Grimm…The Brothers

Everything I know about life I learned from fairy tales.  Not the Disney versions mind you, the originals from the Brothers Grimm.  Not a whole lot of happy endings there especially if magic was sought or employed to resolve a problem.  I think that’s my problem with this current trend to make heroes out of mythical beings.  Honorable vampires?  Puleeesse.  Ghosts, witches, goblins saving the day?  As if.   Even the Harry Potter series, which was a wickedly fun read, got it wrong.  What I learned from the original fairy tales and have found to be true over a half century of life is that bad things happen to good people and magic, aka “the easy way”,  comes with a price.

The man that can help you marry a prince really will get your first born child in payment.   If you want everything you touch to turn to gold…you cannot touch the ones you love.  The wolf really does eat Little Red because she was too stupid to notice the smell if not the big nose and teeth and run away.  The Grimm Brothers gave us haunting stories that would spring to mind when faced with a life quandry.  Stories that illustrated the value of hard work and an honorable existence, if only between the lines.