Once upon a time, a belligerent, boisterous blonde girl of sixteen lived on a farm and traveled the rural pageant circuit.
She loved to wear tiaras, eat, and play with pigs. She also loved taking and eating things that were not hers.
She always slurped up her little brother's cup of Juggy Chunks before he could eat any during Saturday supper. She always stole her mother's pearl earrings before pageants to add "that extra sparkle" to her victory tiara. And she always stole her fourth-cousin-twice-removed Anne Maria's hairspray before pageants to make her puffy blonde locks stay curly for as long as possible.
It was a shame that her conniving, competitive, thieving heart soured what could have been a very decent person. Despite this not-so-sweet attitude, however, the girl's parents (who were not very good at naming) named her Sugar-locks.
One day, Sugar-lock's parents drove to town to sell her pet cow Grease Pig. Sugar-locks was not very good at naming either. The trait was probably hereditary.
"I love you, Grease Pig!" she shouted through tears as her parents' pickup truck sputtered out the driveway. As she waved furiously at the cow that was getting smaller and smaller in the distance, Grease Pig mooed a sigh of relief. Grease Pig would never have to worry about having cheap, red drugstore lipstick smeared across its face or glitter dumped over its eyelids for "beauty," as Sugar-locks put it.
When they left, Sugar-locks decided to take a walk. She needed some fresh air to take her mind off of losing her favorite pet cow. Looking for some roadkill supper in the forest even though roadkill would be in the street, not the woods (although we've established that Sugar-locks is not the brightest rooster in the barn), she stumbled upon a cottage.
The cottage was two-storied, made of brick, and cottage-y. The cottage-y cottage stood out to Sugar-locks because the door was slightly ajar. But instead of respecting the inhabitants of the cottage and not entering the house, Sugar-locks pranced right in.
Immediately, the atrocious, rotten stench of Juggy Chunks tickled Sugar-lock's nose. Three jugs of the expired meat, eggs, and mayonnaise sat in a neat little row on the kitchen table. Sugar-locks dashed to it and inhaled the largest cup first, then winced. "That was hotter than a hog's mouth on a summer day!" She exclaimed. She slurped up the second cup next. "Yikes! That was colder than a frozen apple fritter!" Downing the last cup, she gasped in amazement. "Mmm! That was just right!"
Having enjoyed her afternoon snack, Sugar-locks looked across the kitchen to the living room, in which a neat little row of three rocking chairs sat. She skipped over into the living room. "Ooh, sugarfoot," she sighed. "I'm plain tuckered out, I could go for some sittin'." She plopped herself down into the largest chair. "This chair is so hard, it's kickin' my bunions into overdrive!" she yelled. So she sat in the second-largest chair, then frowned. "I don't know what I was doing all that hollerin' for, earlier. This chair is softer than a mud-pie wrapped in a blanket of my Granny's quilts!" Finally settling herself down into the smallest chair, she reclined and smiled. "That's the ticket! It ain't too hard or too soft. It's just right!"
After reclining in the smallest chair, Sugar-locks yawned. "Oh, boy. I'm really tired now. I oughta take my afternoon nap. Hmm...," she looked up the stairs and saw the door to a bedroom. Perfect, she thought. Moseying herself on out of the chair, Sugar-locks made her way to the cottage's second story. A room with three beds, all in a neat little row, awaited her, as if beckoning her to sleep in them. "Your wish is my command, comfy-lookin' beds!" she told the beds, which of course did not, because they could not, reply.
She hopped into the biggest bed. "Youch!" she yelped. "This bed is harder than my noggin, and that's sayin' something!" She said this boastfully, although most people (of course, not Sugar-locks) would view this hard-headed trait as a negative. She then plopped down onto the second-biggest bed. "Ooh wee, I'm practically sinking into this bed! It's softer than that raccoon liver me and Papaw ate for dinner last night." Still dissatisfied, Sugar-locks reclined in the smallest bed. She sighed in comfort. "Not too hard, not too soft, just right!"
With that assertion, Sugar-locks fell into a deep sleep, complete with earthquake-shattering snores that could, and did, alert every bear in the forest.
Because Sugar-locks was asleep, she didn't hear the family of three bears walk into their cottage. Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear were astonished at their empty jugs, swaying rocking chairs, and unmade beds.
"The intruder licked our jugs clean!" whispered Papa Bear in shock.
"They broke my chair!" Baby Bear cried in between sobs.
"These beds are unmade and filthy!" gasped Mama Bear.
Most especially, the three bears were shocked to find a girl who snored loudly in Baby Bear's bed.
An hour later, Sugar-locks opened her eyes, still heavy with sleep. When they were fully opened, she hollered. The stunned family of bears screamed back.
In the bear world, a bear that screams out of shock sounds frightened and fearful. In the human world, however, these screams sound like aggressive, animalistic growls. Sugar-locks, belonging to the latter world (despite her appearance suggesting otherwise), registered the shocked screams as attacking bears.
"Get away from me! Mamaw! Papaw! Uncle Ernest! Auntie May! Help!" Sugar-locks threw the bedsheets off her back, zoomed past the astonished bears, and ran two miles back to her farm.
The family of bears blinked and alerted the Grizzly Police of the trespasser.
Sugar-locks, in her hasty escape and sloppy breaking-and-entering, left the cottage doors opened, the cottage jugs empty, the cottage chairs broken, and the cottage beds messy.
In her version of events that she would tell her family at dinner that night, though, she was a helpless victim of a bear attack. Sugar-lock's mother, who was a fame-hungry stage mom living vicariously through her daughter in every pageant, agreed that it would be a very good sob story to tell the judges at the upcoming Little Miss Rodeo Hillbilly Pageant that summer.
The suitable moral from this story would be to never enter people's, or bears', cottages without their permission. Sugar-locks, however, was a thickheaded and stubborn person. No lesson could possibly reach that thick of a head, that hard of a noggin, or that deaf of an ear. So, instead, Sugar-locks learned to apply grease to her teeth when smiling for the judges at pageants: That way, Sugar-locks's teeth would look shiny and score her bonus points in the style category.
And she lived sloppily ever after.