Fairy Tale Fix - Listener Tales 01

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Abbie and Kelsey read your stories! This first Listener Tales episode includes stories of hilarious things parents tell their kids to get them to behave and how they unexpectedly backfire on them, as well as how strongly kids believe in stuff and the destruction that ensues to prove a point.

How do acorns keep ending up in your yard? Oh, yeah. Squirrels. We have a new tree in the backyard and we were cutting it down at first and then we kind of just were like, fuck it. And it's growing. Cool's a beautiful tree and it's and it's fall so it's like turning really nice pretty colors how many years has that been happening have i seen this tree no it's definitely been since you've been gone oh wow maybe like in one year it's gotten pretty pretty tall damn what kind of tree is it? I have no idea. That's deeply exciting. Yes, you absolutely should.

I actually... If Dustin keeps this in, I'll post it on the Instagram. My tree, my rogue tree. Yes. I'm actually, I'm really curious if you send a picture of that. One of the people who follows us on the FWP Instagram, and I believe that she's begun listening to this show as well, Maria, is an actual botanist. And so whenever I have plant questions, I send her pictures of leaves and seeds and stuff and go, what is this? That's cool.

I have a naturalist friend. I could do that, too. You could. But yeah, okay. Now have a naturalist friend. I could do that too. You could. But yeah. Okay. Now it's going to happen. I'm going to send her that picture of my tree and be like, what kind of tree is this? Fuck yeah.

Because now I'm deeply curious. This tree that's taken over your backyard. And roses. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Just. Yeah. Well, roses are a nightmare.

Everybody agrees. If I didn't cut my roses down it would look like the last half of sleeping beauty in my backyard it would just be filled with thorns and vines and they're evil evil beautiful evil creatures i mean it only sounds attractive in theory it is actually shitty if you don't have a full-time job and side hustles, and then you have time to like actually. Or if you pay somebody. Right. So you need to be rich enough to pay someone or you need to be a retired old lady, which you will be someday.

I hope so. We all can hope. We can all hope that we are able to retire. But even then, my goal, if I grow old, hopefully, I'll just be like the old neighborhood witch. Yes. So probably let my grosses overgrow anyway. But that would be on purpose. Which makes it better. Hashtag goals.

Hashtag life goals. Hashtag old lady. Hashtag dreams. Okay, sorry. It's what I want. Amazing. My deepest dreams. Well, hello to everyone.

Yes, welcome. This is a really new, exciting thing that we're doing for you guys. It's our listener tales. Yes. We have been asking you to send us your stories and send us, you know, fairy tales that you love, your fixes. And so we have actually gotten a few and I'm so excited about it. Me too. We have been so pleased with the wonderful reception we've gotten to the show so far. We've heard from so many of you about how much you've enjoyed it. And you know, you've got some weird stories. And you've said some weird things to your kids. And now we're going to repeat that. Yeah. So Abby, I'm gonna have you go first. Okay. Well, first things first, I want to shout out to our newest Patreon members at the Job

Creating Dragon level at which you become a producer, a producer of the podcast. And that would be our dear, dear, dear friends, Angel Espinoza and two very, very dear friends of mine, my parents. Yay! Cynthia Lammel and William Johnson, thank you so much. Angel, thank you so much. We are delighted that you think that this show is worth spending that much money on. Absolutely. Thank you so much. We are delighted that you think that the show is worth spending that much money on. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Angel, you are my angel. And Cynthia and Bill, I love you so much. So dearly.

In fact, I have great memories of watching The Tenth Kingdom, which Angel loves that I just figured out. Yeah. Angel's a big fan. Yeah. He's posted about it on Instagram and I got so excited. And then I also have great memories of watching that show at your house when we were in junior high. When I think I first showed it to you and your dad was cracking up at the part where the dad, Tony's singing a wider shade of pale.

Yeah. And dad, like dad had not been watching it with us at all, but he suddenly popped his head out of the hallway into the living room and just started singing along. He's like, this is a great song. I love this song. And then he actually sat down and watched, I think, the second half of the show with us. He actually started enjoying it. So there's something for everyone in the 10th kingdom is the point of that story yes there absolutely is and i have to look up the name

john larquette in the 10th kingdom yes he's larquette he's so good in that movie he's he's so funny everything he also did a turn as a cranky sarcastic lawyer in Boston Legal which is another show that my family loves a lot and he was amazing in that too nice it was nice I have not seen Boston Legal but I am going to now I do okay so like okay maybe not mind. I take it back. I do love it. Don't get me wrong. I love that show. But it's increasingly out of date. It's prone to impassioned speeches about current events, and some of which are still relevant, some of which are not, and a lot of which are extremely hot takes. All right, well. Oh, and it stars William Shatner playing, I think, the role that he was born to play, which sadly was not Captain Kirk because, let's face it,

