Big Claus and Little Mermaid

I must have been no older than five when my grandfather brought out an old book of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and asked me to pick out a bedtime story. I chose one called Little Claus and Big Claus because—silly me—I thought it must have something to do with Christmas. My grandfather obviously was unfamiliar with the story, or he would have insisted that I pick out something more appropriate for children, such as The Tell-Tale Heart.

To this day, I'm not sure why he read it all the way through. He should have stopped when he got to the part where Big Claus brains Little Claus's horse with a hammer. Maybe he wasn't listening to what he was reading, because I distinctly recall that he read it through to the very end before remarking on what a horrible story it was.

Tell me about it. For weeks I had nightmares in which Big Claus was chasing me with his hatchet. It sort of changed the way I felt about Santa, too.

The lesson to be learned here is to never read a child a story you don't already know. Also, never read a child any story—even if you think you know it—that was written by Hans Christian Andersen.

Have you ever actually read The Little Mermaid? It's nothing like the Disney version.

However, if you'd like to see a live performance of The Little Mermaid that is like the Disney version (well, sort of), come see the opening show of the 2013 season of Fairy Tales in the Park, playing in various parks throughout Ventura county this weekend and next.

I guarantee there will be no hatchets.

Cast of The Little Mermaid, including yours truly as Big Claus—I mean, King Triton

Nursery Crimes

Do parents still read nursery rhymes to their children? Probably not. Nowadays, nursery rhymes are probably considered inappropriate—as well they should be. Take, for example, this classic:

Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack jump over
The candlestick.

Clearly an invitation for children to play with matches and possibly set their pants on fire.

Then there's that lazy Little Boy Blue, who was supposed to be looking after the livestock but instead took a nap under a haystack. And Tom Tom the Piper's son, guilty of grand theft swine. And remember Wee Willie Winkie?

Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,
Upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown,
Tapping at the window and crying through the lock,
Are the children in their beds, it's past eight o'clock?

These days, running around town in your nightgown and tapping at windows would almost certainly get you arrested. As a matter of fact, as I recall, that's exactly what happened in the Bullwinkle's Corner version.

Remember Bullwinkle's Corner?

When I hear nursery rhymes in my head, I often hear them in the sweet, gentle voice of my mother, who used to read them to me at bedtime when I was a child. However, I'm just as likely to hear them in the stentorian, adenoidal voice of Bullwinkle J. Moose.

Bullwinkle's Corner originally aired over fifty years ago, as part of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (aka Rocky and His Friends).  If you're too young to have seen it (or too old to remember it), some kind soul has posted most of the segments on YouTube.

"Now," as Rocket J. Squirrel would say, "Here's something you'll really like..."

"This Book Changed My Life"

A woman called out with a frown,
When surprised by some callers from town,
"In a minute or less,
I'll slip on a dress—"
But she slipped on the stairs and came down.

The above limerick popped into my head yesterday. It was one of my favorites from the Arrow Book of Funny Poems, a book I purchased nearly half a century ago through the Scholastic Book Club. Remember the Scholastic Book Club? Nothing but Christmas could equal the anticipation of waiting for ordered books and the thrill when they finally came—delivered right to your desk by your teacher, your order form tucked neatly between the pristine, brand-new-book-scented pages.

I looked up the Arrow Book of Funny Poems on the Internet. It's out of print, but you can buy it used on Amazon.com for—get this—$0.01. No, I didn't misplace a decimal. That's one cent. A penny. One one-hundredth of a dollar. I don't think I've ever seen anything for sale on Amazon.com for a penny—or anywhere else, for that matter (at least not since the price of a gumball soared to a nickel). Of course, shipping costs $3.99, which makes the actual cost of the book $4.00—probably about eight times what I paid for it when I was a kid.

Still, it's worth it.

There was only one customer review, with the heading: "This book changed my life." This bit of hyperbole made me laugh—until I thought about it. The Arrow Book of Funny Poems and other books I ordered from Scholastic Books when I was a kid turned me on to reading and, eventually, writing.

By golly, this book did change my life.

And guess what? Kids can still experience the thrill of ordering books like this at school. That's right, the Scholastic Book Club still exists. Not only that, but Scholastic holds the American publishing rights to the Harry Potter series.

Well done, Scholastic!

ACCIO BOOKS!

Beauty Tinged with Darkness

My first-ever book of poetry was John Ciardi's You Read to Me, I'll Read to You, illustrated by Edward Gorey. Like most of my favorite children's books, it was a gift from my Aunt Vonna. Amazingly, it's still in print. Here's one of my favorite poems from the book:

ABOUT THE TEETH OF SHARKS

The thing about a shark is—teeth,
One row above, one row beneath.

Now take a close look. Do you find
It has another row behind?

Still closer—here, I'll hold your hat:
Has it a third row behind that?

Now look in and... Look out! Oh my,
I'll NEVER know now! Well, goodbye.

