A girls red notebook compelation 2025 version by D.A.Sanford - HTML preview
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Table of Content
Growing can be cruel and just at the same time
The watch’s origin on this world
Parallel universe travel and learning how to handle it
The elderly man’s youngest son wants adventure
Ultimate pleasure is a week old plain cake doughnut
Nothing worse than an old hippie
Prelude
As a child of twelve, I had a red notebook that I needed for school. I was a typical child. My attention span was governed by the wind. A slight distraction and I was off. The notebook fell victim to being left where I was using it last. A lot of those times were when I was sitting on our grassy stoop. I would wait for my friends to come out.
One day there was an elderly man walking by and he picked up the book. I came over to him and looked at my book. He asked me if it was mine. I timidly nodded. With that, he gave it back to me and walked away.
A few days later, I again forgot the notebook at the end of my sidewalk. The same man came by and picked it up. This time he sat and started to write in it. After a little time, I came over to him. My mother noticed and came out to confront him.
He folded up the book and handed it back to my mother.
“I wrote you a tale from my past that I think you would like.”
He then looked at my mother and said
“You need to let your mother read it first. She is looking out for you. She is concerned about my intension. Mom it is a tale of morals, you’ll like it.”
He then walked away.
Mom read it, then she sat down on the stoop. She patted the area next to her and then read me his story.
He wrote
“I was a young widower. The love of my life died in a traffic accident. I thought my life was over. After a few years, I was walking up a large hill when I observed a woman pushing a stroller up the hill just ahead of me. She was a short woman, barely five feet tall. With long white hair.
To anyone, it was obvious that she was struggling so I caught up to her and took over the stroller.
I had a tendency to flatter but I really did not need to. With the tell tale signs, pointed ears, slightly green tinted skin she was a goblin. I really did not need to falsely flatter because I found her attractive.
“You look tired” I tell her “I’ll push this for you.”
In the stroller were a couple of very young goblin children. They were surrounded with what looked like her entire worldly possessions. I pretended that I did not notice.
“Thank you, but why?” she asks, “Why are you helping a goblin? Most humans don’t want anything to do with our kind.”
“Those ones are stupid. I see a person that needs help pushing this stroller up a hill. Just let me lighten your burden.”
She is still wondering but I could see that she truly was grateful.
As we were going up the hill, there were a few men sitting on a park bench. Just looking at them, I could tell that they were going to comment. They were nudging each other and pointing.
When we got beside them, the largest one started the taunts, at me.
“What the heck is wrong with you? Walking with that puke bag let alone pushing its spawn?”
I could see that she had heard this before and was hanging her head. She made a move to take the stroller from me to save me from the ridicule. I stopped her and the stroller. I was mad.
“It sounds like you have a problem with my wife and my children.” I was yelling.
“My wife has more humanity and kindness than all of you combined. Come on dear, let’s go home. Don’t listen to these morons.”
I led her away. As we got out of earshot she looks at me. Bewildered she asks me again.
“Why would you do that? Tell them that I was your wife and these are your children?”
“I will not tolerate those idiots who do not open their eyes and see a beautiful person.”
“You are a rare one then. My last residence, they threw me out because there was a human that wanted the place. That is my life.”
“Would you be open to living with me in my home. No strings other than you will be under my protection. You are not to tolerate people like that. You are to value yourself and your children.”
She moved in with me. For a while she looked like she was walking on eggshells. After a bit of time, she realized that I was real. I meant what I said. I found that I had fallen in love with her and she with me. We were married and I adopted her children as mine.
We had three other children but after thirty years of marriage she passed away peacefully in her sleep. Our five children have been very successful in their careers but make sure that I am never far from their thoughts. I have them visiting almost every week. We all gather together each year on the day she died, visiting our grave site, to talk to her about what has happened and that we think about her. She is buried in my family plot. There is my first wife’s grave, my plot, and her grave.
Never judge someone just because they are different. You may just miss the best. I had a wonderful life with that goblin woman.
My mom finished reading that to me, closed up my book and handed it back to me.
“That was a good story. Honey, I need you to also realize that this is a story. His moral is a good one but it’s a story.”
When she handed it to me, something dropped from the book. I picked it up and found it was a photo. I looked at it then smiled as I handed it to mom.
Mom looked at it and sat back down. The picture was a family photo. There he was sitting next to a short green skinned woman with five sons standing behind them. All of the sons had a hand on their parent’s shoulders. The parents looked old but more than that they looked like they were happy.
Then mom said “Forget what I just said. Let’s make a clear box that we can put here so you can leave your notebook for him to write more tales.
We did just that. His stories were what led me to become a world traveler. I have enjoyed my life and now I want to relay my life and his stories. Never judge someone just because they are different. You may just miss the best.
