All in Told by Grampa Walt

Charlie and Joy are riding flying elephants today. Justin helms Bonny’s Revenge next to them, just in case. Master Mind, the dutiful chaperone, as always watches over Joy’s safety, also from Bonny’s Revenge. Suzy and I came to watch. It’s not every day you see your grandchild ride a flying elephant. 

Suzy holds my hand tightly and enjoys the view. She loves it when dreams are beautiful.

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

The screaming and shouting and pinballing continue as the Tooth Fairy adds magical lights to the sky, more rules to the game, and makes it more complicated and more fun every few minutes.

Joy and Charlie are having the time of their lives, flying, bumping, crashing in the sky.

And then, after a few hours, it’s over.

Joy drinks. The Tooth Fairy creates a bathroom for her to go to. And when she returns, the mood is much more somber.

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

Two small fairies fly into the arena. I should say the fairies look like male body builders, only tiny and with wings. Justin, Suzy, and I, sitting in the first row, look at each other. Master Mind only looks forward.

One small fairy lands next to Joy, who is now engulfed in a protected padded globe, and the other fairy lands next to Charlie, also inside a padded globe. With a lot of show and hefting of muscles each fairy lifts a padded child above his head and rises into the air.

“PUT THE CHILDREN IN THE CANNONS!” The Tooth Fairy orders again. She is flying above the huge cannons, wand in hand.

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

“Enough of this chit chat!” The Tooth Fairy says in her deafening voice. “Let us dress the children for BATTLE! Bring in THE PADDED SUITS!”

Joy and Charlie giggle.

Small fairies fly in from behind us bringing in clothes racks of… I really don’t know what those things are.

“DRESS THE CHILDREN!” The Tooth Fairy orders the smaller fairies. “Grownups and robot - find seats in THE ARENA!”

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

The Tooth Fairy flies over to look at Master Mind. Half his size, her wings keep her afloat so that her eyes are at the same level as his. I look at them, and it hits me that this is my life. A life inside a dream. A life in which everything is crazy, where reality shifts, where impossible creatures exist. This is my life, even as my ‘real self’ is back in Toronto living my actual life. This is a life I can never leave. I will never be back to the waking world.

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

Master Mind reaches the top first. Then Joy, then Justin.

They reach the top and disappear from view into the wormhole-like tear in the sky.

The big leaf holding Suzy, Charlie and I accelerates as we approach the top, and we are right behind them.

“Joy the Pirate!” I hear a female voice boom as everything changes around me and I find myself in a hall with a checkered floor, one that looks like it had been taken out of a chess board. “I have missed you!”

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

We don’t wait more than a few seconds when suddenly something green begins to grow where the kids buried the Last Tooth Dust.

Then the green turns to leaves, then the leaves grow on a stem that grows up and up, widening and turning into a tree trunk. The trunk grows high, and the higher it goes, the thicker it grows. Branches and leaves extend from it every which way, hiding the trunk from view.

High above, the trunk appears to be almost a kilometer high, when the sky cracks open revealing another sky. It is as if a wormhole has appeared in the middle of the sky.

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

“All right, kids, you know the drill,” Justin says. “Dig a small hole!”

Joy and Charlie run forward, go down on their knees, and start burrowing in the desert sand with their hands.

For the last almost three years now, they’ve come here every time Joy lost one of her teeth. Yes, they know what to do. I’ve come with them every time, but they had never let me into the world of the Tooth Fairy because I couldn’t climb the Tooth Tree at my age.

“But, Justin,” I say. “You asked us to keep the tooth. How can you keep her last tooth if we’re going to bury it?”

Justin gives me a wink and a smile then returns to look at the kids.

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

Suzy smiles, “Aye aye, captain!”

“Walter Shelley, are you ready to see the Tooth Fairy?”

I try to come up with something smart to say, like ‘ready as a bird of prey descending on a dead wolf’, but I feel I’ll regret it, so I just say, “I’m ready.”

“Is the last tooth here?”

Suzy raises the small plastic jar that holds it. “You asked me to put it in a–”

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

“I am practicing for the Paralympics today,” Madelyn tells us. She just appeared on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge and came down to our small home on the island, where Joy is sitting with Charlie and Justin and eating breakfast. “Do you want to come? Justin? Zhoy? Charlie? Suzy? Walt?”

Madelyn is going to participate in the Beijing 2008 Paralympics with her team, and she’s been practicing every day.

“I would like to see that,” I raise my hand.

“I want to–” Joy says with her mouth full, then clams up, looking guilty of something.

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

“But what did he say to you?”

It’s been a day since we last saw Colin and Hugh, and Justin is trying to ask Charlie what made him run away yesterday.

Charlie keeps ignoring Justin’s questions as Joy and Charlie play with toys on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge.

“Charlie,” Justin pleads for the seventh time. “What happened? What did he say?”

Charlie looks up finally. “He said ‘poop’.”

“Huh? He said ‘poop’?”

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

“Hugh. Nice to meet you,” Justin offers his hand. “I’m Justin.”

“Pleasure,” Hugh shakes his hand.

“This is my father, Walter. My mother, Susanne. And you just met my daughter, Joy. Her friend was Charlie. The big robot, that, uh, chased her in the flying ship,” he sneaks a look at Colin to see if it’s okay to mention a robot and a flying ship, “that’s Master Mind.”

“Pleasure,” Hugh shakes my hand. “Enchanted,” he kisses Suzy’s hand.

“Oh, laying it on a bit too thick, aren’t you?” Colin tells him.

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

Colin stands there in the street as Hugh talks to Joy and Charlie about the documentary he’s shooting right now.

Justin stands very close to Colin. “Whatever happens, there’s no need for monsters,” he tells him. “No monsters. No monsters.”

“No monsters,” Colin whispers.

“Everything’s okay,” Justin says. “You can see that, right?”

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

Joy gives Justin a look like she’s going to kill him.

“I’m not saying a dress,” Justin says. “I would never say a dress.”

“Good.”

“But look at these clothes,” he touches the formal clothes Hugh had given him. “Don’t I look good? Wouldn’t it be nice to try something else?”

“I’m a pirate,” she shrugs. “I like these clothes.”

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]

We stand in the middle of the street, Colin, Justin, Joy, Charlie, Master Mind, Suzy, and I.

We look around. This is exactly the way London used to look in movies I grew up on, with adjustments for the decades that have passed.

“Wow,” Justin says.

“Look at the graffiti over there,” Charlie points to a large wall with graffiti of a man’s face with his tongue sticking out.

Bonny’s Revenge hangs in the air just above the rooftops. Justin insisted that Colin host us in Justin’s dream, not in Colin’s. Just in case a nightmare breaks out and we need Bonny’s Revenge.

[Click on the title to read the entire diary entry!]