Learning From Fairy Tales [The Six Swans Retelling]

From Shelley Jackson's retelling of "The Six Swans" (renamed "The Swan Brothers" in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (pg 93):

        Women are trouble -- if it isn't an evil wife, its an evil stepmother. Or mother-in-law. Mother's are usually all right, unless they're witches -- watch out for witches. And their daughters.
        You might be all right with kings, princes, and fathers, unless, as is usually the case, they're under the influence of someone else, usually a woman. Men are weak. Sometimes they rescue you, but they always have help -- from ants or birds or women. Sometimes you rescue them. This is kind of sweet.

         You can trust animals. Sometimes they turn into people, but don't hold that against them.
         Children had better watch out.

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The Attack of the Lawnmower!

[The good stuff in the video starts at the 1:45 mark. From the episode of Mad Men "Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency"]

You know how when you were a kid, people would well meaningly tell you about dangerous household items in hopes that you would take care around them?

I was afraid of lawn mowers when I was six because a guest to the classroom told us a story of a little kid getting their foot chopped off by one. The child was running behind it.

I was frightened of the deep freezer, because I was told that if you let it close on you, you would suffocate. Anytime I got anything out of the deep freezer, before I would let the door close I would run to the opposite side of the room. You know, to prevent me somehow getting sucked into it.

I refused to swim when my parents weren't home because I might drown. They themselves warned me of this, and to this day refuse to believe I didn't once take a dip while they were at work while I was stuck home, alone, with no air conditioning. [Not to digress, or anything]

And the above video? I guess it was the sixties, so no one warned them as children that lawnmowers are DANGEROUS DANGEROUS RUN AWAY!!!! [unless you are the one on it, of course] That is the moral of the above video.