The journey to my adventures
When I first met the elderly man I was twelve years old. He came by and wrote a tale for me almost every week. With each tale, he would leave some sort of evidence as tantalizing clue that he was writing about may have actually happened.
By the time I reached age eighteen, it was almost an expected thing. I now had a library of red notebooks that filled a large shelf in my room. Each one a cherished treasure. They were the fuel of my adventurer’s dreams.
There came the inevitable day. It had been almost a month since the last time he left a tale. I was extremely worried. You see, after six years of knowing him, I could see that his years were wearing on him. The loss of both his first wife and then his second wife was hard. With his first wife, he had most of his adventures. With his second wife, he only occasionally traveled. He never said what he did for a living.
Most of his tales would have been called flight of fancy. This one is the first one about how he met his first wife..
He wrote
I met my first wife while hiking through a wilderness area in northern Canada. This was a, off the normal, trail that the Alaskan Gold Rush prospectors used during that time. I wanted to trace their route. It was midsummer. I wasn’t about to try this trek during the winter like they did.
While climbing through a particularly rocky area I came upon a small flat area. It looked like it was out of place. The sun shining through the tree canopy fell on what looked like a manicured lawn. It was a pale green grass that was only about an inch in length. I walked to the end of it when I felt the wind coming from behind me.
“How about giving me a hand?”
I turned to see the most beautiful young woman I’ve ever seen. She was standing there but looked like she was carrying a heavy load.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes. Why?”
“This is too heavy for me to carry back to my camp in one trip. If you help me I’ll give you ten percent of its worth.”
She opens her back pack and I see gold. A large back pack filled with heavy gold. Ten percent, I’ll help. We divide it between our packs and I follow her for a mile off the trail. When we get there she unloads the gold. There must be one hundred pounds.
“You’re a life saver. I had to lug this for miles to get to my jump point.”
I have no idea of what she was talking about but I have to ask
“Did you steal this? Are we going to get in trouble for this?”
She answers “Yes and No. Yes I stole it but no we won’t be in trouble, here. I liberated this from a gang of thieves. They probably stole it from others. We will not get in trouble. We sell this through a broker I know that does not ask questions and is forgetful about his book keeping.”
“What about the original owners?” I ask.
“Not a worry. The original owners will never find us. They are not here.”
She again asks “Can you keep a secret?”
This time she does not wait. She shows me a watch she has on her wrist. It looks more like a watch the size of a man’s watch but that is not uncommon.
“The owners are in a parallel universe.”
She points to the watch. She tells me that normally she would be at her home jump point but that the watch told her that this is where she needed to be.
“It told me that I would meet someone special.”
“This is what allows me to go from our universe to other universes. As long as I want and with who I want but up to now I have only gone by myself. There is a little more that I have stashed. I can tell that you don’t really believe me. Want to see for yourself?”
I figure I would call her bluff
“Okay, Lets go.”
We walk back to that grassy spot and she fiddles with the watch. A second later, we were on a plateau overlooking a valley under a pink sky. There was no question that this was indeed another world. She goes over to a hidden space and retrieves some more gold and some uncut gems that would be world class.
“For this run, how about I give you a few of these gems?”
I nod.
We jump back to the meadow.
“I believe that we would make a good team. Want to travel the universe?”
On further writings the elderly man wrote about his travel with the woman, how they came to love each other, how they got married and how she died.
After the month of not seeing him, they arrived at my home. My mother was there and answered the door. There stood five men. We recognized them from the photograph we had on our mantle. They were his grown up children. Different heights but their skin was various shades of light greens. No mistake, they are his sons.
“Our father passed away recently in his sleep. You were a delight to him because he told us about how you always liked his ‘tales’. It was in his will that you should have the watch that his first wife had. He wrote that you would appreciate it.”
I cried at the fact that his tales were done but deep down I knew that he lived a good life and now was at peace with his wives. I showed them the picture he gave me and asked if they would show me his grave site. They took both mom and me to the cemetery in a very large limo.
There was three stones with each of their names on them. I laid flowers on each and thanked each of them for doing this. They said something I did not expect.
“Our father talked about you so much. We worried about him after our mother died but when you came into his life and let him write his tales, you gave him life. We thank you sister, yes we consider you our sister. We will be, if it is alright with you, visiting you and your mother. Could we write our tales of our parent’s life in that red notebook?”
I tell them that I would like that. Then I said.
“I’m eighteen now. My mother knows this. Since I started reading what your father wrote, I wanted to have my own adventures. In a little less than a year, after a survival school I’m going to take, I plan on going adventuring.”
“Then let us take the responsibility of watching out for your mother.”
The youngest, who looked like he was in his mid-twenties said that he wants to adventure like his father and asked if he could come on a few of mine.
