Golden Lotus

I wrote my very first story when I was eight years old in the third grade. I had just finished reading my first five hundred page of beautiful, tragic romance novel about a man remembering his past life, in which he had fallen in love with a princess’s handmaiden. However, their love was doomed because the princess herself was in love with the man.

The princess appointed the man as her guard hoping to fall in love. In order to avoid the princess rage, the man and the handmaiden ran away from the castle, with the princess’s soldiers in pursuit. They reached the edge of a cliff, and with nowhere to escape, both decided to jump. Unfortunately, the soldier caught the man’s hand just in time, and the handmaiden fell. The man was taken back to the castle.

The princess, heartbroken that the man did not love her back, was dying of sorrow. The king, in a cruel twist of fate, decided that the man should die alongside the princess in a beautiful glass dome. The man was placed into the glass casket, suffocated, and slowly died beside the princess.

In the man’s next life, he fell in love with a girl who sold flowers, but his parents had arranged a marriage for him with another girl who is a reincarnation of the princess. The flower girl was the handmaiden in her past life. Same as their past lives, the man and the flower girl run far away from the princess and was pursued by the man’s parents and relatives of the princess. At the end, same as the past lives, the couple jumped into the river and drowned. The princess died of a broken heart again.

After finishing the novel, I felt sad as well as inspired by the love story and I was determined to write a story of my own where the man and the flower girl could have a happy ending. In my story, the man was a prince, and the flower girl was the daughter of a wealthy man in the country. The flower girl called the prince the nickname “Golden Lotus as a symbol of their forever love.” The princess in my story was the evil queen who tried again to destroy the love between the flower girl and the man. The evil queen was exiled at the end of the story. The story concluded with the couple having a son, called Golden Lotus Jr and they lived happily ever after.

It took me three days and nearly half of my school exercise book to write. I was happy and satisfied with my work. My first audience were my parents, and the feeling of standing in front of them, awaiting my very first review, was the most exciting moment of my life. I hoped for a few tears of joy or a hug to congratulate me on my achievement.

After reading what felt like forever, both of my parents burst out laughing. I was confused at my parents’ reaction. It’s the greatest love story that I have created and I was sure nothing in my story has indicated about humor. Feeling frustrated and angry, I told them there were not a single word of humor in it. My parents stopped laughing and my mom gave me a hug, My dad said I had done a great job and it’s incredible love story but he told me I had to change the prince’s nickname because it was a bad word in our language.

Only years later did I realize that “Golden Lotus” is a slang nickname for a man’s private parts.