"...and Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother lived
happily ever after."
With that, my sister finished her bedtime story. "Now good
night and no more talking," she warned as she left the room,
sparing the heroine of our story not another thought. As for
me, I couldn't let it stand at that. As I snuggled under my
covers, I gave the story serious hypothesizing. What would
have happened had the hunter not arrived on time? Poor Little
Red Riding Hood would have been swallowed, beautiful hand-
crafted cape and all! Or what if the wolf had decided to eat
the grandmother instead of depositing her under the bed? What
a tragic waste of life! [Ed. In our version, he/it swallowed
her whole. But what if he had done it piecemeal?] And so,
tossing and turning, I worried endlessly about a stream of
unlucky possibilities. At last, I fell asleep, dreaming of
big bad wolves and chewed-up capes.
I was reminded of the bedtime story ritual and its after
effects when talking to my daughter's kindergarten teacher.
She casually mentioned that Shevi adamantly refuses to allow
her hair to be checked. This kindergarten has the preventive
measure of inviting an outside person once a week to check
the children's hair. I confessed to bearing full
responsibility for Shevi's lack of cooperation. One day at
home, as I was combing her hair and she was squirming and
fidgeting, I enacted a drama in which the visiting `Morah'
finds a louse in her hair. The kindergarten teacher looks up
Shevi's phone number in front of all the girls, calls me up
and asks me to take Shevi home right then and there and not
send her back until she is completely clean. Dramatizing
Shevi's potential humiliation in horrific proportions made
her terrified of having her hair checked. It took a long time
for Shevi to get over her phobia.
When I was a child, our family -- siblings, aunts, uncles,
cousins and all -- went to a popular amusement park. I
enjoyed the merry-go-round, pretended to enjoy the wilder
rides, but declared unapologetic animosity to the `pirate
ship.' In that so-called thrilling experience, a boat in an
underground cave transported us to the bygone days of piracy.
As the ship glided through the water to the background of
haunting music, we were treated to chilling scenes of
leering, moving pirates gloating over discovered treasure,
binding hapless prisoners with heavy ropes and holding wild
parties to celebrate their plunder. To say nothing of the
sound effects.
As an impressionable seven-year-old, I was terrified beyond
words. My cousin unsuccessfully tried to calm my hysteria.
She covered my eyes, warned me not to look, all the while
reassuring me that it wasn't real. I didn't believe her -- of
course it was real; the pirates were moving, weren't they?
Fact was fact and nobody could tell me it was fiction.
I am sure that all those who have ever had the misfortune of
visiting the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's in London
will remember the morbid clanging of a huge bell as visitors
cautiously grope their way down dungeon steps into a world I
care not to describe. I was supposed to have guided foreign
relatives to this "not-to-be-missed" London sight, but I fled
back up the stairs leaving them to their fate. Thankfully
heading towards the "Escape from the Chamber of Horrors"
sign, all I wanted to see was Hashem's glorious sunlight, but
instead, I was plunged straight into the Battle of Waterloo.
I tried to ignore the gunshots, screams, smoke and battle
cries as I hurried past the morbid exhibition in a panic. I
almost wept with relief when I saw Nelson nursing his wounded
arm with the beloved EXIT sign right behind him.
My little daughter's kindergarten fear brought home to me
what I had almost forgotten. Shevi was frightened that the
incident would be played out exactly as I had described it.
As a child, she could not yet draw a distinction between fact
and fiction, just as she would probably expect to come across
a little cottage in the woods housing seven dwarfs.
In literature class, we once read a book that puzzled me no
end. It was about a boy who was sent to stay with his elderly
aunt. Every night after midnight, he walked into the garden
and took part in the scenes that had taken place twenty years
earlier. The book frustrated and perplexed me. Did it happen
or didn't it? If it had, how? And if it hadn't why did the
book say that it had? In retrospect, a valid question.
Baruch Hashem, we have a wealth of true-to-life children's
story books that teach us practical middos and
mitzvos which our children can comfortably relate to.
My friend told me that she once caught her children spreading
jam on their plate. She was about to give them a virtuous
lecture on the propriety of good manners when her four-year-
old boy said in defense, "We're doing like Mr. Muddle." He
was right. After all, it was she who had read that story to
them. How was he to know it was fiction rather than fact?
[Ed. A case against secular children's literature? Or against
the mother who didn't bother to add her own comments to the
`harmless' or so-called educational- by-default story?]
The adventures of my babysitting days (back in England) are
all but forgotten, yet one incident sticks in my mind. I had
finally gotten the children in bed and, hopefully, asleep. A
final check revealed that one of the boys was still up.
"Why aren't you sleeping yet?" I asked.
"I'm thinking what it will be like when Moshiach comes," he
said, his eyes sparkling, even in the dark. "We'll go on a
huge bird to Eretz Yisroel and see Bubby and Zeidy and the
brand new Beis Hamikdash..." As I listened to his animated
chatter, I hoped with all of my youthful idealism that my
children would also have similar outlets for their naturally
active imaginations.
Many years since, I continue to ardently hope so.
