When my niece was a couple-three years old, she went through this engaging stretch of weeks, maybe months, during which she improvised neverending stories. For some reason these tended to involve creatures like the Frankenstein monster, Dracula, and so on. (That may have been attributable to my sister’s macabre sensibilities.)
For instance, a story (told, and told, and told… from the back seat of a car) might go something like this:
Once upon a time Frankenstein was walking through the woods AND THEN it started to rain AND THEN Dracula flew down and got Frankenstein AND THEN Dracula and Frankenstein went to a party and monsters were all there AND THEN the sun came out and it was like Sesame Street…
And so on, and on, and on, all the AND THENs providing the transitional links between hundreds of what might otherwise seem, to my unimaginative adult mind, to be discontinuous stories. (They also, and perhaps by unconscious intent, made the plot as a whole uninterruptible.)
I loved that.
This urge to free-associate stories seems a common phase which kids go through — not all kids, but many of them. Should you need evidence I offer, first, this brief and enormously popular (over nine million views and counting!) video from earlier this year: a three-year-old little girl summarizes the plot of Star Wars, Episode IV (this was the original film in the franchise, remember, first released in 1977 simply as Star Wars).
More recently, along came the next one — likewise destined for online-video classic status. (I encountered it the other day, among the weekly 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks entries.) The monologue (a little over four minutes long) is in French, but the clip also includes English subtitles. Some of the characters will be familiar (vaguely) to anyone who’s been around little kids in recent decades. But as far as I know the plot is based on nothing at all other than what emerged, spontaneously and moment-by-moment, from the storyteller’s mind.
Knock me over with a feather. Plucked from the wings of a hippopotamus — in HEAVEN.
Eileen Wiedbrauk says
That. Was. Amazing. And yet somewhat sad b/c that little girl’s French was better than mine after five years of classes. Le sigh.
Jules says
I love that Star Wars one, too. So classic.
marta says
Stunning. Lessons–don’t talk back to Darth Vader and remember when you’re dead in heaven it is too late.
ha! I am so glad you shared that. Hurray for imagination.
John says
Eileen: Would it make you feel better to know the little girl’s French is so good because… she herself IS French? That said, your le sigh compresses centuries of Gallic resignation into a split-second. Nicely done. :)
Jules: When I saw the longer “the hippo was allergic to magic” video over at your place, I thought of the mini-Star Wars video right away. Classic indeed.
marta: Glad to see you got the most important information of all out of them. Just goes to show you: imagination’s good for not just its entertainment value, but also its practical advice!
All: After posting this entry, I clicked through to the Vimeo site where the second video is hosted. That specific page at Vimeo is the province of one Capucha, who identifies herself elsewhere as “the very lucky mother of Capucine (4) and Aliocha (11).” Many other videos of both girls there, but also this quote from Capucine: “There are thousands and thousands of stars in the sky, but we don’t have enough fingers to count them.”
And that right there is the opening sentence of some future classic of children’s lit.