Self Awareness

SHORT STORY TITLE: Kids in Your Neighborhood.

It’s Christmas Eve, and a six-year-old girl, who loves this time of the year, decided it was a fine afternoon day to walk to her grandparents’ house for the first time, it’s just down the hill about a 10 minutes walk away.

Walking downhill, she saw three other little kids holding holiday-wrapped gifts, walking happily toward her way.

She stopped the closest kid to ask them.
“Hi, where’s everybody getting the gifts from?”

“There is a building down the hill on the left side. Go inside the center. They are handing out Christmas gifts to little kids in this neighborhood,” the adult explained.

“Thank you!!”
Then she walks down the hill to the center sign and found a check-in table.

“Hello there,” a lady greeted behind the check-in table.

“Hi. Are the Christmas gifts here for kids in this neighborhood?”

“Sure, you would sign up here on this form,” the lady replied.

“I don’t know the information. I know how to get there, I live in a unit up the hill…”

“You can fill as best you can and go through.”

“Thank you!!”
Then she walks to a line where she received a gift.

She woke up at her grandparents’ house on Christmas Day afternoon. Thinking about yesterday, she went outside to play in their neighborhood.

Playing alone in the neighborhood’s parking lot, she heard holiday songs from a mail truck approaching just as she was ready to go elsewhere.

‘Mail? On Christmas?’ she thought.

The mail truck parked when it saw her.
The driver, dressed like a mailman wearing a Santa Claus hat, appeared and spoke to her.
“Hi, little girl, Merry Christmas. I am delivering gifts to little kids today. Do you want a holiday present?”

“Hi. I do. But I have no money, gift?”
She looked at the mail truck from where she stood.

“Yes, just a holiday gift from charity for little kids around here. Do you live here?” he asked.

“Yes. I live here,” she thought about yesterday, “What is charity?”

He thought to answer and said, “Charity comes from people who can provide resources as help or gift to others. Just like this holiday, I am driving around to give all these gifts to kids in your neighborhood. Do you want one left or right?”

“Yes. That one. Thank you!!”
She grabbed it, smiled at him quickly, and then ran up the stairs to the house level towards her grandparents’ house.

She excitedly tried to tell her grandmother that Charity had given her two free holiday gifts.

Her grandmother met with a raised voice: “I do not want you going outside alone or talking to strangers or anybody. You heard it, and there’s many houses here. What is the warning?!”

“Stranger danger.”

“We do not want anything bad happening to you outside alone; Downtown is not the place.”
She agreed not to go outside alone again because it is dangerous.

She begins unwrapping the holiday paper in the living room and feeling good from Charity.
She loved how the toy’s flower petals bloom downward into a ballerina’s dress, and then the ballerina twirling around.