Welcome to Goop Tales, episode 127 Manipulata and the Uni Salt Flat Mirror. That's a mouthful.

I'm Maria Kalinchini, the founder, writer, and narrator behind these original audio stories.

Goop Tales is a storytelling podcast for children, created to ignite your imagination,

increase your vocabulary, broaden your horizons, and introduce you to different cultures

and exotic animals,

while also sparking important conversations about character traits.

And today's story was created by me.

And by that, I mean I was the creator of the goop name Manipulata.

Usually I do a listener-generated goop name,

but I could not resist doing Manipulata.

And I'm going to tell you why and inspiration for her.

So Manipulata is obviously a goop that loves to manipulate.

I was playing pickleball recently with some friends.

So it was all the mom friends of some girls that were playing,

that were on the side as well.

I think they were like 9 and 10 and some other friends.

The younger girls were supposed to pick up the balls. They were like nine and ten and some other friends the younger girls were supposed to pick up the balls they were like ball girls on the court one of them did not want to do it so she decided to

manipulate her mother who was playing pickleball and her mom asked her to get the balls, and she was like, um, no, only if you will let me

play at so-and-so's house after.

And her mother just kind of ignored her.

And then she went on and on, and she said, let me play, let me play, let me play.

Her mom just kind of rolled her eyes at the rest of us.

...