Jack vs Jill

 My chiropractor and I have meaningful conversations while he’s adjusting my vertebrae and cracking my neck. Today we got on the topic of nursery rhymes. We got to kicking the whole genre around while he poked and prodded my spine.

“It would be hard to write a book about Jack and Jill,” he said. “There’s not a lot of back story there.”

“I bet she pushed him,” I said, as the air whooshed out of my lungs. “That’s why he fell down the mountain.”

“Or, when he fell, she could have been laughing so hard that she tripped and lost her balance, too,” he said.

Could be. If so, it serves her right for laughing at his clumsiness. If it was me, I'd have been laughing about that crown he was wearing.

I told the doctor I’d see him again in a couple of weeks and went home to research the ill-fated couple on the internet. I love a good writing challenge. Expanding on the misadventures of Jack and Jill would be fun.

But when I got on the internet, I found out someone beat me to it. Louisa May Alcott, who authored Little Women, published a novel with the very imaginative title of Jack and Jill, way back in 1880. Some of her fans described it as better than either Little Women or Little Men. 

That’s a high bar, but I’m not sure they’re right. I read the Cliff Notes and I think Louisa missed the point. Ms. Alcott thought it was a love story, and when the two childhood friends grew up she said they got married.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not buying it. I decided to start at the beginning because I wanted to get to the bottom of this. So to speak.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.

First of all, who told them to head up that hill together? We don’t know. Maybe they were bored and got thirsty. Or they wanted to go swimming and this was the final pail that would fill their inflatable pool. What I really want to know is the name of the genius who decided that the place to install a water fountain was way up there at the top of a hill. I’m no civil engineer, but even I know they should have fired that guy.

Maybe Jack was Jill’s brother. Even her twin. Or maybe he was her third cousin on her mother’s side. Mother Goose doesn’t tell us and that really bugs me. Louisa May didn’t know the truth either, but she decided they were best friends who eventually tied the knot.

Please. That's so predictable.

Whatever their relationship, there’s an even bigger mystery that’s hiding here in plain sight:  Jack.Fell.Down. 

Doesn’t that strike you as being suspicious? All the boys I’ve ever known fall down because they’re wearing roller blades or riding electric scooters or climbing trees. They don’t fall down walking up hill. If you ask me, there's something squirrely going on here. 

I could see Jill falling down. Back when this microstory was written, girls jumped rope wearing floor length dresses made from yards and yards of gingham and flounce. That’s just asking for trouble. Have you ever tried to walk uphill in a dress that drags the ground? I have. You’ll step on the hem every time. I’m just saying. It wouldn’t take much for Jill to come tumbling after.

So why was Jill the second kid to roll downhill and not the first? I know why. Because she needed an alibi.

Think about it. Boys are athletic. They all have ADHD. You could harness more energy from one nine-year-old boy than you can from an entire field of solar panels. Jack was probably doing somersaults while they headed uphill to forage for that bucket of H2O. He was running circles around poor Jill while she sweated under the weight of all that fabric she was wearing. Maybe Louisa May was right in her assumption that someone was in love, but I can guarantee you it wasn’t Jill. She was spitting fire watching Jack show off on that uphill journey until finally . . .

She just couldn’t take it anymore.

And she pushed him.

That’s right. Jack fell down and broke his crown because Jill pushed him. And she wasn’t sorry, either.

She wouldn’t have been the first girl to push a boy down a hill for annoying her. Buttercup did it to Westley in The Princess Bride, remember? She didn’t know it was Westley at the time, but when she figured it out, what did she do next? She threw herself into the wide open air and went tumbling after him.

I’m telling you. Women are a lot more dangerous than they get credit for. But in this case, based on circumstantial evidence and hearsay, the reason Jill came tumbling after is because she knew that if she got road rash, too, there would be no one to convict her. Jack couldn’t prove she pushed him. Not when she came home bleeding just like him.

So, there it is. Mystery solved. Jill and her vast supply of petticoats went tumbling head over heels after Jack so no one could point a finger at her for breaking his crown. And she would have been in the clear, too, except Mother Goose went on to tell us the rest of the story.

Up Jack got and home did trot as fast as he could caper;
Went to bed to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper.
Jill came in and she did grin to see his paper plaster;
Mother, vex’d, did whip her next for causing Jack's disaster.

He ratted her out after all. I knew he would. And I knew she did it. And apparently his mother not only knew what Jill was capable of, she also knew that Jill was Jack's sister. Somebody should have alerted Louisa May Alcott to that tiny little detail.

Maybe the next time Jill has to follow her brother up the hill for a heavy bucket of water, instead of losing her temper on the way up, she'll wait until they reach the top and then shove him into the well instead down the hill.

It’ll give her time to come up with a better alibi.

With thanks to ChapstickAddict for the use of the terrific photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: galvanized bucket sink | chapstickaddict | Flickr