Once Upon A Time

First off, it was brought to my attention by a couple of very observant friends that I incorrectly listed my age as 33 on my last post. Really, that birthday last month just slipped my mind, it really did. I now remember and am admitting that I am, in fact, 34. OK? OK?

So Once Upon A Time there were two children who loved their mommy to tell them stories in the car because they didn't have one of those handy dandy DVD players in their vehicle. Sometimes the stories involved princesses and frogs, other times they involved pumpkins and animals. There was one story in particular that they liked to hear again and again, a "scary" story involving two children lost in the woods. There was only 1 catch, each of the children required a different ending to this story, so the weary yet infinitely patient mother would have to tell the ending twice, kind of in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" fashion. (Remember those books? "If you want Pete to take the cave, turn to page 34. If you want him to go over the mountaintop, turn to page 56." So fun.) OK, back to the story (a condensed version).

So, Once Upon A Time a brother & sister go into the woods to pick berries. The brother says "there's a great berry patch over that hill, lets go." The sister replies "but we won't know the way back, let's leave these bread crumbs from our lunch as a trail." So they do. The kids pick berries and get really full eating them, blah blah blah and then it is getting dark so they decide to head home. But "Oh No!" birds have eaten the crumbs and they can't find their way out. They are hopelessly lost and start to cry. They come upon a tidy little house in the woods with gingerbread walls and a licorice fence, gumdrop windows and frosting doors (is this sounding vaguely familiar yet? I didn't say the mother was a total original!) So a little old woman comes out and tells the children to stop crying, they can stay at her house tonight and she will help them find their way home in the morning. She brings them in and makes them tons of yummy foods to eat, like [insert children's favorite foods here]. They eat & eat & eat & eat until they are stuffed and then she shows them to a cute little room with two little beds and says goodnight. When she shuts the door they realize that they are locked in, and their are bars on the windows. They are trapped! Then the old lady turns evil and cackles . . . . "hee hee hee children, now you are nice and fattened up I can eat you tomorrow . . . cackle cackle cackle . . . evil laugh . . . evil laugh . . . evil laugh . . ." The children are so scared and upset, they cry and cry and try with all their might to break open the bars on the windows to escape, but to no avail. Morning comes and the old lady comes in to get them.

This is where Jack & Abbey require different endings, endings that they have made up themselves, and the conclusion has to be told twice. First, in Jack's version the evil witch lets the kids out but makes them clean her house (hmmmm, interesting) from top to bottom first and while she is leaning over stirring the boiling kettle of water to cook them in, they give each other a wink and push her with all their might, toppling her into the boiling water. The End.

In Abbey's version the evil witch lets the kids out, puts them in the trunk of her car and drives into town to her friends house. There she lets them out, throws them into the boiling water that her friend has ready, cooks them up and then the evil witch and her friend eat them on toast and they are so delicious.

So, should I be worried? Abbey's ending seems a little bit . . . I don't know . . . morbid? Jack HATES this ending and feels in no way should the kids actually, gulp, die. I agree. In most fairy tales the kids don't end up on toast, but she insists that this makes the story better. I guess it might, if it was a horror story! May we might have a future female Stephen King on our hands?