This served as my introduction to poetry, and it may explain why my taste in poems still runs to the dark side. Here's a favorite passage from what might be my favorite poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot—who, when he wasn't writing charming children's poems about cats, could be very dark indeed:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

It seems to me that the most beautiful works of art, like the most beautiful lives, are tinged with darkness. Without darkness, you can't see the stars shine.

Happy National Poetry Month!

Cycling in Ile-de-France

This post has nothing to do with cycling in Ile-de-France, or, for that matter, cycling of any kind. "Cycling in Ile-de-France" is the title of an article on a web site called "Freewheeling France." Yesterday I received an e-mail from the site's webmaster, Lynette Eyb, requesting permission to use the following picture from my Flickr account to illustrate the article:

Château de La Roche-Guyon, Ile-de-France

I was honored, although I didn't have the heart to tell Ms. Eyb that I wasn't cycling when I took the picture. I was on a bus. Also, there's a good chance I didn't take the picture. Loretta might have taken it. I honestly don't remember. It was ten years ago. But I will be happy to take the credit.

The picture was taken (by either Loretta or me) on the road between Versailles and Giverny, on a day trip we took out of Paris on June 11, 2003. When we purchased the tickets for the tour, Loretta told the Parisian at the ticket counter that we wanted to visit "Versailles and Givenchy."

"Madame," the man replied in that wonderfully disdainful tone that can only be achieved with a good French accent, "Givenchy is the perfume. Giverny is the home of Claude Monet."

I'm pretty sure I'm the one who took this picture of Monet's water lily pond:

Le bassin aux nymphéas de Claude Monet

I thought there were too many tourists in the picture, so I removed them with Photoshop:

Le bassin aux nymphéas de Claude Monet (sans touristes)

Even with all of the tourists, it was a tranquil and incredibly beautiful place. If you're ever in Paris, make sure you visit it.

Just remember—it's "Giverny," not "Givenchy."

Isaac Newton Was a Bully

Yesterday, as so often happens when I'm looking up something on the Internet, I stumbled across something wholly unrelated and infinitely more interesting, causing me to completely forget what I was originally looking for. It was a list Sir Isaac Newton made of "sins" he committed in 1662, when he was young and full of beans, and had yet to discover gravity or invent the pet door.

I won't list them all, but here are some of the juiciest:

Making pies on Sunday night
Putting a pin in Iohn Keys hat on Thy day to pick him
Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them
Wishing death and hoping it to some
Striking many
Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese
Punching my sister
Calling Dorothy Rose a jade
Peevishness with my mother
Falling out with the servants
Beating Arthur Storer
Peevishness at Master Clarks for a piece of bread and butter
Striving to cheat with a brass halfe crowne
Twisting a cord on Sunday morning
Vsing Wilfords towel to spare my own
Lying about a louse
Denying my chamberfellow of the knowledge of him that took him for a sot

I grant you that most of the above transgressions seem pretty tame by today's standards. For instance, who among us has not lied about a louse or denied our chamberfellow of the knowledge of him that took him for a sot? And, let's face it, Dorothy Rose is a jade, and everyone knows it.

However, a number of items on the list are seriously disturbing. They paint the extremely unflattering portrait of an obnoxious jerk who punched his sister, beat one guy, stuck a pin in another, wished and hoped death to some, struck many, and threatened to burn his parents' house down with them in it.

In short, Sir Isaac Newton was a bully with a streak of cruelty to rival that of the Marquis de Sade. And if any further proof were needed of that fact, I remind you that this is also the man who invented calculus.

Q.E.D.

Déjà Poo

I have already told you about Dickens—our beautiful, good-natured, long-haired tabby. Neither of us had ever had a long-haired cat before Dickens, and we have come to find out that the trouble with long hair on cats—aside from the fact that you constantly have to brush it—is that things tend to stick to it. Things that, shall we say, belong in the litter box. Consequently, those things occasionally get dropped elsewhere.

For instance, on the hall rug.

We have a beautiful Navajo rug in our hallway—a souvenir from a trip to Sedona. It covers a multitude of cat puke stains and really "ties the room together." The trouble is that the rug is dark, and the hall is dark, and—well, you get the picture.

Yesterday morning, I got up and, as usual, walked into the kitchen to get my cup of coffee, outside to get the morning papers, into the living room to drop off Loretta's "Times" on the couch and my "Star" on my recliner, then headed back towards the bedroom.

It was at that point that I turned on the light.

Loretta heard me swear (see last week's post) and called out from the bedroom, asking what was wrong. I didn't answer her right away. I was too busy looking at the trail I had made. It was like one of those dotted-line trails Billy leaves in The Family Circus, when his mother tells him to do something and he wanders all over the neighborhood before he does it.

The worst part is, this has happened before. Same rug, same Billy poo trail. You'd think I would have learned my lesson.

I already know not to go barefoot. Anyone who lives with cats should know that. In the twenty-four years Loretta and I have had cats, we have stepped on everything from hair balls to toy mice to real mice. I should also know not to venture too far in a dark house without turning on a light.

Lesson learned.

Until the next time it happens.