I hate the Gingerbread Man

In class yesterday (before the porno moment, see my previous post), we were talking about narrative writing. My prof. used children's stories as examples. He asked us if we had ever heard "The Little Engine that Could" and, of course, we had. We learned that the engine story and Dr. Suess stories are good because they have a point, a moral.

Then he asked us if we had ever heard "The Gingerbread Man". It was that very moment that I realized that I had not, in fact, ever heard the story. I know the little saying "run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!" but I had no idea why he was running.

Thankfully my prof. told us the story. A preacher's wife bakes gingerbread men and when she takes them out of the oven, one pops up off the pan and starts running. He runs and runs and everyone and everything (cows, chickens, etc.) chase him. He finally gets to a river or something and a fox eats him. So my prof. asks, "What would have happened if he hadn't started running?" A kid replied, "Someone else would have eaten him." My prof. said that was exactly right and the story has no point. It basically says that no matter what you do, you will die so don't even try.

I started laughing a little.

Then the prof. says, "There should be a black page at the end of the book that says, 'YOU TOO, WILL DIE ONE DAY.'"

We all started laughing a lot.

Then he told us how someone bought his son the book and how he threw his son's book out because he refused to read him such a stupid story. LOL