22.Jun.2008 Sunday Salon Week #6: Fairy Tales
A while back, the 12th Bookworms Carnival was on. The theme was Fairy Tales. One of my favorite topics! Sadly I’ve been crazy busy the past few weeks (or has it been months? I lost track), so I couldn’t really spend time on it.
I decided to write a bit on it though.
When I was little, I read Hans Christian Andersen’s stories. The one I remember the most was The Little Mermaid, because it was one of the saddest tale I’ve ever read. I was in utter shock to see Disney’s version of The Little Mermaid. They have sugar-coated it to the max. Don’t get me wrong, I love Disney movies in general. I love Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty (I was terrified with the old witch in Snow White so was never really into it). But they cut so much from the Little Mermaid, it’s almost unforgivable! :( It’s just that you’d lose the whole point when the mermaid’s feet are not in pain, the sisters don’t make sacrifices, and the mermaid doesn’t face the choices between killing the prince and jumping into the sea and becoming bubbles!
My dad read to me and my brothers when we were small. He read us Chinese stories though. Short stories and folk tales. He said I could read the western tales by myself. I did, I read everything in our local library. From Enid Blyton to One Thousand and One Arabian Nights.
There’s this one short story that I remember the most from my dad. It’s about a guy who is so lazy to wake up from his bed that his mom has to deliver all his food. One day the mother needs to go somewhere, so she makes his son a necklace full of food that looks like donuts. That way he doesn’t need to get up and can just eat the food around his neck. So the mother leaves for a few days and she comes back to find that the son has died starving. Apparently he’s so lazy that he only eats the food at the front of his head and not the ones at the back or side of his head.
It’s just freaking hilarious. So my dad, my brothers and I referred to it every time we think someone is really lazy. “… like that guy who dies because he’s too lazy to turn his head to eat the food on the side of his head…”
Apparently since we were very young, my brothers and I had very strong sense of humanity. We complained to our dad everytime someone dies, even though he’s the bad guy. Like the wolf in the Three Pigs story (or was it Little Red Riding Hood?). We protested, “Why did he die? Why? Why?” So my dad had to alter it a bit to keep us happy. I guess when you’re little everything seems cute and cartoony. So we took pity for even the big bad wolf.
