Dear Wendy, Beware Peter Pan

Dear Wendy,

The other evening, I came across an old roommate that brought up an old memory that made me think of you. She was panhandling on the street corner holding a sign that read, “Sith Lord killed family, need $$$$ for light saber.”

Now, before you get all blood-and-thundery about the comparison, let me explain. This roommate (let’s call her Thelma), she was a great cook. One day as I was running out the door, I opened the freezer to snatch a pop-cycle on the fly. Next to the frozen artificial cherry and grape sticks was a platter of fudge she was cooling that she had made for some friends visiting from out of town.

I yelled into the living room where she was hanging out with her friends and asked her if I could have a piece of her fudge. She said, “of course!” So, being the chocolate monster I am, I took four.

I ate them in the car as I drove downtown to meet a friend at the mall to help her shop for a piece of her costume for a show we were in.

As my friend and I were leaving the top floor of The Gap, she ran down the escalator, turned back and asked me why I was just standing there. “Sometimes I just want to stand on the escalator.” She looked at me very troubled like she was trying to tell me something but didn’t know how. I looked around me. Nothing. I looked down. I was still standing at the top…of the stairs. They appeared to be moving. I appeared to be moving. Instantly I broke into a sweat and a panic.

My roommate was also in grad school working on her PhD. Not long before this incident, I noticed a pile of clear shoe boxes in the Harry Potter storage under the stairs that looked like they were half-filled with kitty litter. She had explained to me that she was a mycologist doing research on psilocybe cubensis. [Translation: She was a mushroom scientist(literally) that was cultivating psychedelic mushrooms under our stairs.]

She had failed to mention that she had put them into the fudge for the pleasure of her hippie guests. Being the prude that I am, you can imagine my embarrassment and fear that rushed through my veins- NEVER would I do this on purpose.

I gripped the handrail tight and controlled my breath as I explained to my friend at the bottom of the stairs that I was suddenly feeling sick and needed to go home. I ran away to the back of the store and took a freight elevator down to the ground floor where I called my roommate in hell-bent fury. When she answered, I exploded all over the line. Her friends roared with laughter. She had put me on speaker phone.

After she talked me down and scolded me for taking four, she instructed me to not drive for a couple of hours and to go rest somewhere quietly. So I went to the IMAX theater to watch the new animated 3D Beowulf movie starring a digitalized Angelina Jolie. I sat in the dark as the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland began floating in front of my eyes on his magic mushroom asking, “you… who are you?” Going to the theater proved to be a poor lapse in judgment as the opening fight with a giant troll and a flaming sword popping out the screen through my 3D glasses had me screaming in terror at the perception of purple cobras lunging at my eyes – ultimately getting me kicked out of the theater for disturbing the audience.

I drove home and was feeling better until I got onto the freeway. The lines in the road turned into yellow, black, and white plaid. I had to follow the brightest tail lights, hoping they were leading me in a straight line, until I got off the freeway. I was literally praying out loud to not die or go to jail and to just get off the road safely.

By the time I got home, my best friend had brought me ice cream and held my head in her lap watching TV while we cried (me from hallucinations, her from laughter) until I came out of my living terror.

I never spoke to my roommate again and hadn’t seen her since I had moved after grad school and she had gone to jail for illegal “mycologizing.”

You see, this entire fiasco of a memory made me think of you and what you’ve been through lately.

I know how much you love Peter, and I know how hard it was for you to realize you didn’t belong in Never Never Land. The lure of that distant island filled with mythical creatures and adventures (don’t even get me started on that fairy dust) is no more different than that fudgey psychedelic fungus.

Peter and the lost boys have been around longer than you, never growing old and only living in pleasure. So for you to walk away from the promise of eternal youth took great courage. But you must remember a few things:

• You did not leave Peter behind, he refused to come home with you.
• You did not stop loving him, you just left a piece of your heart behind.
• He did not stop loving you, he just loves Never Never Land more.
• He wasn’t the one that got away, he was the one you set free.
• Love him with all of your heart but not your mind. Your heart you can give to anyone and any thing, but your mind is all yours to lose. Give your heart to love but don’t lose your mind to it.
• You may be alone now, but you will die an old woman surrounded by your family and friends in the end if you stay true to yourself.

Did you ever wonder why Peter Pan was so unhappy outside of Never Never Land where he was always struggling with his shadow and you were unhappy too long outside of London? In the end, Peter needed his Never Never Land and you, like Alice, needed out of Wonder Land. You and Peter Pan won the lottery of the heart. But falling in love, real love, is like an accidental high. (People who seek it out need to have their heads examined.) It makes you see things that aren’t there, makes you a fool in public, and ultimately leaves you screaming, struggling to get home, and crying with your head in your best friend’s lap crying with ice cream.

Although Peter’s last words to you were “Never say goodbye, because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting,” you didn’t say goodbye, you left the window open and he left a little fairy dust behind.

Yours truly,

A lost boy no longer lost