A little tale to lighten the mood during quarantine (inspired by my children)

Jack and the Social Distancing Beanstalk

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack. He and his mother lived in a hovel on the edge of the forest. Initially, it had seemed like an isolated shack; now it was desirable distance away from everyone. On the other hand, they still needed supplies.

“Jack!” called his mother. “Take this wheelbarrow full of money, and go down to the markets on the Amazon River to buy hand sanitizer!”

“Just one wheelbarrow?” he asked.

“Well, get a small bottle anyway, if they have any,” she snapped. “Now, off with you!”

He obliged, but on the Amazon, there wasn’t any hand sanitizer, at any price.

Glumly he went back home, when up popped a stranger.

“Hi there!” the little man chirped happily. “How would you like to buy some magic beans?”

“Sure, if you can pass them to me from at least 6 feet away,” agreed Jack.

The bag of beans were tossed to him, but Jack happened to sneeze before he could hand over the wheelbarrow, so the little man just ran away.

“Hi Mom, I’m back!” he called. “I still have the money, and I got some magic beans too!”

“You don’t know where they’ve been! Throw them out!” she screeched, so he did.

The next morning, a beanstalk had grown outside the hovel, reaching all the way to the sky.

“Now THAT’S what I call social distancing! I’m outa here,” he said, beginning to climb.

At the top of the beanstalk, he saw a gigantic castle in the clouds. He snuck in, and saw a titanic giant amidst all his hoarded treasures. There were rolls upon rolls of toilet paper; hand sanitizer was stacked up in enormous barrels; and there was a goose that laid an unlimited supply of face masks.

Jack took one look at the giant, and decided what to do. He coughed.

The evil giant, hearing this, ran panicked out of the castle, fell down the hole where the beanstalk was, and smashed to bits on the ground.

Jack lived happily in the castle, and, since he had so much, he was willing to share his treasure with others. By throwing it down, of course; there was no way he was going back down there.

The end

Mother's Day Revisited

Here's the Mother's Day card I drew for my wife. Why I would draw this probably needs a little explanation.

The kids all love to play Jack and the Beanstalk. The stairs are the beanstalk and the rooms upstairs are the giant's castle. The giant – that is, me – has to pretend to sleep while guarding a golden chicken, which Jack comes to steal (in actuality, it's a chicken that lays golden eggs. However, we don't have anything that lays golden eggs, or even a chicken, as the part of the chicken is played by a rubber duck. But you work with what you have).

The only problem is that everyone wants to be the giant. You go upstairs, pretend to sleep, and when someone steals the golden chicken you jump up and chase them all over the place. So all three kids want to be the little giants that help the big giant catch that nasty thieving Jack.

So – you guessed it – the part of Jack is inevitably played by my wife (I guess the feminine form would be Jackie and the Beanstalk).

On a side note, the whole game started when my daughter did play Jack, and cut down the stairs, er, beanstalk. Then my son said "tape tape tape," meaning he taped the beanstalk back together so I could keep chasing her. I called him the little giant for helping me and the whole thing just escalated from there.