Pretty please? Sugar on top?
So my BetterHalf and I were getting ready to go out and had cable on, and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle was playing. I’ve seen bits and pieces of it, but never really watched it.
So there’s a couple of times that the nanny (aka, according to him “The evil little crumpet”) is really messing with the little girl’s head.
And we talked about how children are really easy to manipulate. He’s a parent, I’m not. But I’m the oldest cousin on one side of a Catholic family and the second oldest on the other. I’ve babysat a LOT of children. Which is why I didn’t want any!
Long story short–TOO LATE!
I told him about this short story I read years ago. As I remember it, it was written by a British naturalized American. In the end notes, he said he was inspired by his little girl coming home from school and reciting The Pledge of Allegiance. (He’d never heard it.) Then she told him something like “Now you have to give me a dime. Teacher told me if I learned that perfectly, you’d give me a dime!”
I’m paraphrasing of course.
The short story happens in the course of a school day when like a totalitarian government takes over, and converts all the little students into believers.
I was thinking it was a James Clavell story—works for the naturalized American part, but couldn’t find a ref. Then I thought maybe Roald Dahl, b/c I loved a lot of his work, but really didn’t make sense from what I know of his life.
Any ideas?