OK kiddies, I’m at it again.
Get into your footie jammies and grab your glass of Ovaltine and come, sit on the couch (not the Couch, that’s different) and I’ll tell you a story or two before bedtime.
-Rue.
Once upon a time there was a boy. This boy was a shepherd. That meant he watched sheps. Only it didn’t. A cowherd watches cows and a goatherd watches goats, but a shepherd doesn’t watch sheps the way you’d figure. Nope, he watched sheep. I don’t know what happened to the other “e” in shepherd, and frankly, I don’t care. But that’s what the boy did, he watched sheep as a shepherd.
Being a shepherd isn’t one of your more taxing professions, mentally speaking. Oh yeah, sometimes a sheep will wander off and you have to go find it, but as a whole, pretty easy work. And boring. Dead boring. It’s the same thing every day: take the sheep out, watch them eat grass all day and bring the sheep back in at night. It’s pretty understandable that the boy got bored.
“Phillip,” he said one day to his favorite sheep, “I’m bored.”
Phillip looked up at him with his big sheep eyes and gave him a big sheep smile. Then Phillip went and stood on his head in the meadow. After a while Phillip started to juggle rocks. He got up to five rocks before he dropped them all. Then Phillip did a little dance. This would have entertained the boy if he had been watching. But the boy sighed and lay down on the grass and put his hat over his face and missed all of Phillips gamboling. The stupid boy.
“I know!” said the boy, not even noticing that Phillip wasn’t there. He really wasn’t a very good shepherd. “I’ll cry ‘Wolf!’ and everyone will come running! That will be exciting!”
That’s the kind of village the boy lived in. If the shepherd cried ‘Wolf!’ everyone would come running to his aid. The same way as if the guy down at the granary cried 'Rat!" or the tailor cried ‘Moth!’. It was a very helpful village.
So the boy cried ‘Wolf!’ and the villagers all came running. Well, not all of the villagers. Some kinda jogged and a few didn’t come at all, but most of them came running. There was no wolf, just the shepherd. The villagers were mad, but they got over it and went back to their work in the village.
After the hubbub died down, the boy got bored again. ‘Wolf!’ he cried again. Again the villagers came running. Again there was no wolf. This time there was a lot of grumbling about all the running and there was no wolf, but again they got over it and went back to the village. Except the shepherd’s father. He knew his son was getting bored watching sheep. So he stayed behind to have a talk with the boy.
“Hey kid! Get over here!”
“Yes father.”
“Your bored watching sheep, aren’t you?”
“Yes father.”
“So you cried ‘Wolf!’ even though there was no wolf, didn’t you?”
“Yes father.”
“And you’ll probably do it again when you get bored, won’t you?”
“Yes father.” The boy was an honest shepherd, if a little stupid.
“Here. I have something for you.”
“What is it father?”
“A hand-held video game.”
“With the color monitor?”
“No, just the black and white one. But it has six different game cartridges.”
“Oh. Thanks father.”
“Just don’t be crying ‘Wolf!’ anymore, you hear?”
“Yes father.”
So as the day wore on, the shepherd would play with his hand held video game when he got bored. No more crying ‘Wolf!’. Phillip still did his acrobatics and juggling, even if the boy wasn’t watching. The other sheep appreciated him.
At the end of the day, the boy brought the sheep back in for the night. As his father was counting them off, there were five missing!
“Where are the other five sheep?”
“I dunno. But I got 150 million on Super Mega Spaghetti Man!”
The next day the boy’s sister took care of the sheep. He had to go work in the soybean fields. That was worse than watching sheep. Even if he cried ‘Caterpillar!’ no one would come running.
His sister was a better shepherd anyway. She appreciated Phillip’s talents and she kept a close eye on all the sheep. She never cried ‘Wolf!’ when she was bored. She would knit. Some days she’d come home with all her sheep and a couple of socks or mittens or something. She was a much better shepherd, even if she never scored above 200,000 on Super Mega Spaghetti Man.
Uncle Rue, story guy.
