Bedtime Stories

Skeeter Bronson [1], hotel handyman, was faced with a difficult dilemma. He was asked to babysit his sisters kid while she flew off to Arizona to look for another job, as her current job as principal of an elementary school was fading into history. No problem for a uncle who hadn’t really interacted with his niece and nephew much over the years, right? Just plop them in front of the tube and… Wait. NO TV! How can children survive in a world without electronic images floating into their cerebral vortex! What is wrong with their mother? How will these kids reminisce with their peers later on in life if they have no TV shows to reminisce with others about?

The Solution to no TV?

Skeeter turns to the one mechanism that has maintained cultures far longer then TV has or every will have, at least since the invention of the printed press, BOOKS.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)

But unfortunately the books Patrick & Bobbie (his niece and Nephew) have in their arsenal of books prove to be worse then no TV with titles such as The Organic Squirrel Gets a Bike Helmet, and 'Rainbow Alligator Saves the Wetland' . Skeeter then sets his mind back in time to reach for a weapon against this communist propaganda (as he calls it) and boredom. He resorts to something older and more widely available to all of humanity throughout all of time; Oral Storytelling. This skill was passed on to him by his father Marty, who used to tell stories to young Skeeter all the time. Telling stories from your heart out loud caused Skeeter’s dad to interact personally with him and fueled his imagination as he ran around the hotel doing all types of little kid type things like hiding in the place where hotel guests get their ice.

Instead of telling fantastical stories hiding a liberal envirmentalist worldview, Skeeter tells fantastical stories hiding Skeeter’s life. Horror Guru and master storyteller Stephen King said that fiction is truth inside the lie. You can convey and transmit more truths through a good story then you can through a dry intellectual boring lecture or sermon.[2] This is often how the grand master of master storytellers tells truths about himself to those who hear his voice.

He spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world." –Mathew 13:34-35

Skeeter’s life is told through the lens of the fractured fairytale, the heroic comedic Western, The lively roll-polly days of the grand Roman-epic and the way out wacky world of science fiction. Each of these tales presents Skeeter the gallant knight king, the rugged cowboy hero on his red steed, the superstar daredevil gladiator knight and the plucky space hero overcoming the obstacles and hurtles placed in Skeeter’s personal life.

In these tales you learn of his disappointment with the paranoid germ phobic Nottingham who took control of the hotel over from his late father and unfulfilled his promise of letting Skeeter have a prominent place in the Hotel business. You learn of his bitter rivalry with the current goon that Nottingham has placed in chare of the hotel. You also learn of Skeeter’s pursuit to win the hand of Nottingham’s lovely daughter. All this and more are hidden in Skeeter’s tales of adventure and daring do, including Patrick & Bobbie’s wide-bugged eyed pet guinea pig, Bugsy and Skeeter’s slacker buddy Mickey.

But the story telling does not resort to the mere storytelling telling style of ‘The Princess Bride’, alone. It crosses over into the Twilight Zone as the stories that Skeeter tells his niece and Nephew come true. In the course of his story if he says it rained gumballs or he got kicked by a dwarf, or meet Abe Lincoln, it happen in the real world.

However these events that happen in the story-world don’t happen in real life quite the way Skeeter thinks they will. He doesn’t end up dying by being vaporized and the girl of his dreams that he lands a romance with is not Nottingham’s bombshell air-headed daughter but his sisters eco-friendly best friend named Jill. The Abe Lincoln meeting is quite different then depicted also. ‘Life’, John Lennon reminds us, ‘is what happens when you’re making other plans.’

By the way the things that come mysteriously true to life are the added bits by storytelles and not the storyteller. Out of the minds of babes.

The Grand storyteller decided to tell a story and spoke a single word that told that story. That word itself was also the Grand Storyteller and he created the ultimate story which became true and which we are all a part of. In order to make the story more exciting he decided to literally enter that story. He told this to the Skeeter’s of the world who told this tale with their childlike hearts to those who would and those who would not listen. The story of the Grand storyteller becoming part of his own story came true but not quite in the way people expected.

The almighty story teller who controls the reality and ultimate outcome of all stories came not as a mighty knight, gallant cowboy, heroic superstar gladiator, or a plucky daring space hero but as a baby born in a feeding troth and a man hung out to die like a common criminal. He did walk on water, hurl demons out of people, and restored sight to the blind, but never to make himself look good, but to help convince others that he was the Grand Master storyteller and that he loved all the characters that He created.

‘Bedtime Stories’ is a fun fantasy adventure filled with laughs and visual delights and the enduring message that stories are meant to be told out loud to each other as they create a bond that unites people and can convey the truths of reality in a creative, fun and friendly way. We imitate the Grand-Storyteller by becoming sub-storytellers and creating our own stories. What a privilege and a gift.

[1] “which is a name even more unwise than Hussein if you want your child to run for president”-Roger Ebert

[2] "When it comes to learning moral lessons, I have often been much more affected by great fiction than by abstract theological discourses."- Charles Colson