An argument can be made that Jiminy Cricket is the most unique fairy tale creature of them all. With characters such as Tinkerbell, Ariel, and Genie, we must accept our belief in magic in order to allow ourselves to be fully emerged in the tale. Mermaids, fairies, and genies do not actually exist in the reality around us and their appearances in stories confront us with the task of being absorbed well enough in our imagination to manifest them as real while their story is played out. As soon as the last page is flipped or as the credits roll, however, their existence dissipates once again as we return to the real world.

Jiminy’s character almost works in the opposite way. He exists prominently for us in the real world all the time in the form of our conscience. He is unique in the fact that he is more tangible in fairy tales than he is in reality. He is given a physical form that is visible for everyone, and he is given the ability to speak and express freely, and to wander off on his own. In fairy tales, he is more difficult to dismiss or ignore because he is given a voice that can always be heard and a body that can stand in your way. In fairy tales, he can be held in your hands. His body language can impact your reaction and his voice is difficult to silence, because it is his own. He is unique because his existence is far more real in stories than in real life, but even when you turn the last page or you see the credits begin to roll, he is still just as real in your life as he was in the story you were consumed by. In reality, he is tethered to every one of us and he does not have the freedom to wander. In reality, he does not have a physical form and he does not have complete freedom to express or speak. In reality, he is often muted and because there isn’t a face to feel sorry for or a body to hold, he is far easier to dismiss or ignore. He is unique because instead of us having to imagine that he exists for the sake of the story, we are forced to recognize that he already does.

Maybe if he existed in the real world the way he does in stories, we would feel inclined to pay attention to his wisdom more regularly and more intently. With the way he exists as it is, the volume of our peers’ voices is often far louder than his. Our emotions are more easily swayed by someone we can see than they are by him, whom we can not. Maybe if he existed in the real world the way he does in stories, he would be far more difficult to abandon.

Choosing whether to listen to him or not often does not change how much we learn from him; it just changes how we learn. The lessons themselves are interesting in how much can be uncovered and vast in how they can be presented. They can be clear cut straight away or continue to remain foggy years down the line.

I want to share a personal story of a time I played ping-pong with Jiminy where in the end, I learned an enormous amount while simultaneously learning nearly nothing at all.

When I was in grade six, my mom allowed me to dye my hair for the very first time. My hair was cut into three distinct layers; the first falling just below my shoulder blades with the other two tapered longer by about an inch. My top layer was dyed blonde, the middle red, and the under layer a deep brunette. It was stunning and uncommon, and I loved the feeling of originality it granted me. In grade nine, I found myself missing the style and decided to replicate it with different colors. The top layer would be brunette, the middle; a pattern of blonde and purple chunks, and the under layer was a shade of brown the closest to black that my mother would allow. When I had the style done the second time, I had a different hairdresser than I had for the first. She didn’t fully grasp my description and wound up cutting the top layer too short, and each layer was further away from the last than what I had desired. The first layer was cut just below my ears and my final layer reached as far as my mid back. The layers were cut blunt and straight across just as they were the first time, but because of the distance between the layers, it wound up looking like I was wearing three different wigs atop one another. I was dissatisfied with the way it turned out, but I decided to do my best to embrace it, nonetheless.

In grade nine, a new girl enrolled in our school. She was heavier set, had long, thick, black hair, and her wardrobe consisted of items all desirable and favorable in that era. She was from the city and her personality was loud and blunt. It wasn’t long until she found her place among the other students and among other things, her (often cruel) opinions of the other kids assisted in her gaining popularity. I became a frequent target for her ill-intended words with my hairstyle usually being the focal point of her harassment. It got to a point where I couldn’t step into her field of view without hearing her scream “choppy hair!” from the other side of the school. The commentary was always well received by standers-by; the halls would erupt in a roaring laughter whenever she spotlighted my appearance.

In grade nine, the world already weighed heavy on my shoulders even without her help, so her words were knives in my gut, and each cut deeper than the last.