There once was a cobbler. He made shoes. Of course he made shoes, that’s what a cobbler does, make shoes. But a cobbler can also be a dessert. Like a pie, only different. It has fruit on the bottom and a crust on top, but there’s no crust under the fruit, so you see, it’s not just like a pie, but it’s close. A cobbler is a guy (or girl) who makes shoes or a dessert like a pie. This particular cobbler made shoes, and he didn’t particularly care for cobbler, the dessert. He did like a nice cake once in a while, but he wasn’t too partial to cobblers.
This particular cobbler was getting kind of old. He didn’t have a wife to comfort him or children to care for him. He was an old, lonely cobbler. Old and lonely and behind in his work. It’s a good thing he wasn’t a butcher. If a butcher gets behind in his work, people complain about the taste and he doesn’t sit right. (Oh man! I crack me up!) When a cobbler gets behind in his work, people wait impatiently for their shoes to be finished.
So here’s this cobbler… His name was Dave by the way. Dave the Cobbler. Only now that he’s pretty old, people called him Old Man Dave. Unless they were waiting for him to finish their shoes. Then they call him Dave the Real Slow Cobbler. So Dave was having his dinner (it was a crust of hard bread: when you don’t get the shoes out, people don’t pay you so you can’t be eating steak and cake all the time) looking at his shoe shop. (He owned the shop, he can eat wherever he wants.) “I shall never get all my shoes finished on time and then no one will pay me and I will die alone and destitute.” At least he, Dave, meant “destitute”. He said something else, but he wasn’t going to go sell his body on the street. So he meant “destitute”.
“Why look,” said Dave. “Poor, poor birds, freezing outside with nothing to eat. I shall do them a favor and give them the last crust of my hard bread and I shall go without. This will show what a good person I am and I will get super-natural help finishing my shoes and all will be well.”
So Dave opened the window and threw the last crust of his hard bread to the birds. He hit one with it and it fell dead. That was OK, a dog came by and ate the carcass after rolling in it a little and was quite greatful. The rest of the birds shrugged their little bird shoulders and ate the crust of hard bread. The were greatful too, in their bird way.
When Dave woke up the next day, he couldn’t believe his eyes! Not one damned shoe was finished in the night! The damned birds tricked him! The were supposed to turn into elves and finish his damned shoes and all was supposed to be well! Dammit!
But no shoes were finished in the night.
The next day people came for their shoes. They weren’t done. Dave was thrown out of his shoe shop like a crust of hard bread thrown to the birds. The irony escaped Dave. What also eluded old Dave was that, while the birds were just birds, all the mice he’d been catching lately in his glue traps had little hats and curly-toed shoes. The mice he didn’t feed scraps of bread to.
So remember children, if you grow up to be a cobbler, sew your own damned shoes. The birds ain’t gonna do it for you.
Uncle Rue, story guy.
I’m still in Frankfurt, about to leave to Geneva, and here I sit paying 4€/hour to use a keyboard with all of the keys in the wrong places to read your stuff and say “hi”!
Classic!
Once upon a time there was a kingdom. Actually once upon a time there were boatloads of kingdoms. There were more kingdoms that you could shake a dead rat at. But that way lies the Black Death, so no rat shaking around here. OK?
In this kingdom there was a king. It just goes to figure there’s a king in the kingdom, and there was. The king had a wife, who by the nature of things was the queen, and they had a son, who it wouldn’t surprise the alert reader was the prince. By and by, which means in this case about twenty years pass, the prince needs a wife. This is so when the old king and queen croak, the prince moves up a notch to king and he needs a wife to have a son to be prince and complete the cycle. Royal succession is like that, a cycle.
So the prince needed a wife. Now he could have taken out an ad in the singles column of the local free press. Or he could have run ads on late night TV. Or he could have hung out in bars, picking up chicks. He could of even asks one of the girls out that he went to school with, they could have had a good time, fell in love and got married. Of course if he did any of those things, the story would be over. So it’s a good thing he didn’t. Huh? It’s a good thing that the prince is fundamentally stupid. Huh?
