The Alternate World of Angelica Pickles

There is an alternate world in which Angelica Pickles has no cookies and I can ride without a car seat. Without cookies, there is no Angelica; no milk, no Cookie Monster, no “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” no chocolate chips, much less a cookie jar or treat from mommy. Without Angelica, there’s no Cynthia, no cool Cynthia Playhouse, no manipulation of babies in Aunt Dee-Dee’s house. In this universe, Angelica Pickles sits on the couch with an empty cookie jar.

Angelica has one friend, me. She cries for me in the mid-afternoon.

“Hello, it’s Angelica. Can your mommy drive you here? I’m hungry.”

I can tell by the sound of her voice that someone has eaten all the cookies. In this universe, Angelica can’t get her daddy to buy more.

My mommy and I pull into her driveway in her minivan. In this universe, hippies weren’t the only ones riding in funny looking cars.

Angelica’s daddy straps her into the car seat next to me, she smells like mashed peas. “We’re all out,” she says. “Can we go to the bakery?”

When we get to the bakery, Angelica had to wait for my mommy to unbuckles her. She runs inside and stars through the display glass. Her pigtails are uneven and her dress is covered in dried milk from her morning breakfast. She has a really bad toothache that her mommy and daddy can’t fix, they say it’s a cavity.

My mommy buys Angelica and me a cookie and we go back to my house. I know that she probably doesn’t want to talk. She just wants to eat. My mommy turns on the TV and we watch from the playpen while we eat. We watch Reptar and Captain Blasto.

She’s napping by the time the Dummi Bears comes on. During the theme song, I hear Angelica talking in her sleep. Angelica talks in her sleep and I would let her until she starts crying, that’s just mean. I have to wake her.

When she finally sits up, she immediately reaches for another cookie. She’s drooling so much it gets on the carpet, so she wipes her face as fast as she can.

I sit next to her and watch her eat.

“It’s okay, Angelica,” I tell her, “There’s another place out there where your mommy always gets you cookies. You get chocolate chip, peanut butter too. Your daddy pours you more milk, and Cynthia sits on the table next to your plate.”

Angelica swallows her cookies and looks up.

“And this in this other world,” she asks, “What are you?”
“Angelica,” I say, “Don’t worry about that.”