Val Dumond

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Articles on Writing, Grammar, and Publishing
by Val Dumond

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Val writes articles on grammar, the art and science of writing, and publishing, for budding writers and seasoned authors alike. These articles are not only informative and educational, they're entertaining - written as only Val can. Enjoy this latest of her articles:

What Do We Feed Children?
by Val Dumond
© Copyright 2010

Just what do we know about those characters that we feed to our children? You recognize who I mean: ones with funny names like Little Bo Peep, Little Miss Muffett, Little Boy Blue, and Mary.

Remember Mary? She made a pet of one of her sheep and let it follow her all over the place - even to school, which made the teacher nervous and the children ecstatic. Her friend, Little Bo Peep, seemed a bit forgetful; she kept losing her sheep. And where was her brother, Little Boy Blue, when she needed him? Poor girl, her sheep had gotten into the corn again. Boy was fast asleep, or was he under the influence of some questionable substance?

One has to ask why so many stories abound about sheep and little girls named Mary: Contrary Mary, Mary with a Canary, and My Maid Mary. Wasn't she also the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead?

But it is Miss Muffett that we know least about. All we seem to know is that she sits around on her tuffet all day, eating. Oh yes, she suffers from arachnophobia; she's afraid of spiders.

It didn't take much delving to discover more about these people. Seems others have also delved (love that word). Some very interesting information has turned up concerning their backgrounds - the characters we expose our children to at very young ages.

Take Little Bo, for instance. Turns out she was asleep on the job and her sheep wandered off. Apparently, Bo suffers from apnea, causing her to drift off at odd moments. She was a receptionist for a time, but her employers kept finding her head on the desk and the phone ringing off the hook. She tried working in a chocolate factory, but nearly died when she fell into the fudge-mixing machine.

Bo often fell asleep in the meadow where her sheep grazed. One day she had a vivid dream about her charges. She actually heard them bleating. Were they trying to wake her? Or was she confusing "bleating" with "bleeding", indicating a violence inside her throbbing for release?

Poor little Bo didn't much like her job, nor did she appreciate being put to work at such an early age. Child labor rules seemingly didn't apply to shepherds. Her secret? Bo wanted to be a writer and write exciting stories about wolves and phantoms and other wild things. Her problem was that she kept losing the paper and pencil to write down her thoughts. Why on earth would anyone expect her to keep track of sheep anyway?

And what about her brother, Little Boy Blue? Why wasn't he out in the meadow looking after those damned sheep? It didn't take much digging to discover that Boy Blue wanted desperately to join a jazz band. He loved music and kept his horn near him all the time, so much that his mother wouldn't let him stay around the house. "Out! Out!" she'd yell at him. "Go play in the barn."

Of course, we all know what Boy Blue did in the barn. Why else did he "fall asleep"? The kid was shooting up and dozing off between riffs. No wonder he wasn't a suitable shepherd either. And no wonder his mother insisted that Bo do the shepherding.

You do realize that his mother (and Bo's) was the Little Old Woman who lived in a shoe. She wasn't actually "old"; she was just so overworked that all the neighbors thought of her that way. They'd pass by the shoe and cluck about all those children, wondering whether to call Child Protective Services or Planned Parenthood.

And where was the kids' dad all this time? Making his children do the sheep-keeping while he... oh dear, their dad was that Jack! You know, the one that kept jumping over a candlestick. Do we need to ask why? Poor fellow, probably had no idea what was going on around him. Let's hope he didn't do his candlestick thing in the house... er, shoe. Oh yes, there was a rumor that occasionally he took a gal named Jill up the hill. No confirmation about that one.

Back to Little Miss Muffett. She is the one character that draws my attention. Why did she choose to sit on a tuffet to eat cheese? And just what is a tuffet? Where did her arachnophobia come from? With a bit of probing, this is what I discovered about Miss Muffett.

Her first name was Mary (what else?) and she came from a dysfunctional family. Her father was a vegan and her mother haunted the fast food places, couldn't get enough of fatty foods. Mary's maternal grandmother lived in a house with a dog and bare cupboards. Her paternal grandfather walked a lot, to fairs, to a floating tub with two other guys, through the streets, and occasionally to Banbury Cross.

Mary had a few siblings, one named Polly who sat by the fire, Jenny Wren who sat by a shed, the girl in the lane with a speech impediment, sad little sulky Sue, a brother who went to bed with his stockings on, a nerd who went to school at noon, Bobby who went to sea with silver buckles on his knees, Jack who built houses out of Legos, and the gullible Simple Simon.

Mary herself was withdrawn but friendly and warm. She loved adventure as long as it was happening to others. She glowed when her best friend, Little Red Riding Hood, told about her adventures in the woods. And when another best friend, Goldilocks, shared her narrow escapes. But Mary preferred to read, draw, and write. She wrote stories that encompassed what she heard from her friends, making up details as the stories grew. She even composed poems to be sung.

She convinced some friends to play her poem-songs. Wee Willie Winkie, vocal; Boy Blue on horn, the cat with the fiddle, the Pied Piper, the little yellow bird who whistled from her window sill, the handsome cock-a-doodle-do, and Tom the piper's son. Oh, what a band they had!

Mary Muffett sat quietly on her tuffet, tapping her toes as she heard her poems come alive. Mary never married, although she is rumored to have had affairs with Wee Willie, but which one? There's Wee Willie Winkie who ran through the town and Willy Wilkin who was known to kiss milkmaids before running off. Mary M. couldn't catch either one.

What happened eventually to little Miss Muffett is unknown. Some say she grew into another old woman with a bare cupboard; some say she went to visit the Queen. But the most believable tale concerned a guy named Tom, the piper's son who ran off with her and couple of stolen pigs.

My belief is that she was the contrary Mary who found herself a small cottage in a remote town and set up a brothel where she raised a garden, with silver bells and cockle-shells to amuse her pretty maids (all in a row).

What do you believe about the characters from your childhood?

Val has three soon-to-be-published books: The JOY of Grammar, The Creative Instinct, and Ahlam, Story of an Iraqi Life.

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