“Duh. Gee dad. I need a wife. Whatever shall I do?” The prince sounded like Baby Bear from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons.
“Well son, lets have us a wife picking contest.” The king sounded like Danny DeVito. If you’re reading this out loud you can get the voices right.
“Oh yes! Let’s do!”
So the king and the prince had a wife picking contest. The queen just rolled her eyes and let them. She knew better than to try to talk reason to those two. The great Royal Galoots. They thought about a beauty contest, which is the obvious way to go, but in the end the went with a talent contest. Hey, looks can fade, but a good talent is forever.
“Daughter of mine,” said a humble beet farmer, sounding an awful lot like Gene Hackman.
“Yes father?” said his daughter. You can give her whatever voice you want, but I think Lisa Simpson would be funny.
“There’s a talent contest to be the new princess. What can you do?”
“I can do a good turkey call.”
“Anything else?”
“Not really.”
“Now hold on there!” cried a stranger.
“Who are you?” asked the farmer and his daughter together. (I was just wondering if you could do both voices at the same time. If you can, you might be the next princess. If you’re a boy, just keep your mouth shut until after the ceremony.)
“I won’t tell you my name, but I’ll give you such an amazing talent, you’ll win the contest handily!”
“You’ll give me extra hands?”
“No girl, that’s just an expression.”
“So what’s the talent, already?”
“I’ll make it so you can spin straw into gold.”
“Cool. What do you want for that?”
“Your baby.”
“OK, but I should tell you, I don’t have a baby. I may be a simple farmer’s daughter, but I ain’t easy.”
So the farmer’s daughter took the strange little man’s offer and won the talent contest. When the king saw a girl that could turn straw into gold, he told the rest of the girls to just go home. Except that one who could do that one thing with her legs. It’s always good to have a bendy girl like that around. She got $150 a week and there was no heavy lifting. She did OK for herself. The farmer’s daughter won the contest and became the princess.
She thought she’d have it easy, being princess and all. But no! The king made her spin straw into gold her every waking minute. He brought her straw by the bushel and carted off gold by the… cart. This went on for most of a year. Finally one day the king sat down to dinner.
“What’s this?” he demanded in his Danny DeVito voice.
“Your dinner, your majesty,” said the servant.
“Yeah, but what is it?”
“It’s goat.”
“Goat!?! Where’s my steak?”
“That’s the thing, see? We’re out of steak.”
“Out of steak!?! But I’m the king! If I want steak I get steak! Even if it’s the last steak in the kingdom!”
“Well that’s the problem, see?”
“What?”
“There are no steaks in the whole kingdom.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, sire, it’s the cows…”
“What about the cows?”
“There aren’t any.”
“So? You pester me about cows and I want a steak. Get me a steak!”
“But that’s where steak comes from. Cows.”
“Nuh-uh! Steak comes from the pantry. I say ‘Bring me a steak!’, you go to the pantry and get one, cook it, and bring it to me. Simple!”
“But before it goes into the pantry it’s rather part of a cow, sire.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“Oh. So why are we out of cows?”
“There was no straw to feed them.”
That’s when the king cut back the princess’ gold production to one day a week. That way he got his gold and the cows got some straw. So he got gold and steaks. Everyone was happy. If you define “everyone” as the king. Which the king did. So there you go.
With more free time, the princess spent more time with the prince. As things would happen, about a year later she had a baby.
“Hi! Remember me?”
“You’re the creepy little man who taught me to spin straw into gold. How did you get in here?”
“I’m magic. I go where I want. Now gimme your baby.”
“No.”
“We have an agreement.”
“Oh.” Now the princess thought hard and fast. She didn’t want to give up her baby, but they had an agreement. So she did the only thing she could do.
“Guards!” she yelled.
When the guards showed up, she pointed at the creepy little man and said “Kill him.”
And they did.
The end.
Ha ha ha! That’s not what happened. But I had you going there for a moment. Didn’t I?
What she really said was “Isn’t there any way around me giving up my baby?”
