A Bedtime Story
“It’s time to go to bed,” he said.
“But I don’t want to go to bed,” his child replied.
“If you go to bed now,” he said, “I will tell you a story.”
She scoffed, “But you always read me the same stories. They’re boring.”
“You weren’t listening,” he said, “I said I would tell you a story.”
“What’s the difference?” she replied, knowing that it would delay having to go to bed if she could keep him talking.
But he was not to be tricked, “Too bad, I’m going to your bedroom to tell a story. If you’re not there, I guess you’ll miss it.”
She was not prepared for this, especially when her dad got up and went into her bedroom, and she heard him start to talk.
“Once, a long time ago, there was a girl named Alice.”
As she inched towards the door, it began to close. “Wait!” she screamed, ran into the room, and jumped into bed. “Now you can go on.”
He continued, “Alice, it would seem, had a lot of trouble sleeping. That was until the night she found the magic hidden in her pillow.”
“What kind of magic?” asked his child, whose name was also Alice.
“What kind of magic, do you think?” he asked.
Alice thought awhile and said, “Magic that could make her fly to fairyland.”
Her dad continued, “It was magic that could take her away to fairyland. And who do you think she found there?”
Alice didn’t waste a moment, “It was the king and queen of all the fairies.”
Her dad continued. “There, she found the king and queen of all the fairies. They both said at once. Why Princess Alice, we are so glad to see you here. We’ve been wondering where you were. We were thinking of going on an adventure.”
“What are they going to do,” Alice, his child, asked. As excited as she was to hear this story, he noticed that her tired eyes were beginning to close.
He continued, “They are going on a great adventure, of course. But that adventure takes a lot of planning, and Alice, who had been playing all day, was getting too tired to help plan. So she asked if the king and queen could wait until the next day to plan it out because she had some ideas on what should be done.”
“That’s very smart of her,” Alice, the child, yawned.
“Then I guess we better stop the story here,” her father said, “and let everybody rest so they get a fresh start tomorrow.”
His child would have agreed; however, her eyes had already closed. He put the cover on her, kissed her good night, turned off the light, and let Alice plan all the adventures she had in store for the next night.
