Bed Time Stories

For a number of years I have had a love affair with books. While I sit in my favorite chair with a lamp illuminating the page and a cup of green tea poised ready a few inches in front of my face while my eyes scramble across the page, trying to take it all in as though if I don't read them fast enough they would disappear. The author has been dead longer than I have been alive, yet he may as well be seated right there, a glint in his eye, wondering which story is my favorite.

I can't remember how I came to truly love reading, but I do have fond memories of my third grade teacher, Miss. Hice, reading to the class every afternoon. After finishing each book she would write the name of the book on a boxcar cut from construction paper and put it on the wall. The boxcars linked up and by the end of the year a train stretched more than half the length of the room.

I looked forward to story time, yet something always felt a little off about the literature. It was like being in the middle of a conversation and trying to remember a word escaping you, and the harder you tried to make your friend understand and the more you flailed your arms, the crazier you seem to the people sitting around you. You can never win in these situations. You're always reduced to saying "You know what I mean! Come on. It's the thing! The one thing! You know, right!? Right!?" Your friend agrees with you, assures you she understands, and asks you to please be quiet, because a lot of people show up to Easter Mass and they're all staring, and Easter mass is the long one so any social discomfort you cause will only be exacerbated by the crawling minutes. No incense can help you here.Then, six weeks later, you wake up at quarter past four in the morning and call your friend, shouting "Hockey Puck! Hockey Puck!" until they hang up on you, never to answer your phone calls again.

Such was the state I have been in for the past 17 years, trying to understand what it is that bothered me so much about the stories read to us on those lazy afternoons after lunch, our bellies full of chocolate milk and jello cups. James and the Giant Peach. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Where the Wild Things Are. The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Answers are sneaky little things. You can look and look and look, but the answer will elude you. Then, just after you've settled into bed and had a cup of chamomile, when your eyelids grow heavy and the brain can look forward to a little REM, the answer comes crashing into your head like an unpracticed High School Marching Band and sends you 4 feet into the air. These are always the times when it seems the pen you keep on your night stand, for these very moments, has been knocked under your bed forcing you to crawl around on your hands and your knees, lest you forget by morning.

The answer came to me much in the same way.

Nearly all children's stories are dark, twisted pieces of literature disguised by colorful drawings in order to infiltrate the minds of children and spawn evil. Pardon me if I seem a little melodramatic, it's just that the revelation was a long time coming and, if you've read this far, I wanted to make sure the juice was worth the squeeze.

It's not that I didn't enjoy James and the Giant Peach, it's just there is something to be said about a book where a boy is psychologically tortured by his two spinster Aunts after seeing his parents mauled and eaten by a rhinoceros that had escaped form the zoo. It doesn't sound as nice without the pictures, does it? James finally snaps and has a mental breakdown, resulting in the belief of floating around the world in a giant peach carried by seagulls. As a child I really like nothing more than to be reminded my parents could die a violent death at any moment.

Fortunately the author of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day could keep from writing about any murderous rampages. In fact, all the author set out to do was remind children that sometimes, no matter, what you do, nothing will go right in your life, you'll be blamed for things you didn't do, and go to bed hungry every night. In fact, the one thing the author, Judith Viorst, hates most about children it's the look of pure joy and happiness they have plastered on their stupid, innocent faces and Judith set out to wipe that smug look right off their beaks. This book is offensive on two levels. First, most regular kids don't even realize they have any major problems in life. It was all riding bikes and playing Nintendo for me, until I read this book and realized how awful a lot of life actually was. More importantly, what about the kid with real problems? What about the kid who comes from a broken home, where maybe Dad drinks too much and likes to smack him around? The one place this kid can find solace is in the safety of school and all of a sudden he has to listen to Alexander whine about going to the Dentist? How angry would you be if your parents neglected you and then part of Alexander's "Terrible" day was dropping his ice cream.

I won't stand for any of this. When I have children I am going to raise them right. I won't be reading them any terrifying bed time stories. Each night they will be lulled to sleep by the soft glow of Jersey Shore washing over their beautiful, innocent faces.