Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Daily Paragraph -- Rumplestiltskin Redux

The following is a story I told my son today. He made me tell it three times, each time interrupting more frequently for different embellishments. The bedtime version was fundamentally incomprehensible. Anyway, here's a moderately coherent telling for your perusal:

Theo was five years old, and he rode the bus every day to kindergarten. One day, Theo met a small man in a green suit on the bus. The man told Theo his name was Rumplestiltskin and that he was a leprechaun.

"What do leprechauns do?" asked Theo.

"We hide treasure," Rumplestiltskin answered.

"Can you tell me where you hid some?" asked Theo.

"Oh no, I can't do that. That would be cheating," Rumplestiltskin answered.

Theo decided that he was going to try to guess where Rumplestiltskin might have hidden some treasure. He noticed that the little man had pamphlet from the Upper Noe Recreation Center in his pocket and that his shoes were covered with sand. Theo connected the dots and said, "I think you buried some treasure in the sand box at Upper Noe Rec Center."

"I can neither confirm or deny that," said Rumplestiltskin. "But I can tell you that if you find some of my treasure, you have to share it, or it will disappear."

After school, Theo convinced his dad to take him to the Rec Center, and they started digging away in the sand box. All the other kids in the playground thought they were crazy, except for one boy who decided to help.

After a few hours of digging, Theo heard a clunk as he jabbed his shovel down into the ground. He and his dad and the other boy cleared away some more sand and uncovered a big wooden box with the name Rumplestiltskin written on it in gold. Anxiously, they opened it up and found it was full of Rescuebots!

Theo was thrilled, and he wanted to take them all home for himself, but then remembered what Rumplestiltskin had said and realized he needed to share the toys so they wouldn't disappear. So, he gave one Rescuebot to the boy who helped him dig up the treasure, and the next day at school he gave most of the rest of the Rescuebots to his friends, keeping only one for himself.

Sure enough, the Rescuebots never disappeared, and Theo found that sharing them with others was more fun than hoarding them and playing alone anyway.

The End

No comments:

Post a Comment