My name is Finn, and I live here with my mom, dad, and little sister, Sophia. I have parents like everyone else, and that means they can tell me what to do—especially when I’m supposed to be having a nap. Don’t blame them too much—they’re really nice. They just seem to be on a different planet than me half the time. I can’t help that! It was when I was lying on my bed, hearing Dad sing into the hallway from wherever he was in the house—that’s what he always does, poor Dad—that I noticed something from my window.
It was a hat. Just a hat. I put on my slippers, strode to the window, and peeked out. Yes, it was a hat. Someone must have left it here in my backyard.
The backyard is where I keep my trampoline, bike, playhouse, and the fairy tree. You have a fairy tree too; everyone does, but you often forget to put it on your list of things to check. Of course, it would also stay far too top-secret if everyone told everyone about it. I don’t know how those fairies do it, to be honest—I mean, how do experts not notice that all trees are slightly different on top, some having quite a funny little bend: mostly because fairies forget to keep their heads up when they go there in the morning to drink their tea?
Well, this hat was not on the fairy tree.
I Monty-Python-style marched down in my slippers and bathrobe and reached the hat. Yes, it was for a very small person. All at once, I wished the world were flat again—this was the way the world should be, with hats walking around looking for children to talk to. The downside of sphericalary, of course, was you’d get vertigo every time you bent down.
Whose hat was it? Could it be a fairy’s? This seemed the most natural idea. So I put it on.
First of all, the hat fit like a glove, except that it was a hat instead of a glove. It was the colour of my mom’s freshest socks—red with white spots (forget her smiley-face socks; socks should not go up to your knees!) My mum used to be a hat-designer before I came along, so that may be why I love hats and stuff. Anyway, the hat had long floppy ears, a little beak, and a green pom-pom on top. It was brilliant!
That hat! For a long time, I thought about the stories this hat could tell. What adventures it must have had, crammed tightly on top of a fairy’s head, as she careens through the early morning mists.
I spun around under the fairy tree, singing:
Ich hatt’ einen Kappen.
Then I quickly drew a picture of a huge ice cream cone and said, “I wish we had this, hat.”
Nothing happened.
But when I drew a picture of the world’s most giant apple, did that ever fall on the playground! It fell on my mom’s head (the apple, of course), who chided everyone under the chimney-slits of the old castle (just down the street from here) for making an uproar in school hours.
After about two weeks, I finally realized that the hat fulfilled one wish a day only. I didn’t want to be too greedy, so I saved them “on account.” The hat was brilliant, for apart from that, it always made sure that wishes were literally pretty small. I’d have never wanted to grow small myself—imagine what a bummer it would be to go in the sewage system—and the hat was about the right size for. The things I wished for were like negligible nothing.
One day, I thought I heard a great sob coming from above. When I looked up, a funny bunch of cows with wings was staring down at me. “Help! SOS! Slap me!” they cried. Of course, I dashed into my room, where my diary and a not-so-obvious copy of The Fels Window by E.R.B. lay side by side on the floor. I tore out a page from my diary, got an empty vodka-bottle from the drunkards beneath us, and mixed up the best solution I could. Then I whipped the cows on; the way to do this is to hold onto the tail with your left hand and slap with your right. The cows were immediately right as rain and promptly made a deal with me for ten days’ worth of flying lessons.
Anyway, those were some of the things the hat got up to in those two or three weeks. They were all my very own fairy tales. I wonder if any of them were collected in a green ring binder instead of all those boring stories I have at home to read. Maybe someone would the Liebhang & Beitol podcast about the hat someday.
So much for that.
One day, Dad said, grinning into my room, “What do you want to do tonight, Finn?”
“Wouldn’t you like to hear one of my fairy tales?” I asked.
“Certainly! Why not?”
So I thought for a second and said, “Okay, here goes. It’s about the hat that lies on our trailer truck. That’s also known as a fairy tree, where all sorts of spirits, trolls, and fairies live.”
“Interesting,” said Dad. “And then?”
“And then the hat said, ‘Finn. I will no longer comply with wishes if you set one of your feet in those galoshes the whole day long, and I will also stop complying with wishes if you spend another single cent of your allowance.’”
I explained. You see, the hat had suddenly got religion, what they call envisagement.
Immediately after that, it got out with the huge ice cream company via a bagful of gold-sprinkling rubbish, and, in the end, it knew no more than I about this here. “Oh! But that does not match up at all!” So one day, I found myself with a load of getty-weigt because of whom, after a few minutes, I started on my giant (well!) drawing. We took about five flour sacks, tipped them over someone’s table in the catch-a-fish pond, and then all set out.
We breathed great draughts from our beer cans and watched the rats eating who-knows-what.
Some ran over us, the whole mini-railed lot of me. Luckily, his out would only happen once a month, or he’d swoon from delight.
The rain drummed on the roof and made a “plump-pump-plump, ripp-a-crash” out of it hiding the mat: voilà! And there lay the hat-and boots while we were really still in. And what else lay there, I ask!
This time, you just won’t believe what happened: we were allowed to fish with lighted sticks on the icy milk stream tomorrow from seven o’clock to two, at twenty-two marks a head. There remained only one dragonfly to settle the whole matter to everyone’s content” Ah, Finn, my boy, you’re fifteen now, so I think you’re woman-happy ever so soon!”
Wasn’t that something to remember?