The Hungry Wolf: last night's bedtime story

Once upon a time there lived a hungry wolf who predictably longed for all things bacon. He day-dreamed of hot bacon bulging out between thickly sliced buttered bread. He once even tried a dish of bacon ice cream which he thought was both awful and wonderful.

As a teenage wolf, after reading a National Geographic on factory farming, he had committed to a life of vegetarianism. However, as he aged, his enthusiasm for this lifestyle change had waned. He now endlessly longed for all things bacon.

If bacon was a color, it would’ve been his favorite color. If bacon was a Saturday he would wish away all the weekdays for it to come sooner. And if bacon grew on trees he would wish away the millions of years of evolution that had put him on all-fours leaving him incapable of either climbing trees or building a ladder to get to the bacon.

There were brief moments in his day when he did not dream of bacon: when he looked for a soft place to lay his head for the night, or when he searched for a discreet place to pee and poop, or when he was actually in the process of eating bacon. When he was consuming large quantities of the greasy, salty meat, his mind would waft upwards to more lofty matters such as his thesis on world peace and wolf ethics.

However, in recent days he had been thinking about the old wolves’ tale of the three little pigs. And so, this morning, after doing the Saturday crossword, he headed out across the rolling hills to find a pig and attempt to blow down its house and consume its piggly contents.

Up and over fields he wandered until through a gap in a hedgerow he glanced the brightly red house of the first little pig. As the wolf neared it he recognized the house was built of ladybugs. Perhaps a million of them, he thought, then corrected him self to guess that this was probably several billion ladybugs. As a fairy tale character he did not question the concept of a house built of ladybugs, instead he immediately set about with a plan to demolish the house instead of simply demolishing the implausible concept of the house itself.

“Oh little piggy, little piggy, come out of your house!! I’ve got bacon on my mind!” he taunted the wee little piggy. He then huffed and puffed and away flew all the ladybugs in a million different directions, or perhaps more.

Above the tops of the hayfield he saw the head of a pig in rapid retreat heading towards her big sister’s house.

In hot pursuit, the wolf wondered what the second pig’s house would be made of. He assumed it had to be a stronger house than a house made of ladybugs. As it came into focus he discovered that this house was constructed entirely of small monkeys. All crammed together and inter-locked, this was in fact a formidable structure to blow down with his wolf’s breath.

His own obsession with food led him to the key to demolishing this house. He left to go shopping and returned with a shopping cart of bananas. Moments later the wolf was killed. Crushed to death by a massive rush of hungry monkeys. The wolf’s funeral was attended by the 3 little pigs dressed in their best black dresses.

It was only years later that the son of the wolf set out to even the score and complete the proverbial 3 pigs story-legacy.

Wolfred the 8th, son of Wolfred the 7th headed out to demolish the house where the 3 pigs now lived together. After weeks of searching the rolling hills he came across the house of the 3rd pig.

At first he was not sure this was the house. Each house, as the story went, was stronger than the previous. This house was made of tuna salad.

As he approached the uneven white walls, with protruding pieces of tuna and celery, the wolf stopped to ponder on the rising sound coming from across the field. Within a few seconds the wolf was crushed to death by a massive swarm of small cats driven crazy by the smell of melting tuna salad.

Alternative ending:
The young wolf cried out: “little piggies! Little piggies! Let me in! Let me in!” To which one piggy cried back, “only when you renounce your carnivorous ways and commit to a lifestyle of vegetarianism.” The wolf reflected on his life: where he was at, where he was going and announced that he would give up the eating of meat. He renounced bacon and was welcomed in by the little piggies, whom he then ate.

Alternative ending:
He renounced bacon and was welcomed in by the 3 little piggies. They then spent the rest of their days making little paper boats down by the bank of the river. Under these circumstances we can confidently say that they all lived happily ever after.

Note: the types of houses that the pigs lived in were picked in advance by Havana and Ilyana.

Overtime, Bedtime and Building Pyramids

The falling sensation woke me. And so I continued to trudge the slippery road that I’d created for myself.

It was 8pm. I’d left home for work at 4.40am and had arrived home from work at 7.45pm. It was a long hard day. And now I was on their bed, fabricating a version of the three little pigs for Havana and Ilyana. As usual, making it up as I went along, but with the burden of a 15-hour shift weighing down on my creative syanapses.
I’m working at the very furthest reaches of the bay area, on a busy 400-man construction site. My sore joints are pounding away at the job, trying to see the end of the proverbial tunnel.
I get to draw a breath while sitting in the portable. But its hardly restful, listening to the surround-sound ominous din of reversing big rigs and forklifts and wondering if a large piece of machinery was gonna be dropped on me or back up on me and flatten me. But I open the door and the light and fresh dusty air floods in and I return to the drudgery and high pace of my construction existence; along with all the other worker ants crossing paths and standing aside for cranes or moving materials.
My day’s highlight, while at work, remains the same. Thinking of the girls as I left them. Curled up on their predawn beds, newly covered up, innocent and wonderful and peaceful in their dreams. And the job juggernauts forward. Me doing overtime, millions of others with no work to speak of.
I get home and they are already pj’ed and waiting for me. The girls are demanding “coffee shop.” A nightly serialization of my experiences at the local coffee shop, with the local zoo animals that work and hang out there. I don’t have the emotional-creative energy to make up something from scratch and so I opt for a variation on a traditional theme. The three little pigs.
This story was perhaps originally created to justify how those in brick houses survive life’s natural disasters and those of us in trailers or mudhuts will have our badly-built homes swept away. If only we’d had the money to build a brick house then maybe we’d not gotten eaten by a hungry wolf. Work hard, we're lectured, and you'll be safe from roving wolves. At some point the homeowners/renters in the story became pigs, convoluting the moral of the story. Surely, it’d only be natural that the wolf would eat the farm animals? Or maybe pigs made the moralizing more palatable for children.
So there I am, half asleep careening through some made-up version of the 3 pigs’ adventure of being pursued by a hungry endangered species, and I crash into the void of sleep that keeps telling me, you’re on a bed: sneak in a nap, it’s not like you’re driving a car, drift off, drift off. And so I do, dragging the story down in my wake.
A cue to my state of mind weaves its way into the story's plot: the first little piggy builds a house of pillows. The next pig, as I wrestle to get back my audience’s attention, builds a house of legos and then the third, a house of Barbie dolls. “A Barbie house?” repeats Havana, sharing a half-disgusted, half-amused look with her younger sister.
Then, in exhaustion, the story hiccups and I begin by trying to end a sentence which I cannot for sure remember how I started. I am aware that I am talking nonsense but assume the girls may not be distinguish between the funny creative nonsense and the plainer, simpler type.
At the end, I close the non-existent bedtime story book, exhale and rise up to sit on the side of the bed. As I reach the door for the final farewell, Havana enjoys the moment: "Daddy, there’s no farmer in the three little pigs" she explains. Evidently a farmer wondered into the story. Despite this happening in recent minutes, I have no recollection of having referenced a farmer. Although it sounds credible.
“Well the farmer was working overtime girls, he’s in everyone’s story tonight, all over Oakland. But now we should let him sleep too.”
Every moment of overtime at work, is time less with the girls.
Even with all this society's evidence of prosperity, in the end, we’re all still out there building pyramids for the pyramid owners. And in a society driven by the priorities of the pyramid owners, time with our families is hardly of importance.