Blast from the Past: Looking After Lottie (Patreon)

With the help of a borrowed computer game, perhaps Lottie can get her favorite baby-sitter back.

Thomas sits down on the bed with a sigh and takes off his shoes. 'So how old does primary four make her?' he says to Anna. 'Seven?' 

'No way!' I cry, then say softly, 'I'm nine.' 

I hate the way Thomas doesn't talk to me directly. He always talks about me like I'm a baby and can't answer for myself. And I don't believe he thinks I'm only look seven, no way I look like a little kid. I bet he just said that to be mean. 

'Nine, right,' Thomas says, 'big difference,' and he rolls his eyes. 

I feel my face get hot and I want to shout at him or maybe cry but I don't want Anna to think I'm a brat. 

When I was really little, 5 or 6, if I acted out, Anna would call me "a little brat", and I don't want her to think I'm like that at all. I'm hoping that if I behave and do everything I'm told and don't whine, then Anna will see what a good girl I am and she won't want to go back to London. 

Of course Thomas will go by himself but Anna won't be sad 'cause she'll have me and things will be like there were before.

Looking After Lottie is a tale I wrote as part of the "first eleven", AR stories in the early 2000s, when I was already an experienced writer but had only recently discovered the AR community. 

Thanks to some revisions and polishing, Looking After Lottie is part of the Parkdale universe, but the first time I visited these characters, the tale was set in the United States. In truth, Lottie's magical method of regressing Thomas (similar to that other first eleven tale Teething Troubles) isn't a perfect fit for Parkdale. 

After the story ended, I thought we were done with Lottie, but I always had a soft spot for a character who regresses without really knowing what they're doing. In Looking After Lottie, she is a real child, and I think there's something so satisfying in how she gets her favorite baby-sitter back. Thomas is a means to an end, collateral damage, but we might also argue that he gets what he deserves. 

Lottie returned to service in Magic Formula's Messy Boy to take care of her big sister and continues to do excellent work in Fossil's Trick or Special Treat.

Is Lottie a tragic character now, like Carly became, trapped in Parkdale? Like Hannah, escaped to London?  I don't think so. At least, not yet. Lottie has been kept innocent, she is stuck in childhood, but her family loves her and I like to believe that she's still having fun. 

Of course, things change!

I'm happy to report that we'll see Lottie next in a Patreon-exclusive flash fiction, coming very soon.