Chris Pine was a better Captain Kirk. I'm sorry. I said it. I put it out there. That is a statement. I made a statement about it. It's just how I feel. William Shatner was born to play Denny Crane, a formerly brilliant lawyer on the cusp of

retirement, refusing to admit it and slowly succumbing to the ravages of what he calls mad cow disease because it sounds cooler to him than alzheimer's and it is it is a brilliant hilarious very upsetting term and turn and he does the best acting of his goddamn life on that show so you know what i'm changing my mind yes watch boston legal everybody okay well i now i must i must watch it thank you for for coming to my TED Talk. I need to see William Shatner's best role. Because he's pretty great. God, he's so good.

Pretty, pretty great. I will send you some choice scenes. You don't need to watch the entire show. It is six seasons long. Oh, I mean, it's COVID, so. I'm watching a lot of TV. It's super good. It's, yeah.

Anyway, I've got lots of opinions about boston legal we could do a whole second show on boston legal and i would have never and i would have a my well would never run dry of boston legal opinions we could also do a good one on like another podcast about futurama yes we could i've actually been re-watch Futurama for the billionth time during COVID. It's my comfort food show. I love it so much. It's so funny. Every time.

Like, if you want to hear me laugh like a fucking idiot. Anyway. Just true. I digress. It's just true. We've been putting, this is all sorry another tangent but we've been putting because obi my dog barks if there's no ambient noise around because then if he hears literally anything else outside uh he will just start barking like a lunatic and so we put tv on for him as just

ambient noises and so lately we've had we've've been playing Futurama for him. Well, he sits on the couch and stares at the cartoon characters. He loves it. He does love Futurama. He's a good boy. He's a good boy with luck, with great taste. You should definitely tweet a photo of Obie watching Futurama to Billy West.

Oh my God, I should. My favorite person on Twitter is Billy West because every Friday he posts a gif of Fry and says, it's Friday. And I love him so much more. Every Friday? Every Friday. I always look forward to it. Okay, well, I need to follow Billy West now. You do? Oh my gosh. I don't currently follow Billy West, and clearly that was a miscalculation. That was a mistake. He talks about Futurama. I mean, he did the voice of like Zoidberg, Brannigan, Fry, the professor. Like all of the funniest characters he did the voices for.

Wickedly talented. Billy West. I'm just following him right now. Don't waste any time everybody go follow billy west i'll forget about it if i don't do it right now oh look in the very the pinned tweet is a zap brannigan trump twitter video oh with richard nixon's head uh-huh beautiful god bless feature-rama we are recording this pre-election so i hope nothing goes terribly wrong between now and when this episode drops um before we go down that dark path uh-'m going to take us down a different dark path.

Yes. I want to tell me some tales from other people. Well, actually, sorry. This story is still mine. Oh, okay. That's fine. I'm kicking it off with my listener tale. Your own listener tale.

My own listener tale. your own listener my own listener listener tale i know this is cheating but it's a great story about the weird things that parents tell their children so i want to tell i want to tell all of you about a weird ass thing that my dad told to me speaking of speaking of mr william johnson uh that he maintains is true to this day. He will not let this go. I'm so excited. Once upon a time, my father, my little sister, and myself were strolling through the park by our house. It's a nice park.

It's very foresty. When you're walking down some of the dirt trails, really everything else does fall away. It's definitely meant to be a like a woodsy foresty park and not a recreational one in the sense that it doesn't have too many like you're not going to like see it's not like a park in the sense there's a lot of baseball diamonds or anything like that um fun fact they filmed robin hood in that yeah yeah the errol flynn olivia de haveland uh robin hood great film and a perfect example of like how just fairy tale-esque this park is it's exactly that beautiful that is also a great movie

but we're not going to go there right now but so we're walking down i want to right that glittery outfit oh my god Errol Flynn in the sparkliest green tunic with the tightest green leggings with his floofy hair and his cool little bow like oh it's so good he looks good he really did he's so handsome and it was all in Bidwell park and we swung on the arm of one of the oak trees that he stood on and taunted the sheriff of nottingham and it was great but i digress i was 10 i think no young nay younger yeah i honestly don't remember how old i was maddie would remember maddie actually should probably be telling the story but she's not here maddie is the only one of us that actually remembers her childhood she has to remind me that things happened but i do remember she will write

