Before Pepper Mill and I put our daughter Millical to bed, she gets a short book or two. She’s got quite a library. Lately she’s been asking for non-book bedtime stories, told in her darkened bedroom, and I’ve been obliging. We quickly went through the usual suspects – fairy tales like Cinderella, Goldilocks, etc. I’ve been telling her Greek Myths and things as well (well, what do you expect?). But she keeps asking for more, so I’ve been extemporizing.
It started out with what I thought was a pretty obvious variation – Goldilocks and the Three Pigs (“This straw house is too soft…”), and has progressed to the increasingly weird:
** Goldilocks and the Beanstalk
Goldilocks and the Four Bears
Goldilocks and the Five Bears
Goldi Bear and the Three Locks
Goldilocks and Aladdin and the THree Wishes
Goldilocks and the Seven Dwarves
Goldilocks and the Three Stooges
Goldilocks vs. Godzilla (“This porridge is way too hot”)
Mine gets a similar story time, slightly different bent…
Little Red Riding Hood, Grandma ,and the Woodsman Laugh At The Silly Wolf (The nightgown and bonnet don’t fit…)
The Three Little Pigs Build Hangers, & The Big Bad Wolf Buzzes Them (Shoddy construction == Flattened hangers, Wolf gets FAA on his butt)
Jack Loses Fortune Paying For Giant Funeral (Goose goes on strike)
Big Bad Wolf Invades The Goldilocks Story (Couldn’t face Little Red any more, for the shame of being laughed out of town)
Poor Goats Have no Stream, no Bridge, no Troll (Have to dig a ditch, build a bridge, place adverts: “Troll Wanted”)
All these, and many more, complete with radically wrong voices (Big Bad Wolf has a squeeky high pitched voice, Little Red has smoker’s voice, and Grandma sounds like Bob Barker…). Story time is a hoot.
How about Goldilocks and the horny bear. This may be a little risque for your daughter though. Goldilocks and the little bear are wondering through the woods and find an old brass lamp. Together they rubbed the lamp and a genie pops out. The genies says because each rubbed the lamp, they both get 3 wishes. The bear goes first and wishes that all the other bears in the woods were female. The genie snapped his fingers, “your wish is my command”. Goldilocks wished for a helmet. Confused the genies snapped his fingers and Goldi had a new helmet. The bear then wished that all the bears in America were female. The genie snapped his fingers, “done”. Goldilocks then wished for a fast motorcycle. Again confused, the genie snapped his finger and Goldi had the latest pocket rocket. The bear then wished that all the bears in the world were female and all were in heat. The genie snapped his fingers and replied “You have your wishes, have fun”. The genie then asked Goldilocks what she wanted for her third wish. She hollered as she started to ride away “My third wish is that the bear was gay!”
There is a classic of episode of Cheers, where Frasier, in a frantic attempt to keep his bar pals interested in a Dickens story, impulsively adds a new character – “A clown who could swallow children whole!”
Some o’ you people are obsessed or repressed, or something.
Tonight she wanted to hear Goldilocks vs. Godzilla again. And she wanted to hear Perseus and Medusa again. ** Pepper Mill got into the act, telling her the stories of Goldilocks and the Glass Slipper and Little Red Riding Hood and the Gingerbread Man.
Cal, you had me worried there. When I saw that thread title with you as the OP, I figured you’d discovered a singularity in your living room and shoved your daughter in to see what would happen.
When my daughter was younger, she also began demanding extemporaneous bedtime stories. At first, I tried to put her off, as I have little imagination. But one night, she demanded a made-up story, and to my amazement, I found myself spewing forth some utter nonsense about the Blue Princess and her travails and triumphs.
The first story was utter crappola. But my daughter loved it. That, of course, clued me in. She wasn’t asking for “lit-er-ah-chur,” she wanted something personal. Also, it didn’t take her very long to see the parallels between her life & that of the Blue Princess.
So the Blue Princess lived on, and now I wish I had recorded some of those bedtime sessions. My daughter, now 11 and “too old” for bedtime stories, still asks to read the few Blue Princess stories I remembered well enough to put into short story form. Because, you see, the Blue Princess is no “princess.” She is part academic, part action hero, and a stalwart opponent of drugs and peer pressure. She’s careful not to abuse the authority her title entrusts her with. She defends the oppressed. She snorts when she laughs.
I know it’s early, and in the coming years she’ll be sorely tested, but so far my daughter is as yet unaware she not only is everything the Blue Princess is, she’s much, much more.
If you want to keep from warping your kid Cal, you have to keep her out of humid places. Steams a killer. And if she does get wet, clamp her down to something straight. Like a table top. Just a parenting tip from me to you.
(And I want to hear about Goldilocks vs. Godzilla. Oh yeah!)
-Rue.
Maybe you should throw in some kung fu into the stories for added sound effects.
May I recomend the following stories
Goldilocks and the Master with cracked fingers
Goldilocks and the way of the Dragon
Goldilocks and the Fists of Fury
maybe throw in a few 70’s detective story plots. you can play Curtis Mayfield in the background while you recite
Goldilocks and Hutch
Goldilocks and the streets of San Fransisco
Goldilocks and Shaft.
