Some fairy tales are horrifying. Why? Because life has its horrid moments, wouldn't you know? In the same vein, some fairy tales sparkle with delight. Why? Because life has its wonderful moments. Fairy tales are filled with all sorts of metaphor, which children get much better than adults may suspect.
It is my firm belief that small children do metaphor much better than adults do. That may sound strange because children don't even know what metaphor is. Oh yeah? Just because they don't have a name for it and don't seem to care about a name for it and don't stop to analyze it, doesn't mean that they don't get it. They live it, which is far superior to just understanding it.
Once upon a time, I was playing with my two friends, who were my only playmates. My other friends were found in books. Once a week, my father would take me over to Rock Bay where the Janz kids lived or he would go and fetch them and bring them back to Thurlow Island, which is up the west coast of British Columbia. We only played together once a week so it was special. We had the wildest games and the most fun of any kids anywhere - ever!
On the day in question, we had been playing in a gravel pit, which was about a quarter mile from home along a narrow road that had tall timber on both sides. Even in the middle of the day there were spooky shadows and gnarled stumps that looked like witches. As we trudged up the road strange noises could be heard. Sometimes though when we stopped walking the strange noises stopped. Were we making these strange noises as we stomped along the gravel road or were strange creatures watching us?
When Walter and Eve and I began to walk home that day, the sun had long since passed its zenith. Shadows crawled across the road like frozen snakes. We came to a bend. When we had come around the bend, we saw something that nearly drove us around the bend. A couple of hundred yards ahead of us was a big black bear or at least what looked like a big black bear. We were not sure.
"Walk slowly and make a lot of noise," said Walter, the oldest of the trio. "Stand tall."
That's difficult to do when you are five.
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