fairy tales

I remember those public service videos in grade school. They were black and white and usually frighteningly futuristic. Designed to scare us into learning some valuable moral lesson that somehow our parents had sadly neglected to teach us. There was the one about the robots, robots cleaning our house, robots working in the yard, robot teachers, robot janitors. It ended with some ridiculous propaganda about running out of water that made absolutely no sense and left me thinking about robots in space with the whole world's water supply. There was the one called Lottery, where the world's population had become so overwhelming that resources were used up and there was not enough food to go around. People were living in some sort of dark age with dirt floors. Filthy children wandered the streets begging and looking generally frightened and feral. It ended in a gruesome scene where the lottery was drawn and the winners were stoned in the streets to conserve resources.

Another one was a planet that was sick, the air was toxic and there was no food or water. People had built communities underground and had forgotten what the sun looked like..... rather grim.

The one that affected me most was the one about the crazy old lady next door, everyone was afraid of her and called her witch. The meaner the neighborhood kids got the crankier the lady became. One day a little girl lost her ball in the yard and after finally getting the courage to go into the yard and get it found out that the lady was wonderful, sad and sweet. Her children and husband were all dead and she was only mean because the children teased her. The little girl started finding reasons to visit the old lady and did random chores just to hear her amazing stories about her past. The little girl's mother was proud and praised her for having such a caring spirit and spending time with the old woman. Eventually word got out to the little girl's friends that she was spending time with the neighborhood witch and they began to tease her. For the old woman's birthday, the two of them had planned a wonderful dinner party for just the two of them. The woman joyfully cooked all day, decorated and cleaned her house for the first time in years. Meanwhile the girl's friends teased her about her strange relationship with the old woman.... she began to feel bad and then decided to skip the party even though she was as excited as the old woman. The thing I remember most about these stories is there was no happy ending. The movie ended with the girl feeling like an ass and the old woman sobbing over her hard work lost. I remember making a happy ending in my mind just to cope with the sadness that was usually hidden from children's eyes and minds. I began to grasp that sometimes life was like that. Not everyone gets their happy ending... sometimes we end the story alone and sobbing over a cold meal that no one will eat. Sometimes the dog is euthanized in the pound, sometimes Maude doesn't wake from the coma. I still see the old woman.... I see her loneliness and her desperation for human touch.

I am easy on my children . I try to protect them from hurt. I replace things that are broken from carelessness sometimes. I try to stall the realization that the fairy tale may never happen to them.... I stall it and listen to them laugh for just a little longer.