Mary Poppins!

August 27, 2008

At first Gilberto, a strange and silly guy who has never left his 300 square mile island, was not sure what to think of Mary Poppins. As he watched he thought about the rest of the world. I wondered what he was thinking.

'What kind of people would watch this for entertainment?' he must be thinking. This was only my guess. He looked with bewilderment as Mary sang the 'spoon full of sugar' song and preformed her magic to clean up the children's room.

After the movie was over Gilberto took one more puff of his self wrapped cigarette. "That was great, wonderful, fantastic!" He said with his thick accent "Thanks Sarah, for this."

I picked up my umbrella and started imitating Mary Poppins "With every job that must be done there is an element of fun, you'll find that fun and" I snapped my fingers "the job is a game."

We started picking up my room for no good reason at all besides the fact that we were both singing and holding my umbrella. All of the sudden Gilberto stopped and had this scared look on his face with a smile hidden behind the fear. Almost as if he was dressed up wearing a mask of someone in distress but underneath was a man who was trying to not laugh out loud.

Gilberto was a man who held a lot of superstition, catholic guilt and an unrealistic precaution from bad luck.

"Sarah...... Did you open that umbrella or did I." Gilberto asked as he closed the umbrella and smirked.

"It was you." I replied. I knew deep down that it was me that opened the umbrella but I enjoyed watching Gilberto freak out.

He began to laugh, with an irrational fear behind the laughter. Almost as if he had switched the mask from distress to happy, only this time the man wearing this mask was afraid. I could see right through it.

"You know what this will mean Sarah, I am going to have bad luck for 7 years!"

"Don't think about that, think about Mary Poppins," I said trying to calm him down, "and how magical and wonderful and fantastic she is."

It has been about 6 months or so, since this happened. So far I haven't had bad luck, but I think he blames all his bad luck on this day.