Recently I uncovered a treasure trove of nearly-forgotten stories and essays written between 2011 and 2016, when I was doing lots of creative writing courses and the like. Most aren’t of the same calibre as what I aim to share here, but this little piece I found quite charming. I’ve always loved writing for children and young people—my first full-length novel was a young adult sci-fi romp—and I really ought to get back to it in the future. Adults can be rather drab, don’t you agree?
Anyway, I thought this story deserved something better than eternal consignment to the digital purgatory of my old laptop’s hard drive. Please leave a like or comment if you enjoyed it. And if you’re a children’s book illustrator, or you know of one, hey—don’t be a stranger.
Artwork entitled If I Had a Tail… by Chris Macias, published in 2016 on Behance.
I was five when I first noticed that I had a tail. Don’t know how I never saw it before, but that’s life for you. Mum says it’s always full of surprises.
I was a little surprised to begin with, of course. I mean, not everybody has a tail. Nobody that I knew, anyway. But then I got to thinking. Having a tail could be a pretty great thing. I mean, kangaroos have tails. It helps them to hop really well, or something like that. Monkeys have tails, and they use them to hang from trees. Heck, even fish have tails, and they can swim like nobody’s business. My tail isn’t exactly like those tails, but it is furry, it is strong, and it is long. I could use it for things, too.
So I figured that having a tail was all around pretty good. I used it to hop around my house. I used it to climb the tree in my backyard. I even used it to swim around in the bathtub, although I didn’t get very far. Still, it was better than swimming in a bathtub with no tail. I mean, most humans don’t have tails, right? They just have butts. And butts aren’t good for much except sitting. If you can have a butt and a tail, well, then you can hop, climb, and swim as well as sit around. That’s how I figure it, anyway.
I’m not saying having a tail is for everybody. It gets caught in things more often than I like. Those automatic sliding doors at the grocery store are the worst. I have to just stand there and wait until someone else comes for the door to open again. Sometimes it drags in the grass or the mud, and Mum makes me wash and comb it. I don’t even like combing my own hair—imagine how bad it is having to comb an entire tail!
It also isn’t so good for when I go to church. Being in the pew is hard because there’s nowhere for my tail to go, so the three people beside me have to put it on their shoulders. Most people are really nice about it, but still. Having a tail on your shoulder for a whole church service can be distracting. Plus, Mr. McLarry always has to sit on the right side of the church now, when he used to always sit on the left, close to where we sit. He said he was allergic to the fur on my tail, I think. We offered to move for him, but he said not to worry about it. But I don’t think he really likes sitting on the right side so much. The Pattersons sit on the right, and everybody knows their son smells like cheese. Which is fine if you like how cheese smells, but Mr. McLarry doesn’t. He says he’s allergic to that, too. But he must be less allergic to cheese than to the fur of my tail, because he still sits on the right every Sunday.
What’s really strange is that my teacher says all humans used to have tails. Not just in olden times, when we were monkeys. Baby humans have them, too, at least for a while. She showed me a picture of a tiny little baby inside its mum’s tummy and pointed to a tiny little bump. ‘That’s a tail’ she said, smiling at me. But I wasn’t so sure. It didn’t really look like a tail to me, and the baby didn’t really look like a human to me, either. Sometimes grown-ups just say things to make you feel better.
But, the way I figure it, having a tail when you’re a kid is definitely something special—that’s for sure. Whenever I get new pants, the first thing Mum does is cut a hole in the seat for me to poke my tail through. That’s pretty special. I also get a bedroom all to myself. That’s pretty special, too. I used to share a room with my brother, but I had to move because my tail kept waking him up while we slept. It wasn’t a problem when I was small, but when I grew big, my tail was so long that it would flick all the way across his bed and hit him in the face! Mum said that enough was enough—it was time for my tail and I to get our own space.
Sometimes I think that my tail has a mind of its own. It chased me around the schoolyard once. Everyone laughed because they thought that I should have been chasing my tail, not the other way around, but I didn’t think it was very funny. Another time, it kept knocking the books off the shelves at the library. Every time I turned around it would hit the books and they would all fall down. It happened so much that I thought my tail was doing it on purpose. It got so bad that the librarian had to give me a big roll of tape so that I could stick my tail to my back!
But even when it’s causing trouble, I know that my tail is my friend. It keeps me warm while I sleep. It helps me through my day with all kinds of things—painting, writing, lifting, reaching, dusting, sweeping, catching, throwing, and even tickling. Best of all, whenever I need a hug, there’s always something soft and cuddly close by.
If I’m honest, it can be a bit lonely having a tail. I mean, not many other humans have tails. Not anymore, anyway, if my teacher is right about babies. So, in a way, nobody really understands what it’s like to be me. Nobody understands what it’s like to be a kid with a tail. People are nice, people are kind, and people say, “Oh, wow! Look at that tail!” but they never seem to want to have tails of their own.
Once, I made these tails out of long ropes. I brought them to school to show everyone. I made enough for everybody in my class to take one home and wear it. I showed them how to put it on, how to play with it, how to make it dance, and how to keep it from getting caught in automatic sliding doors. Everybody thought that it was really fun. But, the next day, no one showed up to school with their tail still on. They had all left them at home because, as much as they liked having tails, they liked having just plain old butts even more. It made me a little bit sad when that happened. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but still. It felt like nobody could ever quite understand what’s special about having a tail. Maybe it wasn’t so special after all.
That’s why I’m so happy that I met Kim. Kim is a new student at our school, and I think she’s great. She doesn’t have a tail, but she does have a really, really, really long tongue. When she sticks it out, she can shoot it all the way across the classroom and stick it to the other wall! I’ve never met anybody who could do that before. The kids in the other class hadn’t either. When they heard about it, they said, ‘You’re lying!’ They said their teacher said humans don’t have long sticky tongues. They said it would be disgusting if they did. Kim didn’t say anything. She just stuck her tongue out at them. Boy, did they get a surprise.
Not too many kids talked to Kim after that. But I did. The first day she was there, we played together for our first recess, ate lunch together at lunch, and played together again at second recess. I think that we get along great. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have a tail, and I don’t know what it’s like to have a long tongue, so we decided to teach each other. The second day she was there, I brought another one of the rope tails I made to school, and she brought a big party noisemaker—the longest one I’d ever seen! We traded and tried them out. I put the noisemaker to my mouth and blew it so it looked like I had a big long tongue, and she put the rope in her belt loops so it looked like she had a big long tail. We played like that all day.
Then it was time to go home. I brought the noisemaker back with me to my house, and she brought the rope back with her to her house. I can’t wait to see if she wears her tail tomorrow.
Mum says it’s going to be a surprise.