Once Upon A Time

When I was about 6 years old my family realized I was a little girl who was fascinated with stories about Head Hunters and Zombies and a guy named ” Burke’s Hare ” who robbed graves and sold the rotting bodies to ” Franks  Stein ” who in turn made Monsters out of them.

I guess my family were more then a little disturbed by my taste in literature so they tried to balance things out by introducing me to your more traditional fairy tales…

Like

 Cinderella

At first I liked Cinderella, but it became clear to me during story time that she needed magic to be prettier then her sisters. I was not encouraged by that as I was not exactly the cutest kid on the block and unless someone showed up with a magic wand I figured I was in trouble.

In the end I was scared of the Cinderella story, it used to give me nightmares.

However I LOVED Snow White.

She got to live in the woods and she ate a poisoned apple and lived-which made perfect sense to me as I had swallowed kerosene on a dare a year before and I had lived.

So I felt a kinship with Snow White and her weird friends who looked like trolls.

She was one lucky girl I remember thinking- her friends were monsters and carried axes and in addition she had black hair too ( which wasn’t something girls in fairy tales had unless they were bad ) so I happily saw myself in that role and asked for that story a lot.

But the Fairy Tale Character who offended me to the marrow of my little girl bones and the one character I truly learned to hate was Beauty- from Beauty and the Beast.

More then halfway through the story I did whatever it is kids do during story time to be disruptive and my Grandma tossed the book into my toy box and that was the end of that.

Or so I thought.

So why did I get so upset?

Here.

Let me count the ways.

First of all her Dad ditches her in the woods and she spends all of her time wishing he would come back-had that been my Dad there would have been serious Hell to pay if he had ever shown his face around me again…

but I digress.

The only person who is nice to Beauty is an Ugly Man who almost dies when Beauty’s  kid ditching Dad shows up and takes her back.

Now that part made me cry and it was awhile before I agreed to hear the end of the story which my Grandma was glad to tell me because I had taken to drawing pictures of Beauty being visited by ” Burkes Hare ” and I was hanging them up all over the walls in my bedroom.

Well.

I was mad, but a sport so I learned that Beauty goes back to the castle the Beast and everything around the castle comes back to life and…

Beast turns into a handsome Prince “and they lived Happily Ever After” my relieved Grandmother sang out as she finished the story.

I remember telling my Grandma ” If she had eaten a poisoned apple that would have been a  very happy ending.”

” You really think so, don’t you. “

It really wasn’t a question.

I didn’t say anything but I remember my Grandmother looked at me with those wicked green eyes of hers and winked at me. I remember she said something about not winning them all…

and I was never treated to another Fairy Tale by anybody in my family again.

….And we all lived happily ever after that.

The End.