The Moral of the Story

The rain turned to snow just now and there’s some kind bird shrieking outside my window. I can’t fathom what there is to be excited about. The landscape is like fifty different shades of….you guessed it.

This week a remarkable and happy thing occurred. My endocrinologist divulged from the mercy of her wisdom a small bottle of pills (actually, I got them from the pharmacy) that promise to cope with the complete dysfunction of my thyroid. Rather than healing itself, the wretched thing flamed out or something, and went from making all the thyroid hormone to none of the thyroid hormone. But that means that now I can take some the thyroid hormone. It’s so complicated. But not so complicated that I can’t perceive the vague feeling of life stealing over my mind. It’s like maybe, who knows, I won’t spend the next twenty years just sitting on my couch. But don’t worry, I’m not getting my hopes up. It could still all work out to be Really Bad.

But, so, of course, I didn’t read anything, or cook any food, or do any laundry. It’s not like Benny Hinn wandered in here and healed the nations or anything. I might have picked up a sock off the floor, and told some kids to stop tearing up bits of paper, but that was the full extent of my domestic endeavors.

No, instead, I tried to find a new book to read out to the children. We want to read Le Morte d’Arthur but we want something light and fluffy before facing that immense tome. Unfortunately, all I had to hand were The Swiss Family Robinson and At the Back of the North Wind. I read a chapter of each and then sat back and waited for some kind of reaction, which came in the form of shrugs.

‘What is with all the moralizing?’ asked one child. ‘Why does everything have to have a moral?’ She just beat her way through Little Women which you can’t get out of without being clear that it’s Very Important To Be Good. The first chapter of Swiss Family Robinson is like that on steroids. Every line is a preach moment.

But she went on complaining, which seems to be her special anointing. ‘Every single book Before wanted you to Be Good. And every single movie Now wants you to be true to yourself.’ She sounded bitter. ‘Why can’t they just tell a story? Just the story, without the dumb insistence that I find myself and my dreams.’
“Who is the they?” I asked.
“I dunno,” she said, “all of them.”
I mean, she’s right. It is so irritating. But I think it must just be bad story telling. If the moral is so obvious that you feel beat over the head with it, it just needed a better editor. I tried to explain that every person who writes anything is trying to get you to think or feel something. There is always going to be a ‘moral’ or whatever you want to call it, but that some story tellers are so anxious that you won’t get it they make sure to come out and smack you with it before the end, because assuredly you are too stupid to understand.

So then she wanted to know what the moral of the Trojan War is. And I said, ‘Don’t steal women.’ I mean, what else could it be.

So, there you are, some deep literary analysis for the week, brought to you by me not reading much, and also watching a lot of the Office. Oh my word, so funny. I finally got to Season 4.