Princess and the Pea…Manic in the Mother-in-Law

‘The Princess and the Pea” was written many a year ago by author Hans Christian Anderson. I got to thinking about this story the other day…

“Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess. He traveled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted. There were princesses enough, but it was difficult to find out whether they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much to have a real princess.”

--Okay so first of all, what?! Brother was a Prince and he had to go travel all over the world to find his princess: How did THAT conversation sprout? A cell phone message maybe?

“Hey mom and dad! I wanna get married so I’m gonna go travel the world for, oh, say…the next 4 or 5 years? …to find my Princess. Take care of my plants! Love ya!”

I wonder if his family told him to try eHarmony or anything before going on his mighty quest. Then again, you can’t blame the guy for wanting to find true love…

“One evening a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it. It was a princess standing out there in front of the gate. But, good gracious! what a sight the rain and the wind had made her look. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she said that she was a real princess.”

--Since when do kings open their own doors? Don’t they have royal door-openers for stuff like that? Can you imagine if you went to Buckingham Palace and Prince Charles opened the door?

And another important question, just WHY was the real princess (she needs a name…lets call her Windy…) why was Windy out in the rain in the first place? Since when do princesses run around in the dark in the middle of a thunderstorm?

“Well, we'll soon find that out, thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.”

--Okay men, here is a question for you: If your mom took your girlfriend, who you had EVERY intention on getting married to, shoved her in a room with 20 stacked mattresses with a vegetable under the bottom mattress and told her to have a good night, would you think you mom was crazy, or would you think she was doing you a favor?

“On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept. "Oh, very badly!" said she. "I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It's horrible!””

--Since when does a two inch pea under a mattress bruise you up like you just took a beating from Apollo Creed?

“Now they knew that she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds. Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that. So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a real princess; and the pea was put in the museum, where it may still be seen, if no one has stolen it. There, that is a true story.”

--Brother got his sensitive princess and Windy got proper royal medical treatment for her bruises! YaY! I love a happy ending!

But one more question: Why did they put the pea in a museum? Can you imagine the tour guide at this joint?

“And here lies the pea that your royal Queen slept-eth on the day before she married the royal Prince-eth. His mother had to test her to see if she was the right royal match…-eth.”

So there you have it! ‘The Princess and the Pea’ in real time. My take on the moral of this story?

True love does exist. But don’t force it and go from person to person looking for it. God knows who your prince or princess is, and God will bring you two together when it’s in His time for it to happen. And when it happens, you’ll know. :)