April was a young girl of much impatience. She was impatient with her friends, her family, and even her pets! However, the thing that made April the most impatient was SPRING! Every December, April would dread the upcoming cold, wanting to skip straight to the season when the flowers bloomed and the butterflies came out, flitting around with the honeybees and dragonflies. This year, though, April was the most impatient that she had ever been. It was a chilling, dreary, morning, March third, and April was complaining.
“WHY, again, can I not just skip the next seventeen days, Papa?” she whined. “ I want it to be the twentieth and I want it to be the twentieth NOW!” MR. Mayflower, April's father, sighed.
“I'm sorry, darling, sweetest, April-pie, but you'll have to wait.” April harrumphed and crossed her arms across her chest. She cocked her hips to the side and raised her brows, as if daring her father to say no to spring again. Fine, if her Papa didn't want to give her spring, she'd have to get it herself…. Or, more easily, bribe her father with some of his favorite cookies. She scampered to the kitchen, opened the cookie tin, and extracted her father's favorite cookie. THIS would most DEFINITELY get her spring! April skipped joyfully to the sitting room and plopped politely down beside her father.
“Papa, would you like a cookie?” April asked innocently, with just a hint of a sly and cunning grin sliding across her face.
“Oh, dearest, darling, April-pie, I would, thank you very much! And-oh look!- my favorite---” Suddenly, though, Mr. Mayflower paused, his cookie-bearing hand halfway to his mouth. He knew this behavior, and he knew it well. He sighed once again.
“April, what do you want?” He questioned tiredly. His daughter had tried this stunt on him too many many times to count, always using food as a temptation. Why, he was like a bumblebees to honey to gingersnap cookies, and his little April knew that well.
“I WANT SPRING!!!” April screeched, no longer in a sweet manner, no longer aiming to please.. “AND I WANT IT NOW!!!”
“I'm sorry, honey, but you'll have to wait.”
The next day, April woke up in a very sour attitude indeed. She was grouchy and puffy-faced, and she yelled at everyone in sight.
“WHERE'S MY SPRING?! I want my spring, and I want it NOW!” she demanded forcefully, glaring at everyone with fiery eyes.
“April, m'dear.” Mrs. Mayflower responded, just about at the breaking point. “I'm sorry, but you'll have to wait!” April couldn't stand waiting anymore, not to mention that she hated that saying, though, so she had what her parents referred to simply as a ‘Vesuvian Tantrum,’ in which her anger bubbled to the surface and erupted. She kicked her legs and wailed at the top of her lungs. Her parents, however, didn't try to calm little April down, as they had in previous incidents like these, instead deciding to just marched determinedly out of the room in perfect synchronization. That would teach her a very valuable lesson indeed!
Three days later and April was still going strong with her temper. She screamed at everyone within a one-mile radius of her house and moped around, sulky, when she wasn't doing that. On the eighth day of March, April wouldn't talk to anyone unless they talked about a plan to get her spring. On March ninth, however, April's best friend, Mai, told her, “You know, April, I have the perfect plan for you to get spring.” At this statement, April's ears perked up, and her frown widened into a mischievous grin.
“Ooooooooo, what is it, Mai?” She asked excitedly but cautiously, as though they would be doing something illegal. Mai grinned widely.
“You go the next eleven days without complaining, and spring will be here before you know it!”
“That is a perfect plan, Mai!” April grinned. “I'll start right now!”
And from then on, April kept her word and was as patient as a three-toed sloth, even past the twentieth of March. She just didn’t see the point of being grouchy and impatient anymore-well, at least, not as much as before!