in all of her corrections yes that's just gonna have to be how we handle it oh actually she already had one um she had one from the very first episode where i say our mother gave us the dealing with dragons book by patricia reed she did not maddie gave me that book maddie picked it out of birds noble read it first loved the fuck out of it and gave it to me so that was that's correction number one but anyway we're walking with our dad through the park and we kind of come to this patch of forest that is that was like completely burned, like all of the trees were charred. And it was in kind of like a fairly perfect circle, as I recall, of just charred branches, dead grass. Growing up in Northern California and being an adult now, I now realize that a fire got out of control, you know, in this particular part of the park. But, you know, my sister and I asked dad what happened to all of the trees here. And he said, oh, did I not tell you? The other day when I was strolling through the park by myself, I happened upon a dragon here in this very clearing. And he went on and he told us this whole story about how he'd bumped into the dragon and the dragon had been threatening to eat him and how he bargained his way out of the clearing, how he convinced the dragon to let him go un-et.

Oh, Bill. out of the clearing, how he convinced the dragon to let him go un-et. Oh, Bill. And then he says that the dragon then flew away, never to be seen again, but that he does owe the dragon a favor that will come due at some point in the future. That's still coming. It's still coming, apparently, because my dad has not let go of this story. He insists to this day there was a dragon there and he did talk to it

and it's amazing it's an amazing story honestly i think that if he ever did say like all right i made it up because i because i didn't want to talk about wildfires and i thought it would be a cool story and you were so young and gullible and it was adorable i think if he ever actually admitted that i would like lose a part of my childhood and a part of my imagination would just wither up and die if my dad ever admitted he made it up i really feel like that explains so much and because i you've sort of told me this story but i've never heard the full thing really but yeah so i love the idea of little Abby and little Madeline just believing in dragons. And the fact that your dad saw him or her. Yeah.

Or them. Them. Or Zer. Whoever. But yeah, no. Or Zer. Whoever. But yeah, no, I don't remember how long we believed him. I think we started trying to get him to take it back like the next day and he just doubled down instead. So thanks for that, dad.

I love you so much. That is adorable. I love that so much. All right. I have got a story from Marie. Hello, fairy tale babes. I laughed so hard when you asked about the weird stuff we tell our kids to get them to behave because I am very guilty of this. My little four-year-old is wonderful and perfect in every way, except when she's not. She's so, yeah, I get that. Sure. Yeah. Kids. She's so feisty. And sometimes it's so hard to get her to listen that one X-mas, I told her about Krampus and how he was the mean version of Santa and that he would punish her if

she kept acting like a completely wild child. Of course, I didn't tell her that he would beat her with a stick and put her in a basket and take her away forever. You didn't? Marie! But I did tell her Krampus would take away her toys, which, that's fair. Krampus would also do that. In addition to the beating. In addition to the beating. And kidnapping.

Yes. in addition to the and kidnapping yes well this hilariously backfired on me because she is so brave and independent that she once demanded to speak to Krampus herself I called my sister and had her to pretend to be Krampus on the phone thanks auntie she basically told Krampus off politely and told him he needed to learn to be nice. Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. I love this child.

I love this child. While my plan to get her to behave didn't work quite like I'd hoped, the little old-fashioned fairy tale fear, I am so proud that my daughter already doesn't put up with bullies and will stick up for herself. Love you guys so much. Thanks for the laughs, Marie. Thank you, Marie. For a lot of things, that story is excellent. Also, thank you for putting this child into the world. Yeah, right? She sounds amazing. Wow. She sounds like a totally smart. Yeah, right? She sounds amazing. Wow! She sounds like a totally smart, yeah, just brave little girl sticking up for herself. That's so brave. She gets told about a Christmas monster and she's like, get him on the phone. I need to speak with him right now. Right now. This kid is going to grow up to be someone important. Agreed.

She's going to be in charge of things. Maybe she'll be president. She's going to snap her fingers and be like, I need you to get me this person on the phone right now. Talk some sense into them. You need to be polite. You need to be nice. You need to be nice. It's rude to take away toys. Oh my God, I love it so much. Oh, thank you so much, Marie. That was amazing. That was incredible. My next one is short and sweet. And I picked it because it just tickled me because I remember feeling this way about a lot of things in my childhood, just making up stories for why things are the way they are. So this is from Daniel, who wrote in to say that he was absolutely convinced that there was something evil capital, like something evil capitalized, living in the drain under the diving board at his community swimming pool while he was growing up.

