The Next Great Children’s Book

Many years ago, in my earlier days of fatherhood, I developed the particular skill of telling my children bedtime stories with, um..how shall I put this?…colorful plot lines. These stories were rich with life lessons, as well as a fair amount of casual violence. Nevertheless, they were quite popular with the kids, if not their mother. Well, last night I was given the opportunity to reprise my role as the Stephen King of the bedtime story, when Kaitlin and Jon’s dear friends, Bailey and Matthew Wolfer shockingly asked me if I would do the honors for their two adorable boys, Milo and Theo. What follows is a rough summation of the story that poured forth from the muddled grey mush of my brain in the pitch black darkness of the boy’s room. The seeds of this particular classic were provided by a picture that little Theo (age 4) had drawn during dinner of an alien with six hands…

The setting was the frozen tundra of Alaska where two brothers lived in a cold and drafty igloo. Their largely absent parents had a rule that if they ever needed to go outside to pee they must do so quickly and return to the relative safety of the igloo asap. But on this particular morning, the boys were feeling adventurous. Before long they found themselves on the cusp of disaster when they notice that a (herd? Pack?) of polar bears had risen out of the icy waters and was about to charge the two helpless waifs with murderous intent.

Just when things looked hopeless they noticed a bright light above, red, blue and green rotating lights hovering in the sky directly above the scene of potential slaughter. Suddenly, three legs shot out from the bottom of the craft as it prepared to touch down on the snowy ground. Then a giant set of stairs extended down from the spacecraft and the Alien warrior of poor Theo’s earlier imaginings arrived on the scene. At first, the boys were convinced that they had been saved from becoming the polar bear’s dinner only to be abducted by this giant extraterrestrial warrior with six hands—each fitted with a different and unique weapon of mass destruction. But instead, the warrior alien turned towards the six flummoxed polar bears and began their wholesale and systematic elimination. The first polar bear fell victim to a shot between the eyes from the handgun of arm number one. The second polar bear’s fate was sealed when the Samurai sword attached to hand number two decapitated the helpless beast. At this point in the narrative I thought it necessary to point out that the deluge of blood spewing out from this unhappy result clashed terribly with the pristine clean and white surface of the heretofore innocent tundra landscape…(teaching the boys about imagery and the irony of perception in the process). When the third polar bear noticed that the only weapon attached to arm number three was a simple whip, he snorted contemptuously (yet more irony, illustrating the time honored truth that pride indeed cometh before the fall). Before bear number three could get the smirk of overconfidence off his furry face, he too found his severed head flying through the frigid air!

Now there were three polar bears left, and suddenly the boys were worried. The warrior alien’s fourth arm was equipped with a howitzer weapon which had only one shell in it and his remaining arms were normal hands with no weapons at all. But then they noticed the warrior alien alter his strategy towards the polar bears. Suddenly the warrior alien turned from menacing to charming, asking the polar bears if they fancied playing a card game. Clearly, the warrior alien had done his homework, knowing that since ancient days, the polar bears were famous throughout the universe for their skills at poker and gin rummy. In fact the very reason that polar bears lived in the arctic was because thousand of years earlier they had fled the jungles of Africa for Alaska because of how difficult it had become to find an honest game in the jungle what with all the cheetahs. In a shocking surprise, the three surviving polar bears agreed to sit down for a quick game with this creature who had just dispatched three of their brethren so spectacularly. As soon as they sat down of course, in a development that surprised literally no one, The warrior alien let loose with the howitzer, killing all three in a spectacular explosion.

Once the dust settled, the two boys found themselves face to face with the warrior alien. Tension filled the air as they all wondered what would be their fate. Suddenly the warrior alien bent down on four arms to get to their eye-level. Then he spoke in a thunderous voice…

“Now, what will I do with these two disobedient boys? Did not your parents specifically tell you to go outside and pee but then return to the igloo at once? And yet, here you both are where you shouldn’t be, witnessing things that very well may scar you for life.”

At this point the older brother spoke up and pointed out the obvious—“Well, I notice that your two remaining arms are only fitted with hands like ours. You have no more weapons. What can you possibly do to us?”

Even though the warrior alien’s face was hidden in a dome of metal, it did seem to crack a shiny smile right before he said the fateful words…

“Apparently you two earthlings have never heard of the Great Tickle Monster!!!

At this point, the warrior alien grabbed the two boys began tickling them unmercifully with his human like hands, so much so that the boys were eventually reduced to giggling, hysterical piles of arms and legs. The warrior alien then said, “Have you learned your lesson, human boys?? Always obey your parents!!”

The warrior alien walked back up the stairs of his ship, the three legs withdrew from sight and the rotating red, blue and green lights disappeared into the starry expanse.

The End.

Since the boy’s father is a graphic artist by trade, I see a best seller coming in the children’s fiction genre once his illustrations bring this story to life.

Move over, “Goodnight Moon”