Storytelling Week 1

Billy and the Dingy Man

The Big Bad Wolf

Billy had always been a rambunchous kid. His parents would tell him often that he needed to be a child and play but, none of these things interested him. When the other kids were out on the playground Billy would be inside his classroom lecturing his teacher. At dinner time Billy would always disobey his parents by not finishing his food when they did, and this often led him to having to stay at the dinner table long after his parents had finished eating.

One day while Billy was at the mall food court he looked up to see that his parents were nowhere to be found. Billy looked at this as an opportunity to be a grown up and explore the mall for himself. He walked up and down the mall pathways until he came to a video arcade. Billy knew that he should probably find his parents but he was grown up and grown up’s did what they wanted when they wanted. So he entered the arcade and looked at all the games he wanted to play. Unfortuanatly for Billy he had no money in his pockets. This seemed unfair to Billy because he was a grownup and grownup’s should have money to play all the video games they wanted to play.

An old man, in dingy jeans with long hair and a beard to match approached Billy.

“What is the problem little man?” the dingy man in dingy jeans asked.

“Well I wanna play these games, but I don’t have any money.”

“Oh I can fix that, I have a bunch of money in my van. It is just outside in the parking lot. How bout you come with me and I will give you a bunch of money so you can play all the games you want to play?”

Billy agreed and the man grabbed his arm and began to walk through the mall with the man. Along the way when Bill would try to stop the man would just tug Billy’s arm to keep him moving. Each time that Billy would stop the man would tug him a little harder. Billy was no fool. After all he was a grownup and if he wanted to stop then he should be able to stop. Billy realized that the man was trying to kidnap him, and that if he got into the man’s car Billy would never see his parents again. Unfortunately Billy noticed this at the exit to the mall. He looked around and did not see a single soul around that could help him. The man now tugged Billy really hard and though Billy tried to resist he was unable to stop the man from dragging him to his car.

“Oh please sir, I know you are going to kidnap me, and I understand that I can do nothing about it, but I wanna be the one that unlocks the door. My mom always let’s me unlock the door and I promise if you give me your keys and let me unlock the door I will go with you and not put up a fuss.” Billy said.

The man didn’t understand this request, but felt it was much easier to kidnap a kid if they didn’t put up a fight, so he handed Billy the keys.

Billy looked at the keys and pretended to push the unlock button on the key fob, but instead pushed the panic button. The loud noise caught the attention of the mall security and they came and rescued Billy from the dingy man in dingy jeans. When the police arrived and arrested the man, he realized that he should have just unlocked the door himself instead of letting Billy do it. Billy realized that he should be a kid a little longer and start listening to his parents.

Authour’s Notes

This is a retelling of the “The Wolf and Kid” from Aesop’s for Children book. I updated it by making it about a kidnapping of a child because I am a parent and I worry about my child all the time. I think kids grow up too fast these days and one of the lessons that I show was that children listen more to their parents and stop trying to grow up too fast. The original message of the story was about the wolf not allowing a goat to get him away from his purpose of eating him, and that element is in here also, but I wanted to change that a little more and make it about the young boy needing to not grow up so fast and understand that parents have reasons for the things they make you do.

Bibliography

The Aesop for Children by Aesop. 2006. web source The Project Gutenberg Ebooks

Picture Attribution
By Gunnar Ries Amphibol (Own work (own photo)) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons