I WAS TOO SHY TO BE ANYTHING ELSE BUT GOOD

In the year 1912 at around Christmas time a young girl received a book prize for GOOD CONDUCT from her school. LITTLE SNOWDROP and other tales from Grimm was given to her in a beautiful pictorial edition with many illustrations from Nelson's Fireside Library.

The young girl's name was Betty Matthews and she lived in an African colony at the time in the South of the vast African continent that was governed and would be governed still for many years by other nations.

In the year 2009 a woman named Chocolat opened the book and read what Betty had written exactly 97 years ealier. 

Chocolat loved the cruelty and the cleverness of the fairy tales of the Grimm brothers because she grew up with Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood and Little Snowdrop.

But she could not get over the title page, her eyes refused to read further and her mind was hit by surprise and started wandering. The immense power of words had struck again. 

And Chocolat had become a helpless slave of day dreaming once again. The words that chained Chocolat's eyes were: 

" MY FIRST PRIZE BECAUSE I WAS TOO SHY TO BE ANYTHING ELSE BUT GOOD ".

Chocolat thought about Betty and she became very jealous of that sentence.

Had Betty brown, dark or blonde hair? Was she thin or thick? How could she understand so much of the world at such an early stage in her life? Was she beautiful or would she stand in the shade all her life? What did her first ball-gown look like?

Did she have a nice childhood, was she loved enough and did she succeed in staying as shy as was needed in her life to be anything else but good later as well? How often did she get deeply kissed ?

What were her dreams? Did she make them come true? At least some of them ? 

Is she alive? There is a slight chance she is.  A very slight chance.

Chocolat had been a naughty girl during her school years and she had disliked school, loved to learn but disliked the school-house, the teachers, the discipline and everything that came with it. She was rebellious and dis-obeying and loved it to be like that. She most disliked the fact that you had to be there everyday.

But that is all in the past and today as a woman she wants to be like Betty: too shy to be anything else but good.

Because today Chocolat understands that is is simply wonderful to see life like that.

Happy Easter to you all.