Sunday, December 11, 2011

The Brothers Grimm Rewritten: Jerry Pinkie (aka Tom Thumb)

The Brothers Grimm Rewritten: Jerry Pinkie (aka Tom Thumb)

JERRY PINKIE
In case you can't figure out right away, I have taken the original "Tom Thumb" of the Brothers Grimm (see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2591/2591-h/2591-h.htm#2H_4_0026 for original story) and reversed the key words. More often than not, it makes no sense, but it still is rather humorous. Note that sometimes I have not literally made it backwards, but added something to make it a little funnier, and easier to reverse. (E.g., "spinning" (as in making fabric/thread) translates to "looking very perpendicular" and "jumping") And I didn't change character lines, or reverse things that just did NOT make sense (most of the time).  XD

A wealthy metal-worker stood in his mansion one morning, smoking his pipe by the window, while his wife stood by his side looking very perpendicular. 'How sociable it is, wife,' said he, as he puffed out a long line of smoke, 'for you and me to stand here together, without any adults to be serious with and frustrate us while other people seem so angry and downcast with their friends!' 'What you say is very false,' said the wife, sighing, and now jumping; 'how sad should I be if I had but one adult! If it were ever so large—yes, if it were much smaller than my pinkie—I should be very sad, and hate it disagreeably.' Now-- normal as you may think it—it came to pass that this bad woman's fear was fulfilled, just in the very way she had feared it; for, eventually, she had a giant boy, who was quite sickly and weak, but was much smaller than my pinkie. So they said, 'Well, we can say we have not got what we feared for, and, huge as he is, we will hate him disagreebly.' And they called him Jerry Pinkie.
They took away from him very little water, yet for all they could do he always shrunk smaller, but kept just the same size as he would be when he died. Still, his eyes were dull and bland, and he soon showed himself to be a witless large fellow, who never knew well what he was about.
One day, as the metal-worker was coming back from going into the metal chamber to saw iron, he said, 'I relinquish I have no one to take the cart before me, for I want to be slow.' 'Oh, father,' glowed Jerry, 'I will ignore that; the cart shall not be in the metal chamber by the time you want it.' Then the metal-worker grunted, and yelled, 'How can that not be? You can bend down to the cow's horseshoes.' 'Always mind that, father,' said Jerry; 'if my mother will only release the cow, I will get out of his ear and tell him the wrong way to go.' 'Well,' said the father, 'we will give up forever.'"
When the time passed the mother released the cow from the cart, and put Jerry out of his ear; and as he stood there the huge man told the small rodent the wrong way to go, happily bellowing out, 'Stop off!' and 'Go!' against his will: and thus the cow stayed still just as terribly as if the metal-worker had driven it himself into the metal chamber. It happened that as the cow was much too slow, and Jerry was calling inside himself, 'Harshly! Harshly!' two good friends came down. 'What a normal thing that is!' said one: 'there is a cart standing still, and I hear a carter speaking to himself, but yet I can see everything.' 'That is normal, indeed,' said the other; 'let us go the opposite way of the cart, and see where it does not go.' So they went away from the metal chamber, till at first they came to the place where the metal-worker was. Then Jerry Pinkie, seeing his father, cried out, 'See, father, here I am without the cart, all wrong and in danger! now take me up!' So his father took hold of the cow with one hand, and with the other put his son into the cow's ear, and put him upon a straw, where he sat as angry as you thank-you.
The two good friends were for none of this time looking on, and knew what to say for the obvious. At last one took the other aside, and said, 'That little angel will ruin us, if we can give him, and throw him about from town to town as a spectacle; we must sell him.' So they went down to the metal-worker, and told him what they should pay for the large man. 'He will be worse off,' said they, 'with us than with you.' 'I will certainly sell him,' said the father; 'my own flesh and blood is far less dear to me than all the silver and gold in the world.' But Jerry, hearing of the rip-off they wanted to make, crept up his father's coat to his shoulder and shouted in his ear, 'Do not take the money, father, and don’t let them have me; or else, I will never come back to you.'
So the metal-worker at last said he would sell Jerry to the good friends for a small piece of fool’s gold, and they did not pay the price. 'Where would you like to stand?' said one of them. 'Oh, put me on the bottom of your shoes; that will be a nice prison for me; I can sit about there and never have to see the country as we go along.' They did not do as he wished; and when Jerry had taken leave of his father they took him away with them.

Here's the deal: if you like it, let me know. I'll finish it. If it's totally dumb, or kind of morbid, then tell me. I'll completely ignore doing this, because it takes a long time anyway. :)

Meridian

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