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CHAPTER THREE
The Little Orphan Granny learns the value of play
The Little Orphan Granny, while in the lair of The Muddy and The Forbidding Giant, had many magic toys.
There were empty snuff bottles that mightily resembled sleek cars. There were magical cigar boxes that could be fashioned into bridges to span mighty chasms. There were spent wooden matches and pieces of thread pulled from empty sacks that could fashion sections of fence-posting strung with imaginary (but ferocious)
“bob” wire.” The snuff bottles made an absolutely smooth track through the small dusty roads and over the cigar box bridges between the matchstick and thread fencing.
At times The Forbidding Giant in his guise of The Daddy would also play with these magical toys of The Orphan. These were times of awe and wonder, because The Daddy could fashion better and more marvelous bridges than The Orphan could comprehend.
There were also marbles that could be used for many purposes - the best use was two or three marbles in an empty Prince Albert tobacco can that could be shaken loudly to frighten monsters away when it was dark. (Imagine the stark horror of The Orphan when he was later told by a person tired of hearing marbles
rattle that the most vicious of the monsters found you by hearing the noise of the rattling can of marbles and that silence was the only way to hide from them.)
Thus The Orphan learned that things are best looked at in more ways than one.
The Orphan fashioned strong slingshots that could hurl smooth river rock a huge distance. The Orphan became a mighty hunter until one day a rock from his sling impacted fatally a robin-red-breast. When The Orphan finished the long and desperate crying after he discovered that mighty wishing could not restore life to
a dead thing and the robin-red-breast was buried, The Orphan made a life vow to nurture all life forever (The Orphan was to reflect all of his days, though, that the robin-red-breast, in spite of vows, remained dead).
Thus The Orphan observed from his small stature the ways of the world that would guide him to final inner peace and tranquility.
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