Things I used to forget before I had a place to write them down...etc.

From Et cetera

The children's entertainment market certainly does like to pussyfoot around life's real issues. Characters like Clifford the Dog, Franklin the Turtle, Caillou the Whiny and those clinically insane Wiggles never seem to encounter and real problems during their adventures. And those conflicts that they do come across never seem to be resolved in quite the right way. What I mean by that is that the character doesn't grow or change in any way, which is a fairly critical element of growing up, wouldn't you say? This must be why everyone has such a hard time letting go of their childhood too. Maybe children wouldn't be able to perceive character development in fiction anyway, but nevertheless, Blues Clues is just a little too fruity a program if we're looking to build human beings with strong social stamina.

You want to know a story that really snapped me out of my cushy little reverie as a kid: The Little Match Girl. Not everyone has read it or even heard of it, but it is a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale that deals with some disturbingly real issues and hits hard in the space of just a couple of pages. Basically, it's the story of a girl who is very poor, she runs away from home in the winter because of an abusive stepfather with nothing but a box of wood matches. She spends the night outside in the cold, lighting matches to keep herself warm and each time she lights one, she has these warm, happy little hallucinations about her dead grandmother. Then as the cold gets colder and the night wears on, she eventually runs out of matches and freezes to death. The story ends with her smiling corpse surrounded by burnt out matches in the morning light. Daaaaaaamn!

So what's the message? There is none, really. No moral of the story this time, Aesop, no sir. What's a kid to take away from this tale? "You can cheat death into being a super good time by hallucinating about your grandma," or, "You should've lit a fire, dumbass." I don't think that's what this story's trying to say, forgive me if I'm wrong. But it's the shortest tragedy I've ever read and it's targeted at kids. I felt that it did me some good growing up. I only wish I could say the same thing for Dr. Seuss, Goosebumps and Fantastic Four comic books.

Flame on, little match girl, flame on!

[edit] See also

• The Little Match Girl (contemporary re-write)