Dean Poling: Age revises a few childhood tales

Jan. 21—Childhood fairy tales have different meanings as we age. Or so I'm realizing.

Take Rip Van Winkle, the guy who fell asleep and woke up 20 years later. Sounded like a neat little story as a child but it has dawned on me that maybe I'd missed the whole allegory of Rip Van Winkle.

It dawned on me just how fast 20 years can pass.

One minute, it seems you're 18, 19, 20, 21 years old. The next minute ... 20 years have passed by. You still think of yourself in terms of being 18 or 20 then, one day, you look in the mirror and that 20-year-old in your mind is wondering who is this old geezer looking at me?

Twenty years ... shoot, 30 years ... ahem, 40 years ... gone like that. Poof. Where'd they go?

Suddenly, you have a better idea just how Mr. Van Winkle felt.

Another childhood story that seems to have a different meaning is The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

You know the tale: A kid keeps pretending a wolf's coming. He yells for help. The villagers come to his aid. The boy laughs to see the looks on their faces as they learn he's tricked them. He does this several times. Finally, a wolf really does attack him. He cries for help but, because of his past tricks, no one comes to his aid when he really needs it.

This tale is supposed to teach kids not to make things up, not to trick people, because it is wrong and it could lead to them being eaten by a wolf.

Still, I wonder now if maybe it isn't also a warning in wolf's clothing to the villager in all of us.

True, they were tricked by this meddlesome kid but they also allowed this kid's antics to loosen the village's security. Because they were lulled into believing it was another one of the boy's tricks, the village now has a murderous wolf in its midst.

So, maybe The Boy Who Cried Wolf is also a lesson in maintaining vigilance, despite the obstacles presented by tricksters, etc. Chicken Little is about not losing one's head because that piece of falling sky may only be an acorn.

Unlike the Boy Who Cried Wolf, something really did hit Chicken Little on the head. Granted, the sky wasn't falling but, if you were standing under an oak tree with Chicken Little, it would be good to know at least something is falling from above and smacking people on the head.

A warning of the sky is falling may at least keep you from standing under the oak tree.

While Chicken Little is commonly used as a caution against blind panic, it could also be used as a warning to prepare.

If the sky were falling, no one in the barnyard was prepared for such a disaster.

Same with many of these news reports about pending disasters and catastrophes. People espousing mass doom from these scenarios could be described as Chicken Littles. We should not let these "sky is falling" reports panic us but we shouldn't casually ignore their warnings either.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.