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Thursday, December 2, 2010

THE TALE OF TROY

“Tell me a story Dad! Please don’t put me to bed before a story.” Little Andrew puckered his face and his father laughed. To his wife he said, “Do we have time for a story?”

“If I do the dishes,” she replied. She shook her head and clacked her tongue, though the hint of a smile was on her face. “I dare say that without us womenfolk around nothing would ever get done. Not the dishes, not the table, not dinner.”

“Ah,” Andrew’s father said. “What makes you say that? After all, don’t you remember the story of Troy?”

Andrew’s mother frowned. “Of course I remember. But I fail to see what Troy has to do with cleaning and dinner.”

Little Andrew bounced on his father’s knee. “Tell me. Tell me the story of Troy!”
“And then you will go to sleep?” his father asked. He waited until Andrew nodded and then he cleared his throat and leaned back in his reclining chair. “This will be a very short story,” he said. “But I think you will like it.”


Andrew’s mother leaned against the doorway to the dining room, holding a towel in one hand and a wet bowl in the other. As she wiped the dish dry, Andrew’s father began the story.
“A long, long, long time ago the women of the world told their husbands, ‘You would never get anything done without us.’


So a large number of men left their homes and crossed the sea near the land of Greece. And on a distant shore they built a magnificent city, which they named Troy.
But one man, a man by the name of Paris, returned across the sea and stole a beautiful woman. He brought her into the magnificent city of Troy and called her his wife.
Across the sea the Greeks got into their ships and set off to take the city of Troy. They wanted the city and they wanted the woman. ‘We’ll tear that there city down if we have to,’ they declared.


The Greeks landed on the distant shore and saw the beautiful city of Troy, the city built by men, and they waged a war against it. They burned Troy to the ground and it was destroyed forever.”
Andrew opened his mouth to say, “Wow!” But his father shook his head as if thinking to himself and said, “A great many men built the magnificent city of Troy, they finished it. But it took only one woman to quickly bring it to ruin.”


Andrew’s mother kissed his father and pinched his cheeks. “I should slap you for such a preposterous story! Tssk! Tssk! Now you’d better tell him the true story of Troy and leave out all the silliness.”

“Ah, but the only reason you react that way,” said his father. “Is because Troy is the Achilles’ heel for women!”
* * * *
Note: I wrote this out very quickly and thought I'd post it for feedback. How would you rate this as a children's story, say for age 4 to 9?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

That is a great story...Really great!!!


Awesome!