Funny Story

Funny Story

Our granddaughter Lulu was over this morning, and Linda and I were sitting around the dining room table, and Lulu asked, "You want to see my animal ballet?"   And we said sure.

So she started doing an animal ballet.  She did the giraffe ballet, and then she did the elephant ballet, and then a lion ballet and a panda ballet.  And each one was perfect.  She hummed a tune and danced like each of the animals would dance a ballet if it could.

It was great.

Then she turns to me and says, "It's your turn."

I can't dance.  I can barely walk, so I say, "I'll tell you a story."

She nods, and I start ad-libbing.

I do this all the time, just some kind of goofy stuff, one silly plot point after another.  This time I'm telling her a story about a panda and a horse and how the horse gets lost in the panda's jungle and how the panda doesn't want to help the horse get out of the jungle so the horse starts eating all the panda's bamboo.

And then I stop.  The story is just some dumb ad-libbing that ends as soon as it begins, and I say, "That's it, Lulu."

And she pauses for a moment and doesn't say anything and then suddenly says, "Oh I get it.  It's like Aesop's Fables.  The panda first refuses to help the horse and so at the end the horse sort of punishes the panda by eating its bamboo.  The panda should have been nicer."

And I sit there and marvel.