A story about frustration
Fizzy and the Zip That Would Not Zip
Fizzy has tried eleven times and the zip still will not go up. A story about frustration, and the difference between stopping and stopping for a minute.
3 minutes to read aloud · 😠 Angry
Watch it read aloud · 3 min
Fizzy had been trying to zip up the coat for six whole minutes.
The zip went up one tooth. The zip came off its track. The zip went up two teeth and stuck. Fizzy pulled. The zip did not move. Fizzy pulled harder. The zip moved half a tooth and stuck worse.
Something started fizzing in Fizzy's paws, right up the arms, into the ears.
"Grrr," said Fizzy. "Why won't it WORK?"
Eleven times. Fizzy had tried eleven times, and every single try had been a bit faster and a bit harder and a bit crosser than the one before, and now the zip was properly jammed and Fizzy's eyes were stinging and the coat was about to get thrown across the room.
Mello was nearby, doing something slowly.
"You are fizzing," said Mello.
"I KNOW."
"Shake your paws out," said Mello. "Just shake them. Then stop. Then try again slowly."
"Slowly won't help. Slowly is worse."
"Try it."
Fizzy shook both paws, hard, like flicking water off them. Then stopped. The fizzing did not vanish, but it slid down out of the ears and the arms and went back to being a normal-sized feeling somewhere around the middle.
Fizzy looked at the zip. Properly, this time, instead of through a red fog.
There was a bit of lining caught in it. A tiny flap of it, wedged right in the teeth.
Fizzy had not seen it on any of the eleven tries, because you cannot see anything at all when you are fizzing.
Fizzy pulled the lining free with one finger, and the zip went up in one smooth go, all the way to the top, with a noise like zzzip.
Fizzy stared at it.
"Six minutes," said Fizzy. "Six minutes and it was a bit of fluff."
"That happens," said Mello. "It's not that you're bad at zips. It's that fizzing makes you blind."
Fizzy still fizzes. Fizzy is the fluff who never, ever gives up, and the fizz is part of the same engine.
But now, on try number two, Fizzy shakes out both paws first.
