Politically Correct Bedtime Stories (2 page)

But their idyll was soon shattered. One day, along came a big, bad wolf with expansionist ideas. He saw the pigs and grew very hungry, in both a physical and an ideological sense. When the pigs saw the wolf, they ran into the house of straw. The wolf ran up to the house and banged on the door, shouting, ‘Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!’

The pigs shouted back, ‘Your gunboat tactics hold no fear for pigs defending their homes and culture.’

But the wolf wasn’t to be denied what he thought was his manifest destiny. So he huffed and puffed and blew down the house of straw. The frightened pigs ran to the house of sticks, with the wolf in hot pursuit. Where the house of straw had stood, other wolves bought up the land and started a banana plantation.

At the house of sticks, the wolf again banged on the door and shouted, ‘Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!’

The pigs shouted back, ‘Go to hell, you carnivorous, imperialistic oppressor!’

At this, the wolf chuckled condescendingly. He thought to himself: ‘They are so childlike in their ways. It will be a shame to see them go, but progress cannot be stopped.’

So the wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the house of sticks. The pigs ran to the house of bricks, with the wolf close at their heels. Where the house of sticks had stood, other wolves built a time-share resort complex for holidaying wolves, with each unit a fibreglass reconstruction of the house of sticks, as well as native curio shops, snorkelling, and dolphin shows.

At the house of bricks, the wolf again banged on the door and shouted, ‘Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!’

This time in response, the pigs sang songs of solidarity and wrote letters of protest to the United Nations.

By now the wolf was getting angry at the pigs’ refusal to see the situation from the carnivore’s point of view. So he huffed and puffed, and huffed and puffed, then grabbed his chest and fell over dead from a massive heart attack brought on from eating too many fatty foods.

The three little pigs rejoiced that justice had triumphed and did a little dance around the corpse of the wolf. Their next step was to liberate their homeland. They gathered together a band of other pigs who had been forced off their lands. This new brigade of
porcinistas
attacked the resort complex with machine guns and rocket launchers and slaughtered the cruel wolf oppressors, sending a clear signal to the rest of the hemisphere not to meddle in their internal affairs. Then the pigs set up a model socialist democracy with free education, universal health care, and affordable housing for everyone.

Please note: The wolf in this story was a metaphorical construct. No actual wolves were harmed in the writing of the story.

ong ago in a kingdom far away, there lived a miller who was very economically disadvantaged. This miller shared his humble dwelling with his only daughter, an independent young woman named Esmeralda. Now, the miller was very ashamed of his poverty, rather than angry at the economic system that had marginalized him, and was always searching for a way to get rich quick.

‘If only I could get my daughter to marry a rich man,’ he mused, in a sexist and archaic way, ‘she’ll be fulfilled and I’ll never have to work another day in my life.’ To this shabby end, he had an inspiration. He would start a rumour that his daughter was able to spin common barnyard straw into pure gold. With this untruth, he would be able to attract the attention of many rich men and marry off Esmeralda.

The rumour spread throughout the kingdom in a manner that just happened to be like wildfire and soon reached the prince. As greedy and gullible as most men of his station, he believed the rumour and invited Esmeralda to his castle for a May Day festival. But when she arrived, he had her thrown into a dungeon filled with straw and ordered her to spin it into gold.

Locked in the dungeon, fearing for her life, Esmeralda sat on the floor and wept. Never had the exploitativeness of the patriarchy been made so apparent to her. As she cried, a diminutive man in a funny hat appeared in the dungeon.

‘Why are you crying, my dear?’ he asked.

Esmeralda was startled but answered him: ‘The prince has ordered me to spin all this straw into gold.’

‘But why are you crying?’ he asked again.

‘Because it can’t be
done.
What are you, specially abled or something?’

The differently statured man laughed and said, ‘Dearie, you are thinking too much with the left side of your brain, you are. But you are in luck. I will show you how to perform this task, yes, but first you must promise to give me what I want in return.’

With no alternative, Esmeralda gave her assent. To turn the straw into gold, they took it to a nearby farmers’ cooperative, where it was used to thatch an old roof. With a drier home, the farmers became healthier and more productive, and they brought forth a record harvest of wheat for local consumption. The children of the kingdom grew strong and tall, went to a cooperative school, and gradually turned the kingdom into a model democracy with no economic or sexual injustice and low infant mortality rates. For his part, the prince was captured by an angry mob and stabbed to death with pitchforks outside the palace. As new investment money poured in from all over the world, the farmers remembered Esmeralda’s generous gift of straw and rewarded her with numerous chests of gold.

When all this was done, the diminutive man in the funny hat laughed and said, ‘
That
is how you turn straw into gold.’ Then his expression became menacing. ‘Now that I have done my work, you must fulfil your part of the bargain. You must give me your first-born child!’

Esmeralda shot back at him, ‘I don’t have to negotiate with anyone who would interfere with my reproductive rights!’

The vertically challenged man was taken aback by the conviction in her voice. Deciding on a change in tactics, he said slyly, ‘Fair enough, dearie. I’ll let you out of the bargain if you can guess what my name is.’

‘All right,’ said Esmeralda. She paused a second, tapped her chin with her finger, and said, ‘Would your name be … oh, I don’t know, maybe … Rumpelstiltskin?’

‘AAAAAKKKK!!’ shrieked the man of nonstandard height. ‘But … but … how did you know?’

