Once upon a time, there was a girl named Aden, and she was 9 years old…
I’ve been telling personalized Once Upon A Time stories at bedtime lately. The story-telling has kind of usurped book-reading, but I figure it’s a phase, so I decided not to sweat whether or not books will make a come-back. They will. I’m sure of it.
Besides, the last time I read the Peter Pan book to Cael (4), he told me that it was irresponsible for Peter and Wendy to fly the pirate ship home at the end. When I asked why, he explained that:
- Using enough pixie dust for a whole pirate ship is wasteful.
- Flying over houses in a pirate ship could break roofs and make dust and rocks fall down.
- It’s just not good.
Excellent points.
Make-believe stories allow us a little more flexibility to correct some of the horrid mistakes made by classic authors. We can invent stories that make WAY more sense than Peter Pan, and they’ll be conscientious about pixie dust use and roof maintenance. Take that, J. M. Barrie.
This is one of our stories this week:
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Aden, and she was 9 years old.
One day, Aden received a special gift… a beautiful silver necklace with a little, white pegasus charm.
The necklace had a secret that only Aden knew. When she rubbed the charm nine times with her nose… POOF!… it transformed into a real, live pegasus.
Aden had to be very, very careful to transform her pegasus only outside, because it’s hard to make a pegasus not poop on Mommy’s floor, and no one wants to see Mommy upset by pegasus poo.
Aden nodded sagely.
Aden leaped upon her pegasus and flew to the Land of Fairy Princesses.
The Land of Fairy Princesses is a land full of… um… fairy princesses.
Yeah, that’s it. Every house in every town in the entire land had a fairy princess.
That’s what you call “Fairy Princess Saturation.” Do you know what saturation means, Aden?
Aden didn’t. She also didn’t care, but, frankly, that’s never stopped me. I subjected her to a 5-minute saturation explanation. I like to take the “teachable moment” concept and drive it into the ground with a sledge hammer. Free fun for Mommy.
Eventually, I took pity on her and continued the story.
When Miss Aden arrived in the Land of Fairy Princesses, she was the only regular girl in the whole bunch.
All the fairy princesses were jealous. Their fondest wish was to be regular.
Aden had a great idea! She pulled out her magic wand (because who doesn’t travel with a magic wand?) and turned every single fairy princess into a regular girl.
The former fairy princesses were so grateful! They could finally go to school, wear blue jeans, have sleepovers and eat macaroni and cheese.
“Hooray!” said the regular girls.
They were so pleased that they elected Aden Queen, and she ruled the whole Land.
And that is the story of how Aden became Queen of the Land of Fairy Princesses, which shortly thereafter was renamed the Land of Regular Girls.
They all lived happily ever after, except for the person who was in charge of cleaning up after the pegasus… but that’s a story for another time.
The End
Aden does indeed have a pegasus necklace.
I caught her later rubbing her nose on it.
Way to melt a Mommy’s heart, Miss Aden.
16 responses to “Once Upon A Time”
[…] my house, we make things up. You know. Like bedtime stories. And rules about not tripping each other on the stairs on purpose anymore. And whether or not one […]
[…] I tell them a story. Sometimes, I read from a book. But most of the time, I invent something Once Upon A Timeish in my head. Which, if you’ve been reading for any time at all, you know is a very, very […]
Actually… are we so sure that the pirate ship DOES fly? Keeping a Flight Ship
And here’s more Peter Pan for you/him. It’s a book based on Barrie’s own idea for more adventure: Click!
And here’s a novel JUST for mommy… really, it’s not meant for kids. A grand ‘What if?’ tale sending the characters in a different direction entirely, while deeply rooted in Barrie’s themes. Click!
BELIEVE!
First link didn’t work:
Keeping a Flight Ship
My mommy never told me such great stories! And neither did my boys’ mommy. But their daddy might have.
Aw! But I KNOW your boys’ mommy read them a LOT of books. And she reads books to my kids, too!
no pegasus-size diapers? wouldn’t that save the world a whole lot of trouble? yep, that’s my solution to every problem really: just slap a diaper on it and change it when it’s time… ah, life with babies! 😉
ps: love the story idea, my dad used to do that when we were little, we called them ‘stories of the top of dad’s head’ (only in Dutch it sounds WAY better, I’m afraid the pun got lost in translation there, you know, kinda like with the frog and all 🙂
LOVE the diaper solution! There’s a lot of crap in the world we could clean up this way. Why has no one thought of this? In fact, can someone, somewhere PLEASE put a diaper on Gaddafi??
P.S. Such a super sweet story about your dad! On second thought, maybe we can take over the world with sweet stories like this. Think it could work?
it might… so how would we go about that I wonder?
ps: I don’t think there’s a diaper big&strong enough to absorb the likes of Gadaffi, sadly…
We didn’t know how good we were at giving Christmas presents until we gave Aden that pegasus necklace for Christmas… 😉
Oh my gosh. Is there any way you’d let me blog that story?? Any way at all??
And, yes. Yes, you are.
TOTALLY laughing! Not sure how you can tell that story and keep the identity secret (can you think of a brilliant way?), but it is a story that’s pretty much too good to go untold.
Like I said, totally laughing. Still. 🙂
I’ll put something together and see if you approve! I agree – how can we not tell it??
can’t wait to hear this story! so will we find out whose identity has to be kept a secret?
Beth – Kim put me onto your blog and I gotta say, I love it. Your sense of humor and great writing make me laugh. Thanks for keeping it real! Now go shovel some pegasus poo…
Yay! Thanks, Jodi! (And thanks, Kim, for making Jodi read the blog. ;)… I have a draft going all about Kim’s spiritual gift of peer pressuring… you’ll know EXACTLY what I mean, Jodi!)
Running to get my shovel… sadly, it’s for all the actual crap in my house, rather than for the imaginary pegasus poo. 😉