I am continuously fascinated by the fairy tales and nursery rhymes I was first exposed to as a little kid. Most of them made little sense then, and less now. I suspect the authors had something in mind when they wrote these things. The question is, what? After all, they wrote about impossible stuff, some of it very frightening, and often with plots that seemed just a wee bit twisted, if not perverse. The message was always obscure. Were these guys writing in some kind of code that could only be understood by very sick minds?
The old lady that lived in the shoe was a real piece of work. What in God’s name did she do with those kids? More importantly, why did she live in a shoe? I can understand a townhouse being out of her reach, but a shoe? What kind of environment is that to raise children? I was about 5 when it was first read to me, but I can still picture that high-top shoe that you might call a boot today. If the old lady was running some sort of foster home, she would never get away with it now, at least not without a new paint job.
Then there was Little Miss Muffet. First of all, there is no way she could have been little, eating what amounts to a tub of lard. And there could not have been a tuffet anywhere that could support “her hugeness.” This is just a guess, but that spider that came along and sat next to her might have been a sexual predator. He must have lost interest when he saw that tuffett crushing beneath the little blob’s weight.
A mouse running up a clock? That one is baffling. Did someone leave a piece of cheese atop that clock? If not, the rhyme makes no sense at all, aside from the usual innuendos; the clock being symbolic of something, and the stroking of the hours business is highly suspicious. Well … your guess is as good as mine.
Poor Rapunzel. Locked up in the top of that tower, another Freudian victim, waiting to be “rescued” by a young and handsome prince. I think this is how girls grow up to embrace the romantic concept, because as women, they all seem to want their men to be princes. It’s only a matter of time before they realize they’ve made a terrible mistake. He is not a prince. He is a beer-drinking slob who would much rather watch the Knicks lose than spend time with his wife. Eventually, she lets her hair down, like Rapunzel, hoping that a real prince will rescue her. But they all turn out to be the same. She winds up falling for her psychiatrist, who has no ethics but makes good money. Sometimes, that silver lining really exists.
Simple Simon was the precursor of delivery pizza. Our delivery men are not as dim-witted as Simon was portrayed to be, but if they were, you would be getting your pizza for what, three pence? About a nickel. Truth be told, I think Simple Simon was running numbers on the side. In the book of rhymes and fairy tales I read as a youngster, old Simon was dressed quite nattily. You don’t make enough money to buy clothes like that selling pies. If he wasn’t running numbers, he might have been pimping. It’s the outfit that gives him away.
I don’t think there’s a whole lot to say about Rumpelstiltskin. He had a horrible name and it was a horrible story, loaded with innuendo, which was most evident in his name. Something tells me that all he needed was some Viagra and he would have been fine. I am willing to bet that his mood would have improved dramatically.
Today, fairy tales are abundant in real life. We believe that our great princes and princesses will save us from oblivion, despite the fact that they continue to plunge us headlong into the void. Hillary Clinton has some potential as Little Miss Muffet if she puts on 200 pounds. Of course, Barrack Obama is the quintessential Simple Simon, selling pie-in-the-sky platitudes that will probably cost us more than a few pence if he is elected, and John McCain is the perfect Rumpelstiltskin. But who are the demons and goblins? Just a guess, but the goblins might be the faceless industrialists who linger behind the scenes with briefcases full of cash. It’s hard to get elected, let alone nominated, without a few goblins on your side. The demons are where they always are, somewhere else. They are the “evil-doers.” For some strange reason though, we always seem to find out that they have been doing business with the goblins.
Perhaps fairy tales and nursery rhymes are trying to tell us something. We have never been able to learn from history, but maybe we can learn from fantasy. Why not? Our world seems to be built upon it anyway. So perhaps there will be a shining prince who will rescue us, the collective “Rapunzel,” from the prison of our own shortsightedness. Little Miss Muffet’s tuffet is crushing under the weight, Simple Simon’s pies are just empty crusts and Rumpelstiltskin could be our next prince-to-be. Quite a transformation, huh? But the mouse is still running up the clock, as well as the national debt, and time is awfully short.
Hello out there – is there a real prince, or princess, anywhere?