“Would you like to hear a bed-time story?”
That was the phrase she still expected to hear at night, even though she hadn’t been a child for years. And yet, when she lay down on the pillows and pulled the blanket up to her chin, she could almost hear a whisper-faint echo of the words, as if the very air around her knew what was supposed to fill the silence.
What was it about bed-time stories? They were so comforting, so soothing, almost like the word-equivalent of a cozy blanket. Even if you fell asleep in the middle of them, you knew that they would end happily ever after. The prince and the princess got married. The dragon or ogre or what-have-you was slain. The main character’s dearest wish came true, and good triumphed over evil. It was all so simple.
Real life wasn’t that simple — even little kids knew that (despite the fact that adults often forgot how wise children were, and tended to think that they couldn’t possibly know anything about “real life”). But the important part of the stories didn’t lie in their simplicity. It lay in the acknowledgement that evil did exist, and that there were ways to face it and to fight it. In real life, you couldn’t always win. But you never had to take anything lying down, either. You could be an active protagonist.
It was a good thing to be reminded of, she figured. Maybe that was why she always insisted on reading stories to her students. Bed-time stories were of a special breed, but kindergarten stories were close enough. It wasn’t the same, reading stories to a whole class instead of having a parent tell you a story all by yourself, but she would take it.
She’d had her chance to enjoy the stories, and now it was time to pass them on.
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