The World Will Always Be a Wonder for Amy Venzalo

Written By: Fatima Haroon.

Tucked in bed, little Amy found it hard to shut her eyes and go into the ‘half-dead mode.’  Today, she had heard her cousin, a medical student, say that when a person falls asleep, he or she is believed to be half-dead since the body shuts down to some extent.  She could not understand exactly what this statement meant, but in her head, the word ‘dead’ was enough to make her keep her eyes open.  In an hour or so, she just could not bear lying wide-eyed in bed.  So, she got up and walked to her bedroom window, which acted for her, like a glass-covered theater display of the stars and the moon.  She wondered where all the ‘half-dead’ people would be right now, really.

Looking out the window, she wondered if they were really taken up to the moon until the sun started to come up, which would act as signal for the sleeping wanderers to return back to Earth.  This explanation seemed good enough for her until she wondered how they could get so high up in the sky without any rocket of some sort and without making a sound?  Remembering her science lesson, she realized that there was no oxygen on the moon, so how could they wander about the moon in their pajamas when they could not even breathe up there?

With an innocent yawn, Amy rubbed her eyes and sat down on her favorite pink stool.  Looking at that stool, she remembered her mommy once telling her that Santa made the elves make it for her for Christmas.  When she asked her mommy how they and the elves were different, she said they were just like us, only shorter.  This flash back made her to think that maybe the sleep wanderers were transformed into elves, who had to make toys every night for all the children in the world for Christmas.  She was convinced that the North Pole was really where all of the sleep wanderers were taken because she recalled watching a cartoon in which the elves were making toys in a place full of snow.  Then, Amy mumbled to herself, ‘but how could they make toys in such a cold place without any tools to work with and without any fire to keep themselves warm?'

Confused and utterly sleepy, she decided to give up the war between her fear and sleep and threw herself on her bed.  Rubbing her swollen red eyes once more, little Amy yawned one last time before she whispered, ‘Let’s find out where those sleep wanderers  really are,’ and fell asleep.