It was just really creepy. I know. Oh my gosh. It was just one drain, like just the drain under the diving board, none of the other drains in the rest of the pool. But he says that he very specifically felt just like it just evilness oozing out of it. No one ever told him that there was something there. And he doesn't have a specific idea of what the evil was and in retrospect he said that it's that he's pretty sure that it was just a really gross drain i'm imagining it's like he was scared to like dive into the pool so he like didn't like that drain yep that drain diving board was scary oh my gosh gosh. You're probably right. But his little kid brain,

like just made up a different reason for why, like, well, I can't, can't dive off the diving board. That's right over the drain with the evil thing in it. So, so that's why I play at the shallow end of the pool.

Yeah. Perfect. Perfect reasoning. I'm, I am a very brave young man but i also don't i don't fuck with demons so yep yeah fuck that drain that is adorable that was it that was it was short and sweet but it tickled me thank you daniel thanks daniel that's awesome feel free to write in again and say if and defend your honor if it

wasn't that you were afraid of the diving board. All right. This is from L.A. Excited I get to read this one. This is such a good story. Yeah. Hi. Love the first episode I heard on Fantastic World's pod feed and have immediately subscribed. Thank you. Thank you so much. My oldest daughter loved when I told her stories. When they're young, kids believe everything you tell them. And my warped sense of humor often had me telling her to do things like, fine, if you don't want to stop playing, take off your feet so I can put on. Hold on. Fine, if you don't want to stop playing, take off your feet so i can put your shoes on and we can go to nana's okay i'd watch for a minute as she'd tug on her feet and try and try to explain it why it wasn't working that is so freaking cute i gotta try that i think my niece might be too old to believe that, though.

You can give it a shot. I'm going to. Because that's really cute. My horrible parenting came back to bite me in the ass, though. It always does. Yeah. At one point, she became obsessed with my watering can. The only problem was once she watered my flowers.

Yeah, her watering can. Like for, okay, like for potted plants. I'm imagining like a tin that you water like flowers and stuff with. Okay, all right. The water comes out. So the only problem was once she watered my flowers literally to death, she wanted to water everything. After several weeks of wet socks because she'd watered the floral kitchen rug, her stuffed flowers, my floral bedspread, and the neighbor's cat. Oh, no. And a very important document.

I told her a ghost had moved into the can. Why didn't I move the can? Oh, I did. But she had learned how to use chairs to get to high places. I'd rather have wet socks than trips to the ER. Never teach them that. That's smart, though. Oh, my God.

She became terrified of that can, and the little one I bought her that she only used when I had the grown-up one. And the watering can's at the store, and she kicked my stepmom's decorative watering can off the porch. She's 28 now and has only recently started growing plants. Is there a moral in there somewhere? I can't wait to hear more episode. Thanks for the fun. Oh my God, Ellie, you traumatized your daughter into just not being able to look at plants without being afraid of ghosts.

A ghost moved into the watering can. That's really cute. That is really cute. I love that so much. I like how then she applied, like, it wasn't like it was just that one haunted watering can. It was all watering cans for the rest of time. I like that she tried to water the neighbor's cat. of time. I like that she tried to water the neighbor's cat. I love the idea that it's all like, oh, water makes plants grow. So I'm going to water this one to death. And then I'm going

to start watering everything else. The floral rug. Oh, my gosh. Well, your daughter sounds adorable. And it sounds like she's a really nurturing person. So well done there. All right, you're up. which is the one where we did Hansel and Gretel. And Heidi wrote in to ask me a question about the Brothers Grimm, in addition to a bunch of gifts and astonished exclamations of vampires after episode two. Amazing. And she wrote to me and she said that she had heard that the Brothers Grimm didn't really collect the stories that they got themselves so much as they hired a bunch of

women to collect their stories for them. But that's what she heard. So I did a little extra research on wikipedia biography.com and read a feature that National Geographic did on the Grimm's Brothers for the Brothers Grimm. And so I think I have the right answer could be a little more nuanced. But I guess that that's true only in the sense that they would invite storytellers to their home in Marburg, which the storytellers that they invited were most often women, and have them tell the stories that they knew while Wilhelm and Jacob wrote them down. They also interviewed their relatives and friends and friends of friends, also most of whom were women. And women of nearly every class at that time, peasants, middle class folks, and the rich and well-to-do.