I would return home each day drowning in sadness, and I found my release in sharing the torment I endured from that girl with my mother and my sister. They would both consistently encourage me to stand up to her and consumed by their anger, they would sometimes urge me to fight back with fire. They would suggest calling her out on her own appearance to give her a taste of her own medicine and place her in my shoes.

The idea of handling it in that way made me deeply uncomfortable. It is easy for guilt to rapidly consume me and Jiminy told me that if I gave her a taste of her own medicine, I would be putting a spoonful in my mouth, too. Still, a day came where I just couldn’t take it anymore. Standing up for myself was the only advice I had received… and giving her a taste of her own medicine was the only method I could recall.

I had to go to class. The way to class was down the hall before me and she stood in the middle of my path. When I caught sight of her, I stopped in my tracks as instantly as I would have if I had run into a wall and my instinct was to cower. I prepared to hide until she wandered away, or to take another, longer route just to avoid the inevitable turmoil I would endure, but a sudden fire inside of me demanded I marched straight through the fire before me. I made it past her large group of friends, but just as I stepped passed her, the words boomed from her chest and echoed off the metal lockers:

“Choppy hair!!!”

I duct taped Jiminy’s mouth closed. Heat flushed my body and burned in my chest. My lips moved before my mind ordered them to, and I snapped back:

“You’re fat. Leave me alone.”

Now, what I meant to say in that moment was, “look, it’s really easy to call someone out for the way they look. There are many things about us that are outside our control that we are unhappy with. Personally, I’m not fond of the way my hairstyle turned out, either. I had my hair done a certain way years ago and I wanted to do that again, but my hairstylist misunderstood what I wanted, and this was the result. If I could, I would have had this top layer much longer so that the hairstyle would flow together a lot nicer and if you could see the way I originally envisioned it, I’m sure you would agree that it looks great. Unfortunately, it turned out like this instead and honestly, even without your constant ridicule, I’m pretty unhappy with it. Being that I am thirteen or fourteen and I just had this hairstyle done, I don’t really have the means to go and fix it, so for the time being, it is out of my control and I have to accept it. I brought up your weight only to give you an example of what it feels like to have someone comment negatively on a feature about yourself that you may not be comfortable with addressing so that you could understand the kind of heartache you’ve been causing me every single day. I needed you to be aware of the pain you’ve been inflicting on me so that you would hear me when I say, leave me alone.”

Instead, as soon as the words fell from my mouth, I knew that all she probably heard was,

“Really mean thing. Leave me alone.”

Guilt hit me so hard and fast it would have been more bearable to take a baseball bat to the nose. I instantly wanted to hit “undo”, but I wasn’t equipped in that moment to begin fixing what I had just done. My stomach filled with bricks and curdled like spoiled milk. Tears immediately flooded my eyes and my entire body vibrated aggressively and uncontrollably. The only thing I was able to do in that moment was walk away from it as swiftly as possible. I cried harder about standing up for myself than I ever had from taking her abuse. I marinated in guilt until I wreaked of it and I didn’t get any sleep that night. After excruciating hours of stewing in my shame, I finally found the courage to ask Jiminy what he thought I should do.

I didn’t like his answer.

He told me I should apologize to her.

That won’t work. That will just give power back to her and even though what I had done was causing me agony, apologizing might reverse my affect on her, but it would tell her that I would allow her to continue her haste by proving to her that I was so spineless, I would apologize for standing up for myself. Worst of all, apologizing wouldn’t erase my guilt. I would continue feeling bad for what I had said while also enduring again, her bullying.

Nope, can’t apologize. I told Jiminy I wouldn’t, and eventually, I went to bed with that decision made.

