Cindy Ellal (standard:humor, 2475 words)
Author: Harold Lorin	Added: Jul 04 2004	Views/Reads: 3746/2366	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Alternate version of cinderella, updated and perhaps more accurate.

Cindy Ella 

Harold Lorin I 

Once upon a time, in New York City, la grande mela, there was a teen-age
girl named Cindy Ella whose widowed father had, after a humble 
beginning, made an great success in the email spam address business. He 
was a sharp man with few friends and the joy of his life was his 
daughter.  Cindy was beau­tiful, knew most of the consonants most of 
the time, was capable of short interchanges, and bore the marks of her 
father’s barbed nature and his giving and generous love. 

It came to pass that the father met, at a special-invitation party at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an elegant lady with two older 
daughters and somewhat reduced cir­cumstances. They married and the 
combined family moved to a Duchy in Europe where the natives sometimes 
wore costumes and the taxes were equally charming. The new step-mother 
and her daughters received appointments at the National University. The 
mother was a Professor of Art History, and her not so beautiful, but 
bright and amiable daughters were, in this order, specialists in 
Cognitive Science and  in Animal Behavior. They were witty, kind 
hearted, and often had long conversations using adjectival phrases and 
sophisticated metaphors. 

The menage installed itself in an ancient  castle rented from an
Aus­tralian newspaperman who also had tax issues. It had not enough 
staff and much of the original plumbing, for this reason not quite 
enough water, unless one counted a muddy mosquito swamp that  had been, 
in prouder and more hostile times, a moat. 

The stepmother and Cindy’s step-sisters worked hard at the University.
The father worked hard avoiding taxes and at a new found interest in 
collecting 17th century Mannerist Slavic paintings that were not 
difficult to find. Local dealers assured him they had incalculable 
market potential. 

“Could be worth anything,” one said. 

“Who knows in 5 years?” asked another. 

Cindy was having a difficult time adjusting. She spent much time in her
room, trying new lipstick colors and watching for pimples. She so tried 
the patience of the local International School, that even the promise 
of a new soccer stadium could not keep her enrolled. The stepmother, to 
correct her appalling laziness, and instill some idea of 
accountability, assigned her some light household tasks. Since general 
provisioning was done by a servant at a mega-supermarket upon whose 
board sat the heir apparent to the crown, Edmund 
Hapsburg-Hoehellenzern-Valois-Hanover- Savoy-Rothschild, Cindy was 
charged with the purchase of the wonderful local cheeses (mostly 
sheepmilk) and sausages the town market offered on Tuesdays. She was 
also assigned the task of collecting ashes for the rose garden from the 
baronial fireplace.  The stepmother used the ashes to sweeten the soil 
around her special teas. 

“Oh, Daddy, it’s so dreadful here,” complained the beautiful Cindy to
her father. 

“What’s so bad?” he asked, “taxes are nothing.” 

“It’s triple dull, dull, dullsville,” she said. 

“Go to Paris for the weekend.” 

“Again. I’ve been to Paris. Paris is dull. Dull. Dull.” 

“Improve your mind,” he said, “collect something.” 

“My mind doesn’t need improving,” she said. 

Her father did not press the issue. 

Cindy complained  so poignantly of the bur­den of her duties at the
castle that the father  spoke to the stepmother about the wisdom, after 
all, of assigning Cindy household tasks. 


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