They kind of got a broad range of stories from all of these different groups. And then Wilhelm would edit them and streamline all of the different versions they had been told to be told in more or less the same narrative style and voice. This is also what I found when I went down the sort of the little rabbit hole, which is in the earliest editions, it's the earliest editions that contain a lot of the darker themes because these stories apparently weren't told with kids in mind most of the time at that time. Like some were, but mostly those were nursery rhymes. The stories that the storytellers that were talking to the Brothers Grimm were mostly used to pass the time while doing tedious but time-intensive household tasks, which were mostly performed by adult women. which were mostly performed by adult women. So the original stories were much darker, much more sexual, and just altogether much more fun than the ones that got actually passed down.

I want to read those. Well, I mean, we can if we get an original first edition copy of the collected works of Brothers Grimm, the ones that have kind of entered more our cultural zeitgeist are the kind of cleaned up ones that they developed for kids later. Cool. Yeah. I need to get one of the first editions because I would love to read them like side by side. Yeah, I do. I think that would also be interesting of seeing what they decided was worthy, what they decided kids could handle and what they decided kids couldn't.

Apparently the kids can handle getting, you know, left in the woods and almost eaten by a witch. Yeah, but not Cinderella's sisters cutting off a heel to fit in a shoe. Apparently that is a first edition part of Cinderella, but doesn't serve didn't survive to like later tellings. So it goes Brothers Grimm first edition, Brothers Grimm second edition, then Disney, then Disney. Well, apparently there were like there were a lot there were a lot of editions of Brothers Grimm. But yes, essentially, essentially, that is true. And the original collection, the first edition collection was supposed to be more of like a Grimm. But yes, essentially, that is true. And the original collection,

the first edition collection, was supposed to be more of like a scholarly work. It wasn't really published, supposed to be published for the masses. It was more supposed to be a scholarly work that preserved oral traditions they perceived to be uniquely German and directly related to preserving German culture. It's so cool that they did that. And it's interesting that there are different versions floating out there. Yeah. All from the Brothers Grimm. But to kind of get back to Heidi's original question, like, so technically, they did collect

most of the stories themselves. But I do agree that there is something sort of appropriative about it, in the sense that they were recording, embellishing, and publishing a tradition that was mostly practiced and carried on by the women in their culture, including the women in their families who contributed heavily to the original collection but don't receive formal credit. The reason we have Hansel and Gretel and Sleeping Beauty and a bunch of other like classic Grimm's fairy tale stories is because Wilhelm's wife, Dorton Wilde, told him those stories. In secret, by the way, because her father didn't approve of her spending so much time with these poor young men who just

wanted to talk about fairy tales all day. I went down a very long rabbit hole. But yes, that is... You need to send me some of those articles. That sounds like fun. I will also link them in the show notes if any of our patrons are interested. That's the end of my stories. Do you have one more for me? I've got one more. And this one's really cute. This is from Lillian.

Hi, Abby and Kelsey. I love the podcast and I'm excited to hear more tales from you guys. So I'll just get right into it when i was in preschool i was convinced that fairies existed but that they were just really great at hiding i mean okay that sounds that sounds correct that sounds pretty fake um for some reason i had the idea that they like to hide in flowers i think from the cartoon thumbelina i think she's born in a flower blossom or something it's been ages since i've seen thumbelina she is in the

movie isn't she born in like a flower box on the old lady's windowsill i'm gonna have to re-watch that one yeah it's been ages i also i'm really excited to read that one soon sometime yes absolutely but okay continue one day i was telling this boy in my daycare class that fairies were real and he called me a liar so i decided to prove him wrong but i was so determined to prove him wrong and finally find a fairy that i destroyed my preschool's flower garden and gotten so much trouble for it. That's really cute. Oh my god, that's adorable. I never found a fairy hiding in a flower blossom,

but I still like to think that's where they would hide. And maybe they're just really sneaky at flying off when you pull the flowers apart. But also, maybe don't pull flowers apart. Oh my god, her teacher must have been so confused. You ladies are awesome. Thanks for taking the time to read Sincerely, Lillian. Thank you, Lillian. That's way cute.

Oh, my gosh. That's adorable. That was amazing. Thank you so much for sending us your stories. And thank you for listening to Fairytale Fix. If you enjoyed these listener tales, please send us yours. We would love to hear from you. You can send them to info at fairytalefixpod.com or you can message us on Instagram,

Twitter or Facebook at fairytalefixpod. Please also, if you have the time, subscribe and give us a review. Yep, we would really appreciate it. Really helps other people find the show. And they lived happily ever after.