The Equuschick started reading Gentle Ben (Puffin Modern Classics) to the Dread Pirate Grasshopper at bedtime. The reading it has proved to be a good idea, not so much the before bedtime. It seems The Equuschick hasn’t read it in while and she forget certain details, like people drowning. He was a bit upset. Heh. And then of course, reading a chapter were the bad guy slices the bear’s ear off and then the bear rips the bad guy’s face off, well…the DPG was so upset he was punching the walls and screaming at the top of his lungs “IS THE BEAR GOING TO DIE? IS THE BEAR GOING TO DIE? Those guys are so STUPID*!” Yeah. It took him a while to go to sleep that night.
*Technically, the use of the word “Stupid” is discouraged. But then on the other hand, if the genius Equuschick was going to read her 4 year old a story where a man gets drunk and goes and provokes a hibernating bear with a scythe, she felt that it was important that he did grasp the full significance of the er, lack of wisdom in these activities.
On the bright side, The Equuschick had enough sense not to read the The Lord of the Rings (50th Anniversary Edition) to the 4 year, even though they did enjoy a read through ofThe Hobbit: Illustrated Edition a few months ago.
But it didn’t do much good, because the DPG happened to overhear a conversation between Shasta and The Equuschick and has been obsessed by this idea of a backstory ever since. (“Mommy, I thought Uncle Andrew from the Narnia books was the lord of the rings. He had a lot of magic rings.”)
“Mommy, how did Gollum kill his friend to get the magic ring? He didn’t have a sword.” “Umm. He choked him.” “Did he have really long toenails? Did he grow his toenails really long and then choke him with his toenails?”
“Why didn’t Bilbo kill Gollum in The Hobbit?” “Well, he almost did. He had his sword ready to kill Gollum but then he felt sorry for him.” “I would have had a longer sword, I would have killed him because he was bad.” “If you had killed Gollum, then a long time later the world would have been destroyed and it would have been because you had killed Gollum and not let him play his part in a Plan.”
“Well, I think I would have let him live.”