The Adventures of Blue Boy
(for my daughter, Sabrina)

May 13, 2005
iranian.com

In a big farm house cozily nestled near a christal blue lake, Blue Boy lived with his parents, his little sister Rachel, his China sea turtle, Sami, who slept below his bed and sometimes kept the lights on too long reading newspaper with his old magnifier he had salvaged from the bottom of the lake, and, in the barn some two hundred feet away, were his two horses, Silverpony and Silverita, mom and daughter, and, last but by no means least, the mousie, better known as the household's real troublemaker. Although Blue Boy often had a hard time wondering if Sami was not as bad, if not worse, for clashing with the mousie all year long, except on "peace day".

One evening, when Blue Boy returned after losing a baseball game tired and rather sad, he was greeted by Sami at the top of the stairs leading to the bedroom.

"Hello Blue Boy. How was the game?"

"Aweful," answered Blue Boy as he dropped his gears, "lost 6 to 3."

"Again?!" Sami reacted and then meaningfully said, "I have good news Blue Boy, we have a guest."

"Really? Who?" He asked as he climbed the steps.

"Well, no one you know -- yet."

"I see, and where is he?"

"It's a she Blue Boy," said Sami and then quickly added, "actually a little girl, kind of."

Blue Boy picked Sami up and stared at his small rectangle-shaped green eyes. "Okay, let it out Sami, what are you up to now?"

Sami shook his head, pointing inside the room and said, "see for yourself, but be quiet, she is sleep."

"Oh I see," said Blue Boy, put Sami down and skulked inside and then immediately noticed a tale lurking underneath Sami's blanket, a crocodile's tale. "Sami! What is this?!"

"Look Blue Boy," Sami whispered as he removed the blanket softly, "you're waking her up."

"I can't believe it," uttered Blue Boy, with his jaw dropped in total disbelief at the sight of a baby crocodile laying on her back sucking on the tip of a milk bottle, "Rachel's bottle?!"

"Oh Blue Boy, please keep it low, can't you see she is shivering."

"We need to talk," Blue Boy said firmly and pointed his finger to the hall way.

A minute later, Sami was through explaining -- that he had discovered "the baby crocie" in the woods on the other side of the lake, that she looked like she had not eaten or slept for days, that if Sami had not brought her in she may have died in the hands of the mean neighborhood dog that was toying with her when Sami found her.

"Sami you don't understand, we can't keep a crocodile in my room. My mom will kill me."

But, as usual, the older, and sometimes wiser, Sami managed to persuade Blue Boy after a good half an hour debate that they had no choice but to keep the baby crocie for a "few days" until she was healthy enough to be taken back to the lake.

"I don't know if this is such a good idea Sami, her parents may be looking for her," said Blue Boy with a tinge of self-doubt.

So it happened that for three consecutive days, and nights, the baby crocie shared room with Blue Boy and Sami, until the fourth night when, suddenly, Blue Boy noticed the tale has grown by a good several inches.

"Sami, look at that... she is growing so fast, soon she will be big enough to eat us both in one scoop."

"Don't worry Blue Boy, she is just a baby," Sami reassured him, although with less than full confidence when the baby crocie took a little bite at his tiny foot. "Stop it now."

An hour or so later, with the crocie's tale scaring him with its perpetual motion beating under the bed, Blue Boy stood and put on his trousers and ordered Sami to help him wrap the blanket around the crococie and take it outside, as quietly as possible. Carrying their load under the full moon's glare with difficulty, near the lake they ran into several teenagers one of whom never wasted an opportunity to trouble Blue Boy. "Hey, kids, look what we have here," that kid said and then asked Blue Boy, "what you got in there?"

"Nothing," said Blue Boy as he and Sami dropped the blanket on the ground.

"Nothing, ha? Let me see," said the kid as he approached the blanket, leaned down and opened it disregarding Blue Boy's adamant, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Screeming in fear at the sight of crocie's open jaws about to grab his head, the kid ran away, followed by his friends. Sami and Blue Boy burst into laughter and Sami comforted the baby crocie. "That's okay, you can go in the water now and swim," and then threw it some cookie when the baby crocie proceeded toward the water cautiously.

So it happened that the baby crocie was the bona fide new species of the lake for another several weeks, and Sami even introduced her to Rachel, who was now old enough to forgive his misuse of her old bottle. One day, however, both Sami and Rachel rushed to tell Blue Boy, coming back from school, that the baby crocie was in trouble.

"She is crying, has a bad tooth I think," said Sami. "It's all the chocolate and cookie you've been giving her," replied Blue Boy. "Dentist," said Rachel a minute later after they had exmained the baby crocie's condititon again.

"But how are we going to get her to a dentist?"

Sami had an idea however. A few minutes later, using Rachel's doll cartwheel, they put baby crocie inside it and then began the street journey to the family dentist's office. On the way they were forced to tie her mouth with Blue Boy's shoe lace to keep her from drawing public attention with her incessant cries. "You must keep still when we get there," Sami kept saying to her.

The nurse was, naturally, a little unnerved when they entered and, after Blue Boy had told her that it was just a toy and Rachel, mock crying, was taking for real thinking it needed a dentist, did the nurse sighed in relief and said, "gosh... it looks so real," and then went to inform the dentist about the new patient.

"Let's see what we have here," the fatherly dentist said when they put the baby crocie on the table and he removed the lace, only to be grabbed on the head by its jaws. With the sight of the doctor's legs flailing in the air and his head in baby crocie's mouth shaking wildly, Sami and Blue Boy quickly talked the crocie into freeing him. "He is your friend, wants to help you, let go." Finally it worked and the poor doctor sat on a chair breathing heavily. Blue Boy brought him some water. A few minutes later, baby crocie's bad tooth had been taken care of, by the still shaking hands of the dentist who told them, as they were tucking the crocie inside the cartwheel, "please, next time you need a dentist, go somewhere else."

About
Kaveh Afrasiabi has a Ph.D. in political science. He has authored a number of books, fiction and non-fiction, and numerous articles -- including the Harvard Theological Review, Middle East Journal, UN Chronicle, and The New York Times. He is the author of: After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press, 1994).