Growing up, I always felt like the fairy tales my parents told were not the ones most kids heard. Cinderella was thrown into a pig pen when the Prince came to try on the slipper, Sleeping Beauty was covered in cobwebs before anyone came to find her, Hansel and Gretal ran away because their parents were going to murder them, and Rapunzel was stuck in that tower because her pregnant mother traded her for a head of cabbage from the witch's garden. Even the end of Rapunzel was different from the one's my friends heard. In my version, the witch cuts off Rapunzel's hair and pushes her out of the tower because she got knocked up. When the Prince shows up, the witch pushes him out of the tower and blinds him in a picker bush. He wanders the desert for years and years before Rapunzel finds him and cries magic tears on his eyes and he can see again, than they live happily ever after with the twins she had apparently been raising by herself until that point. Focus: What stories from your childhood are different from the ones most people heard? Were the seven dwarfs perverts? Did Pinocchio not get to be a real boy? Alt-Focus: What IS the other version of Rapunzel? Did anyone get a happier ending for that one?
Were your parents on drugs, or just cruel? I think most of us know that the original versions of many fairy tales did not end happily, and have been sanitized over the years. I'm not sure if lostalldoubt86 got the original, unsanitized versions, or whether her parents were trying to win a bet over how much therapy she would need when she grew up. When I grew up my Mom would read to us all the time, since she thought that this would encourage us to become highly-educated intellectuals or something. Anyway, we had, if I recall correctly, no less than two copies of a very large book of children's stories that seemed to be popular at the time (several other families I knew had copies) but now I cannot find hide nor hair of it on the Internet, which is strange. It was called something like "The Great Big Book of Stories" or something like that. It was, to a child's hands, a very large book, almost the size of half a phonebook. However, it was printed on thick but lightweight paper, kind of like cheap construction paper, so it didn't weigh much. There were 4 or 5 different categories of story in the book, and each story was printed on color-coded pages: pink pages, for example, might indicate a story about trains, or cornflower blue might be a story about elves and fairies and such. These were not classic fairy tales like Cinderella and Rapunzel, although they had similar elements. The only one whose title I can remember offhand was "the squeak in Sam's shoe," but Googling this turns up nothing. If anybody knows the book, please let me know the real title. Since the current FOCUS is kind of narrow, I'll widen it: FOCUS: What were your favorite fairy tales or stories growing up?
It's a combination of a crazy grandmother, a big book of Brother's Grimm stories, and "progressive" parenting.
Cracked did an article a while ago on the original versions of some popular fairy tales. Article here.
Ugh, I remember my parents reading me this horror story about an anti-environmental activist. He basically stripped the land, took all of its fruit and tore it to the ground. For this, he was rewarded with a long and happy life, pausing towards the end to return to the land he destroyed and gloat. I think it was called The Giving Tree. It should have been called The Asshole Boy. My parents also read me a story about a Princess and a frog that taught me that bestiality is ok, if you have a hunch. And one about a sleeping woman that taught me that sexual assault is ok if you're pretty sure she'd say yes.
In the original "director's cut" of Three Little Pigs, the wolf ATE the first two pigs before burning to death in the brick house chimney. I'm NOT fucking around. I read it with my own eyes and never forgot it.
Apparently I've been living on the moon. Except for the one I mentioned above, EVERY time I read the story the pigs each bolt for the next house when he blows their's down, and when he burns his ass in the chimney, he runs off screaming with his biscuits a burnin'. I only read the mean one as a kid once. I never saw it again.
Hansel and Gretel disturbed the shit out of me. Hell, after reading the wiki on it, no wonder why. The scene in Pinocchio where all the boys start turning into donkeys fucked me up a little. As did the scene in Alice in Wonderland where the walrus starts eating all of his little minions, or whatever they were. You know what? Fuck Disney. Most of their old shit was either racist propaganda or emotionally disturbing. Neither of which are good to be marketed towards children. Fuck you guys too. I'm not gonna sleep well tonight.
My Dad used to tell us this simple nursery rhyme: "Little Miss Muffett, Sat on her tuffett, Eating her curds and whey, When down came a spider, Who sat down beside her, And said, What's in the bowl, bitch?" And that was in 1980, way before Andrew Dice Clay tried to "create" it.
Aww, my parents weren't creative at all compared to you guys. The most I ever got was my mom telling me Aladdin probably started mistreating Jasmine the minute they got married, because Middle Eastern guys are all bastards that way. I think she may have had some latent anger issues.
I might have found this link through this very board, so if it was yours originally and I'm reposting, apologies. However, you can be comforted in the knowledge that it haunts me to this day. Some sick, twisted person (from Japan, shockingly) has staged these wholesome recreations of scenes from fairy tales. NSFChildhood. <a class="postlink" href="http://glamour-news.blogspot.com/2011/03/disturbing-fairy-tale-black-and-white.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://glamour-news.blogspot.com/2011/0 ... white.html</a>
My grandmother gave me a book of nursery rhymes that she had when she was a kid, apparently "Ten little children, jumping on a bed..." used to be "Ten little nigger boys, jumping on the bed..."
My mom used to tell my sister and I Chinese parables. I didn't really question them until I got older, I just listened and didn't interrupt. It wasn't until later that I started thinking about them and wondering what the message was supposed to be. Take, for example, this story. (abbreviated version) Family with one son has to go on a long journey. Mom makes giant Chinese flat bread so that the kid will have something to eat while mom and dad are on their trip. They punch a hold in the bread and place it around his head so that he won't lose it. When they return, kid has starved to death because he only ate the front portion and didn't think to turn it around to eat the other half. That was it. Seriously. What the hell am I supposed to learn from that? The only lesson I take away from that story now is to not be an idiot.