“Yes. You have to guess my name.”
“How many guesses do I get?”
“One.”
“Man! This is going to be hard. I’ll have to think about it. While I’m thinking about it, why don’t you move into the castle?”
“OK.”
So the creepy little man moved into the castle while the princess tried to figure out what his name could be. About a month later she knew what it was.
“You’re name is Rumplestiltskin!”
“You’re right! You can keep your baby. But how did you know?”
“I just got the mail and there was a magazine for you. Your name was on the little sticker.”
“Drat! My plan undone by my People subscription!”
And everyone lived happily ever after. Even Rumplestiltskin, although he had to find another baby. He didn’t keep it or eat it or anything like that. He’s the one who leaves the babies on poor but honest couple’s doorsteps. Then the babies can grow up to fulfill a Great Destiny, usually killing poor defenseless dragons and stuff to win the hand of beautiful maidens. I’ll bet you’ve always wondered who did that. Now you know.
Uncle Rue, story guy.
See Miamouse? Not every story has sheep in them. Surprised? Yeah, I thought so.
But you might not want to read the next one. It has goats. While they aren’t sheep, they are close. You just might want to skip it. That’s all I’m saying.
-Rue.
One day, the three Billy Goats Gruff came to a bridge. Looking behind themselves they saw their valley had no more grass. Looking across the bridge, they saw a valley verdant and lush. That’s to say it had loads of grass. So they thought it was time to upgrade their valley situation. But who would cross the bridge first? Bridges are a known habitat for trolls. Trolls are a known predator of innocent little goats. Even the Gruff kind.
“I shall cross first,” said the Littlest Goat Gruff. “It’s only a freaking bridge. What’s the worst that could happen?”
So the Littlest Goat Gruff crossed the bridge. Clippity-clip-clip-clip the Littlest Goat Gruff crossed the bridge. When he was about halfway over a voice comes from beneath the bridge “Who the heck is clippity-clip-clip-clipping across my bridge?”
“It is I, the Littlest Goat Gruff.”
“Well knock it off! I’m trying to sleep down here!”
“Oh yeah! Well why don’t you just try and make me!” cried the Littlest Goat Gruff.
With that, a troll swarmed up onto the bridge. “Yarrrgh!” he cried, raising his arms in a threatening manor.
“Great googley-mooglies!” cried the Littlest Goat Gruff.
“Oh man!” cried the troll. “Look what you just did! Those ain’t Milk Duds either, are they?”
“Oh bite me! You scared me, it wasn’t my fault.”
“Oh yes, I intend to bite you little goat.”
“Littlest Goat Gruff.”
“Whatever.”
Before any biting could occur, there was a cloppity-clop-clop-clop across the bridge.
“What’s going on here?”
“And you are?” asked the troll
“I am Goat Gruff. Technically I’m Middle Goat Gruff, but if you really look at things, I’m the base model. The Goat Gruff. My brothers are sized in relation to me. So I like to go by simply Goat Gruff.”
“Oh, OK. Whatever works for you,” conceded the troll. His name was Edgar, but no one ever asks. Edgar the Troll. He also collects otter skulls. But no one asks about that either. There’s a lot about Edgar that no one asks about. He is really interesting, for a troll.
“He said he was going to eat me!” cried the Littlest Goat Gruff, trying to get the story moving again.
“Oh he did, did he?”
“Yeah I did. So what are you going to do about it?”
“You just wait for my big brother… Oh! Here he comes now!”
Clompity-clomp-clomp-squitch “Oh fer the… what is that… ewwww… who’s supposed to keep this bridge clean?” demanded the Greatest Goat Gruff.
“Hey, talk to your brother. He made the mess.”
“It wasn’t my fault. He scared me. And I’m just the Littlest Goat Gruff.”
“Now this is why I always tell you to go before we go. Do you see why now? So? What’s going on?”
“I’m a troll, this is my bridge, clippity-clip-clip-clip, ‘I’m the Littlest Goat Gruff’, eating of goat mentioned, cloppity-clop-clop-clop, Goat Gruff…”
“Thank you,” said Goat Gruff. He always appreciates it when people get his name right.
