Tales of Life with a Girl on the Go

I took Reid to daycare today, since Ken is in Kingston, it was me or no one. Reid asked what there was to do by the time we made it to the first traffic light. After a big trip, when stuffed animals, markers, stickers, toys and treats come out of bags at unpredictable intervals, the drive to daycare is awfully mundane. I suggested that Reid could talk to me, count schoolbuses or yellow cars, watch for motorcycles … the possibilities are endless. Reid asked me to tell her a princess story.

I know the general outline of the traditional princess stories but Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel and the other usual suspects all depend on princes to resolve their problems. The worst might be the princess with the pea problem is a whiner and I praise Reid’s toughness and discourage any behaviour that would require a visit from the “wanhh-mbulance”. (Word compliments of Uncle Roger to deal with whiney kids.) These stories, then, were off the table. Rumplestiltskin might have been acceptable, if I remembered more of it than that a funny name and a spinning wheel figure in there somewhere.

I settled on a retelling of The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch. I think I first encountered this story when I was in university – Munsch has Guelph connections – and I have loved since then. I tried reading it to Reid a year or more ago but she wasn’t as enthralled as me. Maybe she sensed how badly I wanted her to love it. I gave the princess Aunt Pam’s name. I don’t think that is accurate, though. The prince’s name was Ronald. I remember vividly the line, “Prince Ronald you are a bum.” I told about the dragon attacking the castle and the kingdom, not mentioning the fate of all of the people, other than Prince Ronald. Prince Ronald, as you may know, was captured by the dragon and taken to the dragon’s lair. The princess finds him and tricks the dragon into using up all of its fire-breathing capability and energy. Once the dragon is asleep, the princess attempts to rescue Prince Ronald but is rebuffed. He can’t accept her as she is, with messy hair and a dirty face and dressed in the paper bag that she’d managed to salvage in lieu of a dress. Reid was happy with the story.

The next request was for a prince story. I hope the story I made up about Prince William who met a frog in the forest who convinced him that playing in the water was fun and squishing mud between his toes would feel good. The king and queen were glad that he had thought to take off his fancy prince clothes and offered him play clothes for the next day. Getting dirty is important for kids, you know, even for princes. Reid seemed to like this story, too, or at least I think so since she asked me to tell her another. I was saved by our arrival at daycare.

It’s much harder than you would think to be creative without advance notice, in the middle of rush hour. Okay, the drive from our house to daycare isn’t bumper-to-bumper but there are many unpredictable drivers to worry about. It’s best not to be one of them.
When I got to daycare, the Scholastic Book catalogues were on the counter. As I flipped through, I noticed that The Paper Bag Princess – 25th Anniversary edition was available. “What a coincidence!” thought I. Then I thought, was it really 25 years ago that I first read that book. I worked out the math, with much greater accuracy than yesterday when I thought I was celebrating my 3rd Mother’s Day as a mother. So, no, I wasn’t in university 25 years ago. Not even 20 years ago, for that matter. The Paper Bag Princess is still well worth the read. Robert Munsch will even read it for you if you download it.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Barbara's family, Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.