The Trouble With Trolls

Posted on Jul 4, 2013 in Fiction | 0 comments

Sometimes things just don’t go as planned.  Pamela thought she was learning that fact the hard way.

She had been heard complaining, “That is not the way I planned it!”  Finally I actually heard her best friend, Bren, snap back with the tart reply, “You planned this?”

“Well yes, I planned something, but not this or anything like it.” Pam informed her friend. 

“ Sometimes I believe there is a little group of Trouble Trolls who are constantly on the look-out for anything that seems to be going smoothly and faultlessly, who are standing around, doing nothing, prepared to step up to the plate and switch this for that or that for this, whatever will put a kink into anything that was, until they arrived, doing fine.

For example, If you are baking a first class birthday cake which you promised to take to the party and you use all of your eggs and butter to make your special Birthday Cake.  When it is finally in the pan and ready to be baked for 40 minutes, and the timer is set, as soon as you walk away the Trouble Troll will sneak over and turn off the oven.  The timer will work perfectly and in 40 minutes it calls you and you open the oven to find the pan full of wet batter sitting in a cold oven., with no time left to wait another 40 minutes.

And what about those naughty rascals who were the children of the Trouble Trolls who hung around the ice cream parlors for the fun of tipping people who left eating ice cream cones, so they would stumble and lose a scoop or two from their cones to the side walk., which would leave the walk so slippery that other folks slipped and dropped their packages.  They were always worth a smile and a dance.

Then all of the Trouble Trolls danced with glee.  They learned ways to delay trains, cars, and bicycles with equally bad results. And it is the ruined results make them so happy that they dance for joy.

After this last disaster to her well planned vacation, on which, her luggage disappeared for three days, the Hotel gave her a room in the horrid smoking section and her bathing suit was not in the finally found luggage… all on only the third day of a one week holiday! Pamela rebelled.  

Then after even her best friend, Bren, made her unfortunate remark about her poor planning, Pam put her hands on her hips and announced that something must be done about those rotten, terrible, Trouble Trolls and if no one else was up to the task, she would do it herself!

The Trouble Trolls were so busy dancing and whooping it up that they did not even notice that they had just made a very determined enemy.

Bren was still smiling at Pam’s humorous telling of all that went wrong in her vacation plan. So Pamela asked her quite seriously,   

“Are you with them or me?  It just seems to me that they are happy enough for both of us, so if you are with me, knock off the smile and help me decide what can be done.”

Bren tried to wipe off her smile but Pamela was so funny when riled up that she just couldn’t do it.  Bren had a very sweet smile which was one reason they had been friends for so long.

Ordinarily Pam was a very nice, good natured person herself, but when she got angry watch out!  After all, Pamela is a real red-head and red heads have their rights… at least by reputation.  

Pamela was a lady who had raised four rambunctious sons and she had a well defined “Guff” limit.  

Bren had raised, in those same years, one quiet daughter and one quiet son, so she was relaxed, easy going and tolerant, more like Pamela was once upon a time

Bren knew she would fight to the end beside her friend, if her friend came up with a workable plan.  Oh, oh , there was that word again…plan… one of those things that sometimes go wrong.

Pamela was in deep thought.  She might let Bren know her final plan to do something about those terrible, Trouble Trolls, or maybe not.  Those Trolls seemed have a way of finding out things.  Bren may be the link.  She decided to work alone for her revenge. 

Pam had another week coming for her vacation, but she was going to research the Trolls first, so she could figure out what to do.

On the web she saw pictures of them at the beach half buried in sand, smiling. And on a horse in the mountains, smiling, and on a camel in the desert looking at the pyramids and as usual, smiling.  They seemed to be capable of going anywhere. Probably that was what made it possible for them to ruin more plans far and wide for more people… and dance in more places to different music.

So her plan now, half way made in her mind, was to just not take it anymore.  She made her last week stretch out into seven vacations, taken one night at a time with the weekend attached for travel time.

The first was to be at the resort where two Trouble Trolls had worked against her.  The one who had put the “S” next to her name on the reservation book and gotten her placed into a smoker’s room, which made her sick for the two days it took to get her changed into a clean smoke free room.  These trolls were going to learn first-hand, what it was like to be in Trouble.

The first was spotted at once, smiling his smile right in the front lobby next to the front desk.  No wonder he had such easy access to the reservation book.  

As Pam passed casually by, she reached down and picked him up by his hat and carried him under her big purse to the elevator.  Right between the two elevator doors there stood a tall sandy ashtray, where smokers could put out their cigarettes before getting in the No Smoking Allowed, Elevator. 

She paused, as though putting a cigarette into the container, but opened the top and let the smiling Troll drop onto the bottom.  “There you go little Buddy.” she whispered, enjoy the full day of ashes, stale tobacco and occasional, smoke.”

Down in the luggage room where hers had spent three days because someone had smudged the name tag.  she saw another Trouble Troll smiling from the top of a large steamer trunk.  She sat and watched as he hopped down and opened a ladies small case.  It took a little effort, but he tugged at a small scrap of shiny cloth until it was all of the way out of the case, then snapped the case shut and shook the blue thing out enough to see that it was a bikini bottom.  He tossed it across to the out-going laundry hamper.  It went in as smoothly as a basket ball two pointer.   

