Stories With Morals, For a Mixed Audience

Ian loves my stories.

He asks me to "tell a story that you make up," or - in short - "please tell a story" almost everywhere we go. Friday night, we were in a restaurant, getting ready to place an order, and Ian asked me to tell a story. Tonight, I was on the phone with someone, in the car on the way back from the grocery store, and he yelped, "Daddy, can you please tell a story!" loud enough to compensate for all that telephony. At random points on the road - any time of day or night - he'll ask for a story. And they're de rigeur at night: he says he goes to sleep better if I tell a story, and I find that usually, within minutes of my completing a story, there's sudden silence, followed, in short order, by the sweet breathing patterns of sleep.

This story-thing is problematic, because I'm not exactly a database or powerhouse when it comes to retrieving or inventing tales. There's some idea out there - I forget who came up with it - that there are only four true, unique plots in all of lore - kind of like the idea that there are only approximately four unique melodies. Obviously, Scheherazade did okay with these circumstance, but I don't. I'm not "creative" in that sense. So I love to dress up real-life stories as fiction; Watergate as the tale where King Richard stole sacred secrets from the tower of Prince George's knights, for example - but you can only do so much with the Eurozone crisis or Obama's latest stimulus proposals... It seems that if you can clinch the essential paradox at the core of the story, everything else is largely window-dressing. The witch thought she could kill Snow White/Sleeping Beauty, but she didn't take into consideration that Magic Kiss. Etc. Usually, there has to be an irony building up over the course of the story, where someone who is being wronged turns out to be storing up some kind of "credit" that they can then unexpectedly cash in on at the crucial moment. Hard to do - especially every night. But tonight's inspiration was special - not so much because of Ian's unsurprising gratitude, but because of Daniel's ability to outdo himself in twisted responses.

Tonight's story - and I did make this one up - goes as follows. Two boys - a standard Goofus and Gallant morality-tale pairing - grow up as cousins in a seaside town, both the sons of sea captains, and both aspiring to a life on the sea themselves. But one is kind and the other is cruel, and over the course of their youths, the soul finds its own company, and John develops into an up-standin' young sea captain, while Ronald chooses the pirate career-path. And then it happens: one day, on the high seas, John's ship - an American one - is approached by an innocuous-looking ship flying the Union Jack, and since it's neither 1770-something nor 1812, the Americans are happy to see fellow anglophones, and the two ships approach as if to greet each other. However, as soon as they're so close as to be beyond escaping the fate to follow, the "English" - false flag, quite literally - lower the Union Jack and raise the Jolly Roger, as a way of "rubbing it in" that they're about to perpetrate their inevitable pillage.

Daniel pointed out, after the fact - and very insightfully - that this detail lacked verisimilitude - or "wasn't like a real story" - because the pirates, of course, would not blow their cover before undertaking the pounce. I explained that this was just an extra twist of sadism in their modus operandi; because they knew they could attack, they just wanted to bask in a very public gloat, and add an extra touch of horrific "shock and awe" to their victims' ordeal in the process. But obviously, the real "moment" was intended for a five- and eight-year-old boy in the audience, to experience that extra, mesmerizing shiver-down-the-spine as the critical moment sets in...

So, in any case, once the righteous crew is overtaken by the hoards, and led en messe into the dungeons below deck awaiting the next morning's plank-walk, Ronald, in an extra shot of malice, sets John up in a cage on the deck, so they can both stew in the ironies of the moment, and proceeds to ridicule him for the stupidity of having chosen a piracy-free career on the seas. But the twist - prepare! - is that the rogue host has Polly, his trusty parrot, on his shoulder, and he is about as verbally-abusive of her as he is of his captive. He points out that they're both quite stupid, and mocks Polly for her "pieces of eight" mantra, and his diatribe is directed against both avian friend and human foe.

Ian, during the Parrot section, drew on his encyclopedic knowledge, in the middle of the story, to point out that parrots, while they can learn to repeat phrases, have no idea what they're saying. This rather undermines the premise of the story, that the parrot felt a bond of kinship with John because they were both the victims of verbal abuse. It's amazing that my fact-checking audience manages to enjoy these outlandishly implausible tall tales of mine...

Nonetheless, the Grand Twist, is that after all the pirates except the guy-at-the-wheel have gone to sleep - confident in their pride-which-goeth-before-the-fall - Polly, still chanting about "Pieces of Eight," brings John the key he needs to let himself out of the cage, guides him to the stash of other ship-keys, and then to the cells housing the hapless inmates below deck, and the crew overcomes the pirates, brings them ashore, and sends them all to jail, as John and Polly, his new pet, now live happily ever after.

I let the moment of silence sink in, after I completed the story, and just waited for Ian's expected-and-duly-delivered, soft, unfeignedly reverent "I liked that story." But I wasn't quite prepared for Daniel's alternate angle. His review went more-or-less as follows: "I didn't like the end, where all the pirates went to jail, but I did like it when they took down the English flag and raised the Pirate flag." Somehow, I don't think this was his 44%-Celtic-blood speaking, expressing pleasure at the removal of the Union Jack, per se..

***

Many years ago, in the early 90's, when the famous Batman movie came out and was all the rage, I remember my younger siblings watching it at home, on something we had back then called a "V-C-R," and I provided my own unwholesome commentary. As the joker was gloating to Batman about Batman's imminent demise, I said, as earnestly as I could sound, "That guy makes a lot of sense."

Without missing a beat, my baby sister reflected (and that's the best verb for the occasion), in reference to the Joker: "If he weren't a demented criminal, and if it weren't for his Lethal Joke Weapons, he'd be just like you."

I remember my father, at the time, telling me that my reactions to such movies were perversely amoral, and a bad influence on the Younger ones... And now there's Daniel.

The other day, in a fit of humorous exasperation, I announced to Daniel that he was God's sense of humor. Daniel denied it, without any clue as to what I meant (as if to prove my point). But I do wonder if Daniel is not, for me, a chance to experience myself, anywhere from one to four decades after the initial impact of my personality on the world around me, like a delayed echo, probably significantly amplified.

My brother observed that Daniel, who bears the name of his father, is "the most aptly named child in the universe."

(November 13, 2011)