She replied, ‘You are still wearing your name badge from the Little People’s Empowerment Seminar.’

Rumpelstiltskin screamed in anger and stamped his foot, at which point the earth cracked open and swallowed him up in a rush of smoke and sulphur. With her gold, Esmeralda moved to California to open a birth-control clinic, where she showed other womyn how not to be enslaved by their reproductive systems and lived to the end of her days as a fulfilled, dedicated single person.

nce on a lovely mountainside lived three goats who were related as siblings. Their name was Gruff, and they were a very close family. During the winter months they lived in a lush, green valley, eating grass and doing other things in a naturally goatish manner. When summer came, they would travel up the mountainside to where the pasture was sweeter. This way, they did not overgraze their valley and kept their ecological footprints as small as possible.

To get to this pasture, the goats had to cross a bridge over a wide chasm. When the first days of summer came, one goat set out to cross the bridge. This goat was the least chronologically accomplished of the siblings and thus had achieved the least superiority in size. When he reached the bridge, he lashed on his safety helmet and grasped the handrail. But as he began to cross, a menacing growl came from beneath the bridge.

Over the railing and onto the bridge leaped a troll—hairy, dirt-accomplished, and odourenhanced. ‘Yaaarrrgh!!’ intoned the troll. ‘I am the keeper of this bridge, and while goats may have the right to cross it, I’ll eat any that try!’

‘But why, Mr Troll?’ bleated the goat.

‘Because I’m a troll, and proud of it. I have a troll’s needs, and those needs include eating goats, so you better respect them or else.’

The goat was frightened. ‘Certainly, sir,’ he stammered. ‘If eating me would help you become a more complete troll, nothing would please me more. But I really can’t commit to that course of action without first consulting my siblings. Will you excuse me?’ And the goat ran back to the valley.

Next, the middle sibling goat came up to the bridge. This goat was more chronologically advanced than the first goat and so enjoyed an advantage in size (although this did not make him a better or more deserving goat). He was about to cross the bridge when the troll stopped him.

‘Nature has made me a troll,’ he said, ‘and I embrace my trollhood. Would you deny me my right to live the life of a troll as fully and effectively as I can?’

‘Me? Never!’ exclaimed the goat proudly.

‘Then stand still there while I come over and eat you up. And don’t try to run away; I would take that as a personal affront.’ He began to invade the goat’s caprinal space.

‘However,’ blurted the goat, ‘I have a very close family, and it would be selfish of me to allow myself to be eaten without asking their opinion. I have respect for their feelings, too. I would hate to think that my absence would cause them any emotional stress, if I hadn’t first …’

‘Go
then!’ screamed the troll.

‘I’ll rush back here as soon as we reach a consensus,’ the goat said, ‘for it’s not fair to keep you in suspense.’

‘You’re too kind,’ sighed the troll, and the goat ran back to the valley. As his hunger grew, the troll began to feel a real grievance towards the goats. If he didn’t get to eat at least one of them, he was determined to go to the authorities.

When the third goat came to the bridge, the troll discovered that he was nearly twice the troll’s size, with large, sharp horns and hard, heavy hooves. The troll felt his physical-intimidation prerogative fading fast. As fear turned his insides into jelly, the troll sank to his knees and pleaded, ‘Oh, please, please forgive me! I was using you and your goat siblings for my own selfish ends. I don’t know what drove me to it, but I’ve seen the error of my ways.’

The goat, too, got down on what passed for knees in goats and said, ‘Now, now, you can’t take all the blame for yourself. Our presence and supreme edibility put you in this situation. My siblings and I all feel terrible. Please,
you
must forgive
us.’

The troll began to sob. ‘No, no, it’s all my fault. I threatened and bullied you all, just for the sake of my own survival. How selfish I was!’

But the goat would have none of this. ‘We were the selfish ones. We only wanted to save our own skins, and we totally neglected your needs. Please, eat me now!’

‘No,’ the troll said, ‘you must butt me off this bridge for my insensitivity and selfishness.’

‘I’ll do no such thing,’ said the goat, ‘since we all tempted you in the first place. Here, have a chomp. Go ahead.’

‘I’m telling you,’ the troll insisted, standing up, ‘I’m the guilty one here. Now, knock me off this bridge and be quick about it!’

‘Look,’ said the goat, rearing to his full height, ‘no one is going to take away my blame for this, not even you, so eat me before I pop you in the nose.’

‘Don’t play guiltier-than-thou with me, Hornhead!’

‘“Hornhead”? You smelly hairball! I’ll show you guilt!’ And with that, they wrestled and bit and punched and kicked as each sought to don the mantle of blame.

The other two goats bounded up to the bridge and sized up the fight. Feeling guilty at not accepting enough of the blame, they joined the others in a whirling ball of hair, hooves, horns, and teeth. But the little bridge was not built to carry such weight. It shook and swayed and finally buckled, hurling the troll and the three codependent goats Gruff into the chasm. On their way down, they each felt relieved that they would finally get what they deserved, plus, as a bonus, a little extra guilt for the fate of the others.

here once lived an economically disadvantaged tinker and his wife. His lack of material accomplishment is not meant to imply that all tinkers are economically marginalized, or that if they are, they deserve to be so. While the archetype of the tinker is generally the whipping person in classic bedtime stories, this particular individual was a tinker by trade and just happened to be economically disadvantaged.