Politics and Fairy Tales

Here is a true story from my childhood:

"Once upon a time there was this girl that liked to walk in the woods every day. On one particularly unusual day, she set out for her daily walk in the woods with a red hooded cape on. As she walked, she came upon a pig building his house out of twigs. The girl was a little hungry, so she asked if she could have a snack to tie her over until lunch. The pig agreed and gave her curds and whey. She hadn't been seated for long before a spider came along and scared her away, and she decided to continue her walk.

As she walked, she carried three bags of black wool--one for the master, one for the dame, and one for the little boy who lives down the lane. On her way to the little boy's house, she paused briefly to sing to seven hardworking short men. After all that was done, the girl came upon a pig trying to rebuild his house of straw. She decided that she had time to visit with this pig, so as they visited, the pig told her a story about his ten pig friends that went to various places or stayed home. At the end of his story , he stuck his thumb in a pie and pulled out a plum. He gave her some bread, and they said their goodbyes.

The girl crumbled the bread as she journeyed on through the woods and dropped some of the crumbs on the trail where she walked. She kept walking until she came to another pig's house, this time it had just barely been finished. Oddly enough, just as she arrived at the house, a wolf was blown out of the chimney with his rear end on fire! This was such a sight to see that on the hill right beside the pig's house, a boy that was fetching water fell down and caused the girl to tumble to the ground after him.

She woke up a few hours later to find a group of people standing around her. One was a wooden boy with a really long nose. He was lying profusely. No one seemed to pay him much attention, because at that moment, a young boy (with one shoe off and one shoe on) jumped over a candlestick, became tired then went to sleep under a haystack. Luckily, a man who had purportedly stolen Christmas helped her up, got her a glass of water, and patted her on the head. She was now ready to continue walking.

She thanked the pig for his hospitality and went on her way. By this time, the moon had come out, and to the girl's surprise, a cow jumped over it. She saw a dish running away with one of the pig's spoons, but there was too much cowbell for her voice to be heard over all of the ruckus. All of a sudden, she was nearly stampeded by a mob chasing a lively boy-shaped gingerbread cookie. She decided to start running to hopefully avoid any other crazy happenings. Then she remembered a special shortcut that she thought nobody else knew about...

When she came to the wall that runs through the path, she scaled it and jumped down, landing with a big 'crunch' on a big pile of broken egg shells. She was a little confused until she heard the clip-clop of all the king's horse's hooves. She continued on, she was close now! All she had to do was cross the bridge and she'd be home! The girl came to the bridge, and was halfway across, when a mean angry troll jumped up and was insistent that she could not pass. Suddenly, a big goat came charging up and bucked the troll right off the bridge into the river. She thanked the goat and moved on through the woods, arriving at home just in time to hear some guy rap at her window and cry through the lock that it was now 8 o' clock."

Kyla Rohrbough
-Fairytale Superhero Princess.