“No problem, you’re welcome, so… cloppity-clop-clop-clop, Goat Gruff, eating of goat reiterated, Clompity-clomp-clomp… errr… clomp, and now you’re here. OK? We up to speed now?”
“You were going to eat my brother?”
“Yeah. Both of them actually.”
“Well now, I can’t be having that.”
And the Greatest Goat Gruff rolled his goat eyes and lowered his goat head and pointed his goat horns and rushed his goat charge right at the troll. The troll stood his ground, or bridge as the case turned to be, until the last moment. Then he dodged aside, grabbing the Greatest Goat Gruff by his neck and spun him off the bridge, into the raging froth (that’s the river, it was a little rough that day) below.
“Holy fbeepg shbeep!” cried the Littlest Goat Gruff. “How’d you do that?” he asked with wide eyes.
“What? Toss your brother into the river? I took a self-defense class at the community college. I heard all about you goats and your scam. Eating up all the good grass in a valley, then crossing the bridge, and offing said bridge’s troll I might add, and heading over to the next valley to eat all of that grass. Billy Goats Gruff? Bah! You’re a bunch of Locusts Gruff if anything. I read all about you in the troll newsletter.”
“Well yeah, of course that. But how did you beep out what I just said?”
“Oh that. Well when I first met you up on the bridge and you said ‘freaking bridge’ I figured you had a mouth on you. So I had the story put on tape delay. It’s a good thing I did too. Little kids could be reading this.”
“So I can’t say ‘damn’?”
“Yeah, you can say that. Just not gratuitously.”
“beep beep beeeeeep! Oh, I see. How about beep?”
“No.”
“Hell?”
“Yeah, that’s OK.”
“What about… beep beeeeep beep beep beep beeeeeeeeeep!”
“Man! What is your problem? You trying to get on Springer or something?”
“You talking the show, or like ‘get on Springer’?” the Littlest Goat Gruff asked, wagging his eyebrows. The Littlest Goat Gruff’s mind was pretty much in the gutter.
“Oh knock it off,” said the troll. “Now I’m going to eat you. And your brother.”
“beep!” said Goat Gruff.
And the troll did. Eat them that is, not what Goat Gruff said. Not right away anyway. That was later. And the Three Billy Goats Gruff despoiled lush, verdant valleys no more. They weren’t knocking off trolls no more either.
Uncle Rue, story guy.
YAY! YAY! YAY AGAIN!
Rue DeDay is a dude? I had Rue pictured as an old woman. Rue McClanahan-ish.
Oh yeah…Cool stories!! 
Making up for lost time, eh?
Which is fine. I was missing my morning Rue fix.
[Hank Hill voice]
That boy ain’t right.
[/Hank Hill]
Man, I shouldn’t read these at work 'cuz now I feel like I should have on pj’s and be drinking a cup of hot cocoa. Nerts!
Thank you Uncle Rue.
Yay Uncle Rue! clap clap clap (That was applause, not 3 cheers for the venereal disease)
:: sigh ::
Board’s up, Rue’s posting stories. All is right with the world.
Yay! Unca Rue you’re the best! Can I sit on your lap when you read the next one?
YAY! Unca Rue! YAY! Can you tell us the story about the princess who peed, I mean, the princess who slept on a pea? How bout the three bears and some lox, I mean, the three bears and a little girl named Goldilocks? Can I have a beer and some pretzels instead of cocoa and cookies? Oh, and a jar of marshmallow fluff. I promise not to get it all over Couch, I mean, the couch.
Psst Swampbear - What Was That Test Again? and Lots of Other Stories too (scroll down). But no Goldilocks that I can see.
Please Unca Rue could we have a story about the Blonde and the Bears? Could we huh could we?
cosies up
Puddin’
Link.
(All the old stories are in the link in the OP, but Euty did such a good job with Teemings Extras, it’s easier to find them all there.)
-Rue.