Bad Fiction, Good Critics

Tonight, as usual, Ian wanted me to tell him a story after lights-out. Ian has a strong preference for extemporaneous tales, concocted on the spot, on demand. I don't exactly excel at fiction. Sometimes I do okay - Ian actually applauded the last "Nice and Ferocious" truck morality-tale I told him about a week ago - sincerely clapping in the dark, probably both because he liked the moral and he liked the plot. But tonight was different.

Tonight I told the following story - I don't think it's worth sharing per se, but it provides a backdrop to the excellent points made by the two-boy panel of critics that I faced after the delivery. Here's the story, without all the flourishes and elaborations drawn out for the boys in the original recounting:

A king had an upright (or "upstanding") tax collector named Collecto and a corrupt treasurer named Klypto. After each round of tax-collection, Collecto would hand off the bags of plenty to Klypto, who would always say, "Thanks for the money - heh, heh, heh." Over time, Collecto started to think that maybe Klypto wasn't completely safeguarding the stash, so he would ask Klypto what was going on with the money, and Klypto would say, in a sinister voice with an English accent, as all good villains-in-kingdom-based-stories have: "Your money is waxing."

Eventually, Collecto went to the king and reported that he suspected that Klytpo was up to no good. The king was concerned, and directed Collecto to demand a duplicate key to the vault, in the name of His Majesty. At that point, Klytpo said, "Your money is waxing," and, as he was supposed to hand him the key, handed him, instead, a candle. He then explained that he was about to make off with all of the funds, and that Collecto would have no time to go back to the king and round up the army, because the get-away was imminent. At that moment, Collecto was so angry and stressed that he gripped the "waxing" candle in his hand, and suddenly the wax started to melt from the "heat of the moment," if you will. Then the revelation came to him: he stuck the molten wax into the lock of the safe, and as it hardened, it took on the effective shape of a key. Collecto, with the help of the local farmers, whose eager help he had enlisted on the spot, managed to send all of the contents in of the safe to the castle, in the farmers' wagons. Of course, it also turned out that pretty-much everything that had been stolen from anyone in the kingdom in the previous ten years was also retrieved from Klypto's vault, since Klypto turned out to be the Grand Villain behind all theft in the realm.

So when Klypto returned to the vault with his wagons, intent on making off with the Goods, as he entered it, he was greeted by a small military entourage from a nearby post - known to the farmers whose help Collecto had secured - and each of them was holding a candle in one hand and a sword in the other. As Krypto screamed: "Where's all the money?" a now-much-emboldened Collecto, surrounded by armed and candle-clutching troops, replied in a familiarly-sinister voice: "Your money is waxing - heh heh heh."

The End.

So these were the questions/points-of-constructive-criticism from the young literary panel:

1. As soon as I mentioned that the villains name was "Klypto," Ian expressed skepticism around the idea that parents would perceive that their baby was a Thief of the Future, and name him accordingly.

2. Daniel found it hard to believe that anyone would name a baby "Collecto."

3. Ian didn't think that a villain would drop hints as to his dark intentions by saying, "Thanks for the money - heh heh heh" every time he was trusted with cash.

4. Ian didn't believe that wax could really harden so neatly into the shape of a key, and be used to open a door.

No applause. But lots of useful points to consider, for a Dad who might hope one day to construct a better plot than the sorry drivel which was scattered forth this past night.

***

For months and months and months - probably for years - I got away with "Once upon a time, in a log cabin deep in the woods, there lived three bears - the Momma Bear..."

Then, when Daniel started wanting to hear Hansel and Gretel, I got away with my own much-whitewashed version of that story. Eventually, however - especially as he started to hear more "Grimm"/grim versions of it, Daniel took note of the fact that it was the step-mother, not a neighbor-lady-who-hated-kids, that tried to lose the young'uns in the woods; that it was a witch, and not just some old lady, who lured them into her candy-house; and that she was more than just "sent somewhere where she could never hurt children again," at the end of the story.

In any case, both of those were much easier than the mental work I had to go through tonight to craft a universally-discounted tale. I think maybe the Three Bears will make a permanent reprise in our daily life...


(December 26, 2011)