Short Tales

Think back to elementary school when you learned the difference between a poem and a story and a myth and a legend and a folk tale and a novel and a tall tale.

I'd share my tall tales with you, but I'm surrounded by short people all day. So I shall call them short tales.

At the first of summer camp, I walked into class, and a kid ran up to me shouting. "MISS LARA???!?!??! How did YOU get here!" I'm guessing the question was asking something more along the lines of WHEN did I get there.... but I interpreted it literally. I COULD answer that I rode a bike to work. But that's boring. So I decided to answer with blunt sarcasm.

"I flew here on a unicorn... duh..."

The facial expressions I got back from the whole class were priceless. Just complete shock. It was not an answer they expected. Every day since then, they've asked me how I got to work that day, and every day it's something different.

"A purple giraffe, but not a tall giraffe, a small one. A good size that I could ride."
"A bicycle made out of birds."
"On the back of an old man."

Today was...
"On a talking tree named Eowen. She talked ALL THE WAY. Normally I like to sleep while coming to work but she just kept talking!"

As time went on, my stories got more elaborate. And these tall tales started branching out into other areas of my life.

On a bus ride one day, one kid, named T, was pretending to fall asleep. I kept telling him that our stop was coming up, and if he was asleep, he'd miss it. We pulled up to our stop, the kids started getting off, and there was T, pretending to be asleep. So, I shouted. "T! You missed it!!!!"

He jolted up. "What did I miss?!"

"When your eyes were closed, the queen of England came and gave us all CUPCAKES!"
"NO SHE DIDN'T!"
"Yes. She did. She gave the girls pink cupcakes and the boys purple cupcakes. Oh, and G came back from her trip for a second and she had a green cupcake too because it's her favorite color."

Other kids caught on fast and jumped in.

B said "Yeah! I had a pink cupcake because it's my favorite color!"
T said "Where are the wrappers? You don't have any wrappers! You're lying!"
L said "They were candy wrappers, we could eat them! They were made out of frosting!"

And then there was X who was just oblivious. "WHAT?! My eyes were open the whole time! How come she didn't give me a cupcake! No fair... I didn't get one..."

I'm not sure how it happened, but I fully convinced both X and T that the queen of England actually came and gave everyone cupcakes. So yeah. I'm great at making up stuff.

Maybe I should give up teaching to be a lawyer!