhile way to spend her time, and she resolved from now on to make every effort to do so whenever the opportunity might present itself. Given the sorry state of things, as her parents often explained, she was sure that such opportunities would not be long in coming.