Flipping through my ancient writing, I come upon one of particular amusement– my take on the classic “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” re-imagined as if it were written by the late Douglas Adams.
Enjoy.
So Long and Thanks For All The Porridge (Jan. 27, 1987)
Far out, in the uncharted backwoods of the uncultured portion of the darkest corner of the unfashionable end of the Black Forest, sat a wholly unremarkable cottage. Inhabiting this utterly insignificant little dwelling were three bears who were so primitive that they still thought wearing clothing was a pretty neat idea.
The cottage had a problem, which was this: its bear-inhabitants, for the most part, could not successfully enjoy their evening bowls of hot cereal. Many solutions were proposed for this problem, most of which were concerned with the taking of nature walks, leaving the bowls alone for long periods of time; which was odd, because on the whole, it wasn’t the bowls that wanted to be alone.
And so, the problem continued; lots of bears were sore-footed, and most of them were miserable, even the ones who wore clothes.
And then, one Sunday, a girl meandering through the woods on her own, suddenly came upon the cottage. Partaking of the hot cereal herself, she realized what had been going wrong all this time. She knew how the porridge could be made tasty and enjoyable, and no one would have to take long walks for any reason.
This is her story.
At five o’clock on Sunday evening, Pappa, Mamma and Baby Bear weren’t very happy. They wandered around the woods, found their way back to the cottage, stormed through the wide open front door straight off to the kitchen, for what they did not realize at the time, were their last bowls of porridge.
“Hey,” said Papa, very relaxed, “somebody’s been eating my porridge.”
“Actually,” began Mama Bear,” it seems all of our bowls have been eaten from.”
“I hope you realize,” Baby Bear announced,” that my bowl is empty, my chair is broken, and I’m not at all feeling well.”
“Hey, cool it,” said Papa, inspecting his porridge bowl with new found interest, “I think that somebody’s still here.”
“I expect you’ll want me to go check the bedroom,” said Baby. “Well, I’ll tell you right off. I won’t enjoy it.” And with that, Baby stomped off in an air of depression.
“We’ve really got to do something about that bear,” growled Mama.
Goldilocks awoke in the little bed, to find a rather smallish bear dressed in little boy sailor’s garb huffing at her.
“I hope you are very uncomfortable,” said the bear.
“Er… uh” said Goldilocks, “Uh…”
“I think you ought to know I’m feeling quite depressed. But then, what do you care? I’m quite used to not being noticed…”
“Oh?” said Goldilocks, moving quickly from the bed to the window, “Really?”
“Oh yes,” replied Baby, “I mean no one ever listens to me.”
However these last words went unheard, as Goldilocks was no longer in the room, but was scrambling through the window.
“Well,” said Papa, “who was in the bedroom?”
“Oh, no-one,” said Baby.
But before Papa could check for himself, the cottage, forest and kingdom were all destroyed in a rash of fairy-tale disasters.
