Cafeteria French Fries and Nostrils are Exactly the Same Size

It all starts when someone believes.
When I was fifteen, my best friend’s mom had a baby. Her name is Emilee, and even then, we all knew she was perfect. If you have ever had a baby brother or sister and were old enough not to feel the need to compete, you may have thought that about them, too.
With this baby, my family was lucky enough to be with her all the time and it was like having a little sister of my own.
As time passed, she remained the most important thing to all of us, and for all the spoiling we did, she was a good kid. In fact, she was such a good kid that she would often do what I asked without giving it a second thought, even if she should have.
One of the times that stands out in my mind the most, happened on the lawn of the Texas state capital. She had flown to Austin by herself to stay with me and I took her all around town. She fell in love with everything from the UT tower to the bright green grass on the capital’s lawn. At the end of the day, I rested there, with her beside me searching in a patch of clover. After a while, Emilee called out, “Look, I found a four leaf clover!”
This is a good time to tell you (or warn you) that I joke a lot. This is not always a good thing, but Em has a great sense of humor, so it usually works out. This was not one of those times.
So I replied, “Emilee, you can’t pick clovers from the grass at the capital!” You can probably guess what happened. She dropped the clover back into the grass before I could say I was kidding. I felt horrible. We searched for an hour, to no avail, and what made it worse was that she wasn’t even mad at me. She just kept saying, “Don’t worry, it’s okay,” after each of my numerous apologies. She really meant it.
The next year, she entered kindergarten and I often picked her up in the afternoons. Occasionally they would still be playing right outside the classroom window and I would watch her for a few minutes through the one-way glass.
One day as I watched, I saw a boy in her class (well known as a bully) pushing a little girl in the chest, hard. Emilee, being the kid that she was, wouldn’t let her friend endure it alone. She stood in between them and I could see her lips saying, “Stop.” The boy didn’t stop. Instead, he grabbed her friend by the arm, and when Emilee tried to pry them apart, the boy shoved her to the ground. Em got up to find chunks and splinters of mulch in her legs. I couldn’t believe she didn’t cry.
The teacher didn’t see any of it and by the time I made it to the door, I was so angry I could hardly speak. I opened it, told her it was time to go, and we left. I was fuming. This boy was a tryant, and even though I could tell Emilee’s mother what happened, he got away with a lot. I knew Emilee was afraid and I wanted her to be able to defend herself. I also knew that defending yourself can be much harder than defending someone else. So in my anger, I told her she needed to get him back when he didn’t even see it coming.
PAUSE – This was not the right answer, but just like she would do anything I said without thinking, I would do anything to protect her – and I didn’t always think it through either.
Two days later, I picked her up again. She ran up and hugged me, and when I went to take her things out of her cubby, she began to cry. I turned around to see what was wrong and my eyes glanced at her daily behavior sheet. It had a message covering most of the page. I couldn’t make out the scrawled handwriting, so I asked the teacher what had happened and all the while Emilee is crying hysterically.
The teacher (the same one who couldn’t get a handle on the bully) proceeded to tell me that during lunch, Emilee had been playing with her food. She had taken a couple of French fries and stuck them in her lip so that she looked like a walrus. The kids thought this was pretty funny, so she decided to put them in her nose and see what they thought of that. They turned out to be the perfect fit and when she removed her hands, the fries stayed put. She started swinging her head around, French fries faithfully lodged, and one-by-one, the rest of the class did the same.
The teacher tried to regain control, but there were 20 sets of flying fries all trying to be the best walrus. When she looked at Emilee to tell her to go to time out, she was shocked. In all the chaos, a little boy sitting next Emilee had become distracted and she was silently putting something in his milk.
I looked at Em. “Who is the boy?” I asked, pretty sure who it was.
Still crying, she pointed to the little stinker. I have to admit, it was impossible to be angry.
“What did you put in his milk?”
Completely sobbing, she yells out, “It was a booger!”
I tried hard not to laugh. The little boy definitely had it coming. But as I looked at the teacher and back at Emilee, I remembered my words. “Get him back when he doesn’t see it coming.” She was devastated and she was in this predicament because of me. She had tried her best to do what I told her to do all because I didn’t fully appreiate how closely she listened to everything I said…and believed it.
Now I tell you those two stories to tell you this. I think we are all characters in our own stories and we all have things we truly believe in that define who we are and how we act.  Emilee believed that I would always look out for her, and although it didn’t always pan out like I hoped, she was right.  If she actually needed a four leaf clover, I would search to the ends of the Earth to find her one.  Like cafeteria French fries and nostrils, sometimes they don’t make perfect sense, or even seem like they go together, but there is a belief behind the craziness and it is what drive our characters and our stories forward.
When you are reading, you see this all the time. Harry Potter believes he is the only one who can kill Voldemort and restore peace to the magical world. Theodosia believes that she must stop at nothing to break the evil curses lurking the museum. The children of The Mysterious Benedict Society believe that if Mr. Benedict put them in danger, then he couldn’t have had any other choice.
All characters, like all of us, believe in things that make us do things we might not normally do. I would love for you to share what characters are your favorites and what beliefs propel them through the stories you love.