Then, the next morning arrived and I discovered that going to school and walking among her was way worse than thinking about going to school and walking among her. That day may have been the worst experience of my time in school ever. Every time I caught a glimpse of her face or heard the sound of her voice, the world came to a halt. My bones became heavy and my skin froze. I felt nauseous and light-headed, my heart pounded, and I forgot how to breathe. That feeling was far more detrimental than the looming feeling of her snide commentary – which did stop, by the way. I passed her by on several occasions that day and not once did she make a single remark about me or my choppy hair. Still, I didn’t get to enjoy that success. I felt disgusting. I was paranoid and anxious, angry with myself, and unbelievably ashamed.

At the end of the day, I saw her in the gym, and I asked her if we could talk. She looked very confused, but she agreed to listen.

I apologized.

As soon as I began talking, I could hear the quiver in my voice, and I knew I was on the verge of crying.

She told me she didn’t even remember what I had said the day before. She told me she didn’t realize how badly she had been hurting me and she apologized, too.

That’s when I became very confused, but she was warm and inviting when she spoke to me and I accepted the resolve for what it was despite struggling to understand how it even happened. From that day on, her and I were civil, and she never made an unkind comment towards me again. She assured me that I never hurt her and seemed to find my massive guilt ridiculous. Years later, she and I even became friends.

I had previously said that I learned a lot from that situation while simultaneously learning nearly nothing at all. I’ll go a little deeper into that now.

I learned how not to handle things, according to my own psyche. I learned that it is in my best interest to always pay attention to Jiminy, because when I neglect him, he finds a way to nuzzle in close to my eardrum before he plays his legs like a violin. I learned that there will always be several ways to handle a situation, but not all of them will work well for me. I learned that while there are lessons both in listening to Jiminy and ignoring him, the way that each type of lesson can impact you is vastly different. (Between you and me, to this day, I still feel the stones of shame settle in my stomach whenever I tell this story.) Most prominently, because I ignored him and then listened to him so close together, having the contrast of impact painted so clearly for me, I learned how far more rewarding the resolution can be when you decide to do the right thing. I was able to feel good by the end of my second decision, and I disallowed myself to feel good as a result of my first. These are the ways I had learned a lot.

The way I learned almost nothing is a little more complex. If I were to return to that moment when I saw her at the end of the hallway as who I am now, I know I would handle it better, and that I could have handled it well. With whom I am now, I have the tools of confidence, self-esteem, and a well-rounded psyche at my ready. In fact, if I could have been who I am now, her comments wouldn’t have phased me nearly as prominently as they did back then. The hurt would have been far less, and for the most part, I don’t think it would have bothered me at all. I probably would have handled it a lot sooner and when I did, I would have been calm and respectful and the entire situation would have fizzled out long before it could have ever reached its peak.

However, the person I was in grade nine was broken, timid, afraid, and small. In grade nine, I didn’t believe in myself in nearly the same capacity that I do now. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to remain rigid in my position if I even suspected the slightest sign of push back. I wouldn’t have had the ability to say when enough was enough, and that day in the hallway, if I didn’t explode, nothing would have ever changed for me. Without that explosion, the only thing I knew how to do was remain silent and keep my head down, so I would have endured that girl’s ridicule until the final day of school, and it would have continued to hurt me more with each day. With whom I was back then, I think that the way I handled it was the only way I could have. Even though I instantly hated what I had done, and even though what I did hurt me far greater than the girl ever did, I believe that my abrupt fiery reaction was the only thing that would finally end it, according to who I was and what I was capable of at that time. In that way, that is how I learned nothing at all, because even though the experience brought a lot of realizations to the forefront of my mind, I couldn’t apply any of them to the situation I had just been in. That situation taught me lessons where even if I knew them before, I wouldn’t have been able to apply them to that situation. Every lesson I learned from standing up to the girl who commented on my hair would have rendered useless as soon as I needed to stand up to that girl who commented on my hair. What a paradox. The only way out for me was through and going through led me to learn a great deal about myself, but it also resulted in me feeling guilty telling the story more than a decade later.

An argument can be made that Jiminy Cricket is the most unique fairy tale character of them all. He is unique in the fact that he is more tangible in fiction than he is in reality, but he is also unique in that he is far more complex in reality than he could ever be in fiction.