Short Story for Children – The Peach Pastry
Photo credit: earl53 from morguefile.com
“Hi, can I have one Chocolaty Delight please?”, the little kid with the flaming red hair asked me.
I looked at his endearing face and replied, “Here kid, that will be 1 dollar.”
He looked confused. “But my mom gave me 2 dollars.”, he said.
“So that means you get TWO Chocolaty Delights instead of one! Isn’t that great?”
That look of sheer delight on his face answered my question better than any words could. He sat down in one of the plastic red chairs I had kept out for my customers and started digging in. There was no other customer in the shop, so I joined him.
“How old are you, kid?”, I asked him as he licked off the last bits of chocolate from the wrapper of his first pastry.
“I am five. And you?”
“I am 34.”
“Oh you are so old. My momma is twenty ten.”
“You mean 30?”
“No. I mean twenty ten!”
I allowed myself a small smile. He suddenly got up and slapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh I almost forgot! Momma forbade me to talk to any strangers.”
“But I thought we were friends.”
“Are we? Oh goody! Momma also told me to share all my things with my friends. So if you are my friend, would you like a bite of my Chocolaty Delight?”
I smiled at how well his mother has brought him up. “Do you love your momma?”, I asked him.
“Ofcourse I love my momma. She is the best in the world!”
“And your Poppa?”
“Oh I love my poppa too! But I have never met him. Momma said he went away before I was born. She does everything for me now. But I wish I could meet my poppa. Do you have a poppa?”
“Oh yes I did! He was a carpenter.”
“What is a carpenter?”, he asked me, his eyes all big and curious.
“A carpenter is a person who uses a hammer and nails to join bits of wood together to make us tables and chairs.”
“Wow! Your poppa was a magician! He made chairs from wood?”
I joined in his excited laughter, but inside of me, I was sad. Where does all the innocence go when one grows out of childhood?
By then he had finished his second pastry and got up suddenly. “It’s almost 6.”, he said. “I have to go back to momma now. Bye.”
“Hey wait!” I caught his arm before he could run off. “Take this to your momma as a present from me.”, I said, handing him a Peach Pasty.
“That’s funny”, he said as he looked at me with his large brown eyes. “My momma’s name is Peach.”
And as he turned and ran out of the store, I watched him go till he disappeared from my sight. Turning back, I ran my fingers through my mop of flaming red hair and whispered to myself, “I know”.
__END__
