Memory

When I was in junior high school, I went to a French language themed summer sleepaway camp. The counselor I fell in love with was named Reba, short for Rebecca, and she was plump with long straight blonde hair, and she was really really smart and was going to Cornell on scholarship in the fall. I had a stuffed toy which was a combination of a pegasus and a unicorn -- a winged unicorn, I guess -- and she told me that that was called an "allicorn". It made sense to me, since it had "all" the features. It took me years to realize that she'd almost certainly just been saying "la licorne", the French word for unicorn.

I was just fishing through the bag of stuffed animals from my childhood that I've got tucked in a closet, which I tucked away from their perches inthe guest room when we set up the nursery for Rhys. There are three of these little white horses in the style I remember, two with yellow-gold wings, and one with a horn, but none with both. I wonder if I made this all up. I hope Reba's dreams all came true.