Oh I am full of stories this evening, children -- stories that end in good things for good people and stories that end with bad things for bad people, and stories that don't end at all but just keep repeating themselves over and over again down through the ages. Which kind of story would you like to hear first, hmmm?
Bad things for bad people, eh? Very good.
In the very long ago there lived a miser who kept all his money in an iron box with a magic lock on it. The lock could only be opened by repeating very quickly a dozen times the words "toy boat." The miser knew the trick to this -- you had to say the two words very slowly and distinctly, otherwise the words came out as 'toy boy' and the lock would never open.
One evening a wizened old man, almost bent double with age and gout and other assorted blessings of too many years, hobbled into the miser's courtyard and asked for a crust of bread.
The miser, of course, told the ancient relic to begone -- there were no handouts for lazy slugs like him -- all must work for their bread, or perish! The wizened old man told the miser very well, what work have you for me to do? The miser smiled a mean smile and told the very old man to draw water from the well and wash all the window panes, both downstairs and upstairs, of his house. That might earn him a crust of moldy bread, with some axle grease smeared on it.
The very old man managed to bring up a bucket of water from the well, then had to rest a while to get his breath back.
The miser yelled at him to hurry up -- no use in dawdling when there was a job to be done.
At that, the very old man began picking up cobble stones and hurling them through each window pane in the miser's house. The tinkle of glass mixed with the enraged roars of the miser, who tried to catch the wizened old man -- but now that ancient of days dropped his disguise and showed his true self. He was Panukuken, the demi-god of mischief! Oh how that miser tried to catch him! But Panukuken was too fast for him, and soon the miser's house became unlivable with the cold wind whistling through it like a hurricane.
And what do you suppose became of that magic iron lock box? Nothing, nothing at all. The miser scooped it up and fled to a different city where he bought a brand new house and opened a gravel pit next to the town cemetery. He still lives there, and if you two over in the corner don't stop dropping peanut shells on my carpet I shall have the miser come get you to lock up in his box!
That's better.
Now not too far away from that miser there lived a calico cat named Dennis. This calico cat was so lazy that it refused to get up and walk over to its bowl of food -- the bowl had to be brought to it. That calico cat finally grew so fat and inert that it couldn't even bother to stand up to eat out of its bowl -- someone had to spoon feed each morsel of cat food into its mouth, and then work its jaws to chew it up!
The mice ran riot around Dennis the calico cat -- using its dirty white belly as a trampoline. Dennis didn't care -- all that jumping helped to digest the food in its stomach and make room for more.
One day a man dressed in pied jacket and pants and carrying a large blue sack over his shoulders stopped at the house where Dennis the calico cat lived, looking for beetroot wax. When he saw the huge furry lump that Dennis had become he offered the householder a bag of silver pins for the cat. Then he stuffed Dennis into his sack and walked away.
No one ever saw the man in the pied pants and jacket, or Dennis the calico cat, ever again. But the householder set up a stall outside his front door selling silver needles. Soon he had enough money to start selling gold thimbles. And then he managed to open a stall in the village market where he sold glass eyes and brass knuckles. He soon became the richest merchant in town and was taken to the palace, where the king made him Secretary of the Treasury. The king told him that if he didn't fill the treasury with treasure in the next day or two he would be forced to have his head chopped off. This is what is known as the gig economy.
The poor householder was at his wits end to know what to do. Until he remembered he still had one silver needle left. He used that silver needle to dig a tunnel out of the palace and down to the river, where he commandeered a boat and sailed so far to the East that he came out in the West. And that's where he stayed until Jack Onionhead took him to the Marmalade Fields. If you don't believe me you can ask Oprah.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Little Penny had fallen into the abandoned cistern and couldn't climb out. Her cries and sobs went unheard, and she fell asleep against one of the mildewed walls dreaming of being rescued by a German-speaking duck. When she woke up she found her condition to be unchanged, so she took loose stones out of the cistern wall and piled them up until she could climb out and run back home. Where her parents gave her a bath and a lecture, and then sent her to bed without dental floss.
That very night the Door Knob Man came into her bedroom and offered to take her to Door County Michigan for the Tulip Festival. She wisely turned him down, opting instead to go with a twinkling pixel to the job fair in Silicon Valley. And there she was offered a position with a new startup that laundered bitcoins into starched white pinafores.
But Little Penny was a bad penny, and began chewing gum at work and leaving orange peels on the table in the break room. She did not prosper at her work and even put rouge on her knees. She only managed to work at that startup for twenty-nine years before she was asked to retire with a full pension. Then she went from bad to worse. She sold bottles of plain tap water as 'hydrogen enhanced oxygen' to unsuspecting customers out of the back of a truck. When the police finally caught up with her she was sent to Paris to work in the croissant mines for the rest of her life.
And that's why you should never trust a duck that speaks German.
Now, which one of you brats undid my back suspenders and snapped them onto the dog?
