Crapola funny, Just like Stephanie!

Fatima was not a morning person, though she was a breakfast person. She liked to eat and sleep; and eating had the best of sleeping. She was cranky if she didn’t have breakfast. She was equally cranky to anyone who tried to wake her up. So, it was the unfortunate responsibility of the new kid to wake her up. I’d been at the boarding school for less than three weeks, getting her out of bed was my responsibility.

Fatima was the cute girl whose room was three doors down the corridor on the left. She was a non-practicing Muslim who wore head scarves because they looked great on her and never got out of fashion. Fatima only wore scarfs outside of school, covering the darkest and straightest hair you could imagine.

People would kill to have long and shinny hair like hers and they would never hide it. She, on the other hand, didn’t think much of it. In fact, she didn’t think much of herself all together. She thought her dark eyes were too dark, her long eye lashes too long, and her brown skin too brown. Also, she thought she was too chubby, she ate too much, and didn’t exercise enough.

When I heard that she was cranky in the morning and rather self-defeating the rest of the day, I was afraid she would quickly get on my thin nerves. I wasn’t going to put up with someone who lamented or begged for sympathy all the time. I had my own problems to whine about.

Contrary to general opinion, Fatima was fun to be around. But there was a trick to it and if you knew it, it work like magic. She had to be fed with caramel popcorn. It didn’t matter if the bag was small or big, when she popped the last popcorn in her mouth, she was a joy to be around. She was funny, witty, and instead of sounding defeated, at times, she was borderline haughty.

The objects of her pride were her amazingly aquiline nose and her graceful fingers. It’s true that she had a stunning nose (the body part she valued most about people) and her fingers were magic when she sat at her piano. But if you didn’t stop her, she’d let you believe that Allah himself had created these eleven marvels. Of course, she conveniently forgot that she snored like an elephant and, at the age of ten, she still drooled on her thumb all night long.

Starting with my first week at the school, and until Fatima and I roomed together, I would run to her room before breakfast, switch on her tablet, turn it on some local country music radio station—she loathed country music—crank up the volume, and make sure it was out of her reach. She hated it, but that was the only way to wake her up. Then, I hurried back to my room to freshen up. When I came back, she was almost good to go.

One morning while we were having breakfast, I was rambling about something I found annoying and concluded with an assertive: “It’s all a bunch of crapola!”

Fatima usually quiet while she ate, exploded in laughter, nearly shooting blueberries out of her nose. Once she recovered, she agreed that whatever I talked about was crazy, but she added that the way I said it was even crazier. Fatima was honest, very honest.

“You kinda remind me of Stephanie Plum,” She said, before digging in her cereal bowl again.

“Stephanie who?” I asked, confused.

I asked again to make sure she wasn’t just half awake speaking some nonsense. Usually, her eyes didn’t really open and her brain didn’t start working until she had, at least, two of the following: a bowl of cereals, a bowl of fruits, and a glass of cranberry juice. She seemed perfectly awake because she immediately explain who Stephanie was instead of making me wait for another hour, when she’d realize that we had started a conversation an hour earlier. Stephanie was not a real person, like a kid at school, or someone on a TV show, she was a book character. And she was really funny and her adventures funnier than ever. Fatima went on for a while and she talked about Stephanie as if she was real, as if she knew her, as if she might sit at our table and watch us finish our breakfast together.

People did that all the time. They talked about book characters like they were real. They mixed make-believe people and real people and thought it was an okay thing to do. I didn’t figure Fatima would be one of them, a make-believer. And I told her about it. And, she gave me a look, like I was clinically crazy, not just silly.

I had to explain myself. I wasn’t sure Fatima wanted an explanation, but being a morning person, my brain was hyper functioning, telling my mouth to get busy.

“Superman is not real, is he?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Exactly, if he were real, he wouldn’t wear ridiculous, tight fitting clothes and a red cape. That’s dorky.”

She smiled. I continued.

“Wonder Woman is not real?”

She shook her head, again.

“With her superpowers, she should at least be a general. Why would she stay behind a desk answering the phone, when she could take on an entire army in her sleep?”

“I see your point,” Fatima nodded.

“Jesus was not real?” I added, remembering from language arts that people understood you better if you gave three good examples.

“I don’t know,” Fatima said, confused. I didn’t know that as a non practicing Muslim, which is like a non practicing Christian to the power of two, she didn’t know that Jesus was the guy who used to walk on water and all.

“No, he wasn’t,” I clarified. “Why would he walk on water, otherwise? Just for show? It’s only in books that people can do weird things like that. Not in real life. Otherwise, they’d know him in surfing circles and they don’t, really. I’m telling you, it’s a bunch of crapola!”

Fatima laughed again—‘Crapola’ was turning into a laughing cue. Then as if she hadn’t heard anything I’d just said, as if we’d looped back where the conversation started, she said: “You are totally like Stephanie Plum.

You should order one of her books,” she concluded, before we got up to go back to our rooms.

I checked that Stephanie Plum gal as soon as I was back in my room. I read a whole book about her, her hamster Rex, her two boyfriends, Ranger and Morelli, her funny grandma, her half-friend Lula, and the people she used to arrest as a bounty hunter. I was hooked and I quickly forgot that she was a 'fig Newton' of Janet Evanovich's imagination.

By the end of that summer, I’d read all sixteen of her adventures—I was already a fast reader. Fatima and I talked about Stephanie a lot. She was part of our 'gang'. We pretended to be part of her adventures and put a few favorite targets in jail. After a while, I started to forget that I didn’t like when we talked about fictional people or fictional events like they were real.

No matter how ridiculous her outfits were, she never looked as dorky as Superman. She looked great in tights or with a cape around her neck.

She could have done something better than bounty hunting, but it didn’t matter, she took on armies of thieves and murderers, and, unlike Wonder Woman, she didn't need wonder bras or weird bracelets.

She could walk on much more than just water. She had the same confidence whether her feet were deep in animal dung or human filth. Stephanie definitely made a big splash in my young life.

Before we returned to school that year, I still wanted to be a writer like mom, but I was ready to acquire some bounty hunter skills, in case I needed them in life. Much like Fatima, I thought that if I grew up to be a little like Stephanie, there's no way my life could be a bunch of Crapola!