“Good toss, little guy.  Mind if I try it?”  She picked him up from the trunk top and heaved him head over heels deep into the same hamper due to be soon sent out to the commercial laundry.  “Have a nice trip and be sure to come back nice and clean.”

‘Two down and two to go.”  Pam told herself, hoping that those two would always see her coming and get out of Dodge.

The Trouble Troll at the beach was easy.  He stood smiling, already half buried, in a low sand mound.  Then Pam saw the boy tossing the Frisbee for his dog to run and catch then return.  She only had to maneuver them around so that the boy was tossing the disc high over the Trouble Troll’s head.  Then she had only to sit down and watch as the sand thrown upon the Troll by the dog, each time he chased the Frisbee, began to pile up.  Soon it was over the tense smile followed by the crafted nose and eyes.  She left as soon as the hat was buried.

The next vacation weekend was happily a ski trip to a local mountain.  She planned to have a good time on this trip, but it all depended on whether she or the Trouble Troll chanced to ruin it for the other first.

It snowed the first night, so the morning snow was thick, clean and pristine.  Dressed in her newest ski clothes Pamela got an early start.  She was on edge as she did not know how she was going to fix this last Troll before he got to her.   

She spotted him standing on a steep slope next to a recently placed “Watch for Avalanches!”  sign.  He had his eyes on the chair lift going up directly over him and wore his standard smile. So Pam slid over to the next lift and rode up beyond the Trouble Troll and got off.

As she stood higher up, she waited to see if he was still by the sign.  He was, and every so often he stepped out from in front of it and looked up hill.   Pamela got ready by packing a tight, firm, baseball size snow ball between her hands.   Then she lined up the left of the sign with her left ski and waited.  If this worked, great, but if it hit the sign it would come apart and fall to pieces and if it was too far left it would go on past all the way to the bottom of the hill for nothing and she would have to make a new plan.

There, he was looking up.  She placed the snow ball in its preplanned spot and gave it the tiniest little nudge with her ski pole.  It began to slowly roll down the steep hillside gathering speed and more snow as it went.  When it arrived at the sign and rolled over the Troll it was about a yard tall.  With the bothersome Trouble Troll wrapped up inside of it the ball continued to the bottom still growing with the soft new snow and stopped by the fence in front of the Snack Shack.   

Pamela skied down and began to finish the six foot tall bottom ball by stretching up to place another large ball right on top of it. Then as soon as she placed the red strip from the broken hair barrette just above the new chin and below the two round, blue water-bottle caps that looked out from above, the carrot nose, it turned into a giant Snow man smiling down at them.  

The children gathered around and wanted to help, so she encouraged them to find the sticks and things to give him a broom and someone found an old ski cap for a hat.  A long piece of plastic blew by and someone grabbed it to make a scarf.  He was getting pretty spectacular and drawing a crowd.  The kid who wanted to put his old sun glasses on the snow man couldn’t reach that high and settled for hanging them on the scarf. 

Before Pam went up hill to finish her ski day, the entire crowd had built one very interesting snow man, complete with bottle cap buttons and some old lost shoes sticking out at the bottom. Only Pam knew that one day next spring the snow man would melt and reveal a smiling, though not too happy, Trouble Troll.

Then a funny thing happened to Pam.  She enjoyed her great skiing day but… she had not felt as happy as she thought her four revenges would make her feel.  She actually was a little sad.

True they had it coming for the misery they had caused her but…

She lifted her eyes to the sparkling blue sky and looked at the Christmas green Pines and with colorful, happy, children still dancing around her Giant Snow man and suddenly she knew what was so sad.

She had gone about this whole thing the wrong way.  Understanding that, she packed up her things and vowing to make it right, she drove home to the beach.

The next weekend Pamela had a new plan.  She opened her computer and put out a call for all Trolls interested in Troubles to sign up with her.

She was amazed at how many she attracted the first time.  They texted back and forth, as she asked questions about how they found joy in making trouble for people. And as soon as she thought she understood what it was, she invited a large group to join her by meeting with her at a special place.  

About a dozen Trouble Trolls were there.  Pam stood tall to explain to them that these people they were about to meet already had so much trouble and things to worry them, that nothing they could do would make it a bit worse.  

What they could do, as dancing was the one thing they loved so much, and always did to celebrate, that if they would come in with her as she had arranged with the Supervisors and dance for these already troubled people, she believed that things would change for the better for all of them.

“Come dance!”  she called as she waved them in. “You have nothing to lose!” 

So they all went into the big building that was the Children’s  Hospital and danced for the patients.

The children and the Doctors and Nurses clapped with joy at the festive sight of the brightly painted, happy smiling, dancing Troll Dolls doing their charming, joyful, dances. When the music reluctantly stopped, the nurses handed the Troll dolls up to the children’s beds, where they were hugged and kissed and loved almost to pieces.  Then with the children all feeling happy and content with promises that they would return again another day, the Trolls were gathered and taken back to their meeting place. 

The Trouble Trolls all agreed that they had never felt so much love before and they would like it much better if they could be known as the Dancing Trolls, or the Smiling Trolls or even the Happiness Trolls.  

Trouble making was not nearly as satisfying as entertaining people who simply could not use any more troubles, and dancing was making them all feel happy.

So Pamela had handled it all herself as she said she would.  It just took her a little longer than she had originally planned. And as she said, “Sometimes things just don’t go as you planned.”   Sometimes they go better!

THE END

With thanks to Pamela for her inspiration – July 2013