Alternate Endings

Have you read those books where you get to pick options at different points of a story? If you want the hero to take the injured man to the hospital, go to Page 35. Or if you want the hero to pursue his assailants, go to Page 40. I ran into a variant of that with my 5 year old daughter.

There’s this filler on one of the kids’ channels where they tell the same short story each time. It goes something like this: there are 3 goats who must cross a bridge to get to the grass to graze. As the first one tried to cross the bridge, a troll caught it and wanted to eat it. The frightened goat told the troll to leave him and catch his bigger brother instead. The troll lets him go and catches the second goat. It too escaped citing that the next goat is even bigger. When the troll tries to catch the biggest goat, he head-butts the troll and escapes.

Upon which, my daughter suggested this variant, “Couldn’t the 3rd goat just have said catch the next one, he’s even bigger? And then of course, there would be no next one.”

I guess she’s knows her Machiavelli. Or, if you want a positive spin on it, perhaps she is familiar with The Art of War:
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

Another time, I had just finished reading this story to my daughter where two monkeys took a cake piece each from a shop. The shop owner chased them and was about to catch up with them. So one of the monkeys dropped its cake and climbed up a tree to escape. The other monkey picked up the fallen cake. With a cake now in each hand, there was no way it could climb the tree, and so it got caught by the angry shop owner. The moral of the story was that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Immediately my daughter spoke up. “Imagine”, she said (it’s one of her favorite phrases), that she and a friend were the ones who had grabbed the cake pieces and they were the ones who were being chased. Her friend would drop her cake and climb up the tree. She would then pick both pieces and throw them to her friend at the top of the tree. With her hands now free, she’d climb up the tree and escape. See, she said triumphantly, it’s possible to have your cake and eat it too.

That she could up with an alternate version instantly had me floored. Is she the next JK Rowling? Or was this a one-off case, inspired only by the lure of the cake? I am guessing it’s the latter.

But either way, why does someone who likes to come up with her own stories still ask us to tell her stories…

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