I asked “Can you keep a secret?”
Mom was slightly shocked but also comforted. She said to him
“I would feel better if she had someone with her. You look like your father so I know you will be able to keep up with her and protect her.”
They all left us their contact information.
It seems that the limo is not rented. They all own their own businesses but their father was a wealthy man. They, now my brothers, said to me that my mother and I would not need to worry about money. Their father set aside more than enough assets for them to take care of us and they would take care of her as if she was their mother.
Growing can be cruel and just at the same time
It was around my fourteenth birthday. I was at the gangly age where growth was in spirts at the wrong time. There were times that I thought I was not even in control of my own body. Voice changing in midsentence, misjudging distances and force. The only comfort at this time was my determination.
You see, because of all his tales, I have been trying to become fit, not muscular, but agile. I have even been taking martial arts classes to improve my coordination. I want to be an adventurer and go on trips, see exotic sights, and live life to the fullest.
Most of my friends tell me that his tales are flights of fancy but they never have been shown the items he has left behind with each tale. Never have they been there when my mother and I talked with him.
The elderly man has had many a meal that my mother made. They did not see his face the first time she invited him to eat with us. I have never seen that look of both elation and sadness that I saw when he was welcomed into our home.
After that meal, he asked if he could write his tale at our table. Of course, we said yes.
We left him to write while mom and I washed the dishes from the meal. Just before we finished, we heard the front door close.
Returning to the dining room, we found the red book on the table with a brown paper wrapped package. On the package was written,
“Open after you read today’s story. I know that you want to be an adventurer. Be safe.”
I open the book, Finding the new tale
He wrote
We were young and she was already a seasoned adventurer. I used that word loosely because she had a tendency to find objects and liberate them from their nefarious possessors who were obviously not the original owners.
Long story short, she robbed the thieves.
It was on one of our adventures on a planet that she said she had visited a few times to get a lay of the land. She never raided a truly peaceful world. Those were for fun adventures. Maybe normal people would call them vacation but these were intense, adventures.
This was not a planet that she liked. Slavery was normal across the world. Any slave caught trying to escape was publicly executed.
In her travels, she had run into planets like this. She searched out an uninhabited planet, no humanoid life. It was lush and fertile ground. She would liberate what slaves she could get and relocate them to that planet.
Funny thing is, most of the planets like this slave one, the owners had lost the will and knowledge to do work. The slaves knew all manner of skills. When she relocated them, they immediately went to work and were able, in no time, build a sustaining community.
They looked to her as a guardian angel..
We were on this planet for the reason of liberating as many slaves as we could. This owner had very few free overseers. Had to pay them. Slaves would be kept in check by fear.
This one plantation, we would need to just take out the few overseers. It was the first time I saw her wearing a coil of metal on her hip. I have learned not to question her on her armament.
We came close to where the slaves were gathered. It seems that they were about to execute a slave. This overseer was using a machete. The slave had his head secured to a block. As he raised the blade, the coil came off her hip.
The best way to describe it was it was a whip around twenty feet long. Other than the handle, it was a tapered triangular wire. She started to move it and it acted like the most flexible leather whip. She shouted
“Grab the machete.”
This metal whip wrapped around the arm that had the blade and cut the arm off. She then went after the other overseer.
“Get his leg.” And the leg was gone.
As the owner was yelling for someone to move his chair to safety, she told me to get the slaves moving towards the jump point.
“If you want to be free, come with me!” I yelled as I freed the slave from the block.
Every man, woman and child did not hesitate to follow me.
She yells to the owner
“If you want to live, don’t ever buy another slave. I will be back to check.”
Then she follows me to the jump point, opens a jump to her planet and ushers the slaves through.
The people on her planet know that when the jump point opens, there will be people in need of help and orientation to a free life.
The owner was found on that porch sometime later. It seems that he starved to death. No one left to get him inside. No one to care for him.
As for her planet, the settings are still there in her watch. I visit it from time to time with my new family. After all, it is a good lesson for my children to see what freed people can do for themselves. It’s good for them to see that people of their own race live in peace.
The setting on the watch is named goblin planet.
I finish reading it, and only after my mother reads it, do I open the package. Inside was a coil; of triangular metal. Thick at the handle and thin at the tip. I grabbed the handle and it adjusted to my hand.
There was a note attached with the instructions that read
This is a living being. It is living metal. By touching the handle, it will become yours. Just tell it what to do and it will be done. Use this wisely and for justice. Make my first wife proud. I have arraigned classes for you with a whip master. Use what you learn when you practice with this whip.”
I softly say touch my arm and the tip does that, softly.
In the four years between getting the whip and my first adventure, the whip and I became friends.
From the time I read that until I found out that I could, I dreamed about going to the goblin planet.