“Tell us a bedtime story,” the niblings insist, because they know the ones I tell will be weird. So I oblige.
“You know the Hansel and Gretel story,” I said. They did.
“There’s more than one version of it, you know.” Historian that I am, I figured I’d slip them some education. “The guys who wrote the fairy tale books—Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm—were college professors looking for all the versions of all the fairy tales they used to tell in Germany. That’s why most of the fairy tales are kinda German. Even Aladdin, with the little-known version where the genie annexes the Sudetenland.”
They didn’t get that joke. That’s okay. It amuses me.
“So in this version of Hansel and Gretel, it goes this way.”
Once there was a woodcutter, who was really terrible at his job, because even though he lived in the woods, and was surrounded by wood, he was poor. He had no money. He and his wife and kids had to eat tree bark to survive, and they were so skinny. Skinnier than you. The kids were Hansel and Gretel; you knew that.
One day the woodcutter’s wife, the mom, told him, “We have no money, we have no food, and the kids are so hungry, and they’re skinnier than the Leslie children. I have a good idea. Let’s take them deep, deep into the woods, to the very edge of the next town, and leave them there. Then they’ll wander into town, and knock on the door, and someone will take them in, and call Child Protective Services, and they’ll get a nice foster home, and someone will feed them.” Foster care isn’t great, but it’s better than eating bark in the woods.
“Okay,” said the dad, who didn’t like the kids all that much.
So the next day, mom and dad got the kids up and said, “We’re gonna go into the woods.” So they went deep, deep, deep into the woods, near the edge of the next town. And the parents told Hansel and Gretel, “Sit down here, and we’re gonna go way over there, and cut down a tree. You stay here and wait for us. Just… stay. Don’t get up. Don’t come follow us. Stay here now.” And then they went home.
After a few hours Gretel, who’s the smart one, told Hansel, “Well, they left us in the woods.”
“No they didn’t,” said Hansel, “they’re over there cutting down a tree.”
“They’re not,” she said, “they left us here. I heard ’em talking about leaving us in the woods, and now they did, those evil parents.”
“Well, what’re we gonna do?” said Hansel.
“We’ll just go home,” said Gretel, and they did. Because they had paid attention, and their parents had kinda taken them in a straight line, so they knew exactly where they were. So they walked straight back home, and there were their parents.
“You left us in the woods,” accused Gretel.
“No!” said the parents. “We were cutting down a tree. We told you to wait right there. We went home for… uh… lunch.”
“Did not,” said Gretel, but they all sat down to a lunch of tree-bark soup, and the parents gave up on ditching the kids for that day.
The next day, the mom told the dad, “Okay dumdum, we made it too easy for them to find their way back. We gotta get them all turned around so they don’t know which way is which, so that they’re really lost and can’t go home.”
“Right,” said the dad, “I’ll take my iPhone. It’s got
GPS on it.”
“What’re they doing with an iPhone in a fairy tale?” my niece objected.
“It’s a fairy tale,” I explained, “it doesn’t have to make sense.”
So the parents took the kids into the woods, and they went this way and that way and the other way and got the kids all turned around so they couldn’t find their way back. Then they said, “Sit down here, and we’re gonna go way over there, and cut down a tree,” and the usual. And then they went home.
“They ditched us again,” said Gretel.
But this time Hansel came prepared. When the parents said, “We’re gonna go into the woods,” he went out back and got a pocketful of rocks. Not those smooth rocks that blend in with everything in the woods; those red rocks like Grandma has in the backyard. And every so often he’d drop a rock. So he left a trail all the way home.
“And in the version of the story I heard,” my niece said, “every time he looked back, and his mother asked him why he was looking back, he said, ‘I’m saying goodbye to my little cat on the roof.’”
I said, “Yeah, okay; he did that too.”
So the kids followed the trail home, and there was mom and dad, and Gretel said, “You left us in the woods,” and the parents were all, “How on earth did you find your way back here?”
And the dad went outside, and saw the trail of little red rocks all the way into the woods, and realized his kids weren’t as dumb as he thought they were. So that night, while they were sleeping, he went out back with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, and got all the rocks out of the backyard, and dumped them into a ravine.
So the next day, when the parents said, “We’re gonna go into the woods,” Hansel ran out back to get a pocketful of rocks—but there were no rocks! So he had to think quick.
He grabbed ten water bottles. He gave five to Gretel, and he carried five. And as they went out into the woods, he was chugging water. And every few minutes he said, “Daddy, I gotta go to the bathroom.” “What, again?” So it took them a while to get deep and mixed-up into the woods. But finally they got there, and the parents said, “Sit down here, and we’re gonna go way over there, and… yeah, you know what we’re doing. Don’t follow us.” And they went home.
“Well, now what?” said Gretel.
“No problem,” said Hansel; “I learned it from walking the dog. We just follow all the wet spots on the trees, all the way home.” Which they did.
“They have a dog?” the nephew asked.
“Had a dog,” I explained. “They were so hungry.”
So they’re home, and the parents are going out of their minds, ’cause their little geniuses keep working their way back like homing pigeons, and they’re never gonna get ’em into foster care. So Dad finally says, “Well, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna get them out of their beds while they’re sleeping, and then we’ll take them into the woods. They won’t leave a trail; they won’t know where they are; they’ll stay lost.” So that’s what they did.
Hansel and Gretel wake up in the woods, and mom and dad say, “Okay. Now we’re gonna go 'cut down a tree,’ and all that. Bye.” And they go home.
“Oh no,” said Hansel. “I didn’t get rocks, and I didn’t get water bottles, and I didn’t get any bread to leave a trail of bread crumbs. I don’t know where we are, or how we’re gonna get home. We’re stuck in the woods. What’re we gonna do?”
“No problem,” said Gretel. “When Daddy wasn’t looking, I stole his iPhone.”
And they went home. But mom and dad were lost in the woods with no
GPS , and never made it home, and were eaten by squirrels. And eventually Hansel and Gretel called the authorities, and Child Protective Services came, and they got foster care and food. The End.
“Wait!” the kids objected. “What about the witch? There’s a witch in the story, who’s gonna eat Hansel and Gretel! What about her?”
“Not in my version of the story,” I said. “Maybe later.”
They still objected, so I told them that version of the story. Which I may post later.