The Pirate Girl

She sits alone in the room, five and so certain she knows everything is to know, oh so certain that she need not learn anything else about the world because she already knows so much about the world she wished she had. Her mother and father worry, you know, worry that perhaps they shouldn’t have shown her that movie. That movie with the woman who swings around a deadly blade that her beloved fiancé crafted for her with his own blood, sweat, and tears.

But it’s too late. The damage is done. She wants little to do with modernity. She’ll use the television, of course, to watch that movie, and perhaps she’ll ask her father to buy her a real sword of her own from the computer. He doesn’t, but the plastic consolation is good enough for her.

“If I could, I’d go back to then,” she tells her grandmother when the old woman visits. Of course, this happens at least once a week, but the girl acts like it’s something new every single time. “I’d never be caught. I’d be the best pirate of them all!”

All she does is watch the movie on loop, pretend she’s a pirate herself, eat, and sleep. Her parents’ friends assure them, “It’s just a phase. She’s just a pirate kind of kid,” but it’s hard to believe that when she keeps telling them how important it is to keep up on their Vitamin C in order to avoid a slow, scurvy death. Her grandmother tries to convince her to watch a different movie. The young girl agrees out of reluctance, and her grandmother feels accomplished. At last, she would finally grow out of this silly phase—though she’s still only five—and move on in life to something a little more substantial.

Then, the pirate comes on screen, and the grandmother realizes that she chose the wrong movie to show. The princess runs away with the pirate, and when they kiss, the girl does not look away. She instead points to the screen and says, “I’ll marry someone like that too.” The grandmother huffs and hobbles away into the kitchen to make some sort of runny dessert that is only eaten out of pure pity.

Now, the girl watches two movies, switching between the two intermittently. Pirate adventure, pirate romance, adventure, romance. Once, she tried to figure out to watch both films at the same time, but she was stopped because it was “three o’clock in the morning.”

“There are other things in the world than pirates,” her parents tell her, but it’s too late. She’s figured out how to spell pirates, and when they aren’t looking, they can hear the click-clack of her typing “P-I-R-A-T-E-S” into the Google search bar. The confident clack of the enter key. She’s done it. She’s figured out Google just to find out as much information about pirates as possible.

Her uncle shows her yet another movie with pirates. She adores it and adds it to her film rotation. The clanging of swords coming from the television gives everyone else a headache.

Her friends ask to play the classic game of “House.” She agrees only if they’re kidnapped by pirates before the game gets too dull. Her friends agree if only so they can have someone else to round out their small group. Before long, they know as much about Blackbeard as she, and they all talk their parents’ ears off about his ship and everything she told them. Later, when she learns about Teuta of Illyria (Two-Ta, she calls her, though eventually, she rectifies this as she grows older), all her friends can soon talk about the pirate queen with almost as much knowledge.

But her friends tire of Blackbeard and Bonny and Rackham and Delahaye soon enough. They stop inviting her to play with them. So, without anyone to drag her outside for House Turned Pirates, she constructs a cardboard ship and sails across the living room floor and kills her enemies—more commonly known as Snuggles the Stuffed Cat and Mr. Green-Eye the Plush Otter—where they stand. She has no crew. She sails alone. She later adds a few stuffed animals to her crew once her mother mentions offhandedly that it would be impossible for one person to sail a ship all by themselves.

And then, one day, she stops. It shocks everyone. Her friends stare at her as she asks if she can join them in their new game of “Vampire House,” just waiting for the moment when she suggests the Vampire Family be kidnapped by pirates halfway through, but no such suggestion comes. Her parents all but cry tears of joy when she sits down and watches a princess movie that has absolutely no pirates, though they do worry for the slightest moment that she may become fascinated with the idea of getting animals to talk to her. Her grandmother pinches her cheeks and says she’s such a grown-up girl now, though she is only eight now, and soon she will be everything all the boys can think about. Her uncle sneaks her a “real pirate telescope” that he had found at an antique shop, and she accepts it with a smile.

When alone, she reads pirate books and watches pirate movies and hopes against all hope that perhaps, one day, through some sort of miracle, she’d find a way to sail with these heroes she does so dearly adore, but alas, time passes with no sign of such a miracle ever happening. So, she grows older and keeps her dreams of pirates to herself as she goes to school and graduates and lies through her teeth about how happy she is to be going to college and graduates with majors in history and theatre.

Then, to the distant groans of her family and friends, she—now twenty-two—gets a job at an amusement park in another state, playing the role of the charismatic lady pirate day-in and day-out. It’s not exactly what she was hoping for as a child, but perhaps, for the time being, it’s close enough.