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Selling the Dream

Between a nasty cold, teething pain, and a stressful week at home, Emma's last few nights have been characterized by fevers, coughing fits, and night terrors. With the lure of dreamland thusly diminished, she's been understandably reluctant to hit the hay. She holds out for a really good story; no more remakes of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Like a campaign promise, it has to ring true, at least for the moment.

I am always in the market for new bedtime stories, and having exhausted the traditional catalogue, will beg, borrow, or steal from any old source. The other night I began an improvised yarn about the Teletubbies, but she gave it the hook after the opening ten seconds. With a dismissive wave of the hand, she gave me a world-weary "No, Papa," letting me know that The Teletubbies are no longer hip. They are like, so twentieth century.

She has a new favorite show called Dragon Tales, an animated ditty about two regular old earthling kids who visit "Dragonland" to play with their dragon friends. This is a show for preschoolers, so it has talking trees, lots of pastel colors, and very friendly dragons. They act just like little kids themselves and never experience sudden fits of fire-breathing rage where they reduce some innocent bystander into a steaming lump of charcoal. This is how I know the show isn't about real dragons.

This week's bedtime stories have been decidedly dragon-centric. I always try and work in a little incentive, like mentioning twenty or thirty times that you can only visit Dragonland if you are asleep, and furthermore, that once you fall asleep, the nice dragons from the TV show might come and invite you to play.

I tell these stories with mixed feelings because I know better. Anyone familiar with the classic old fairy tales knows not to fool around with dragons, unless you want to wind up blazing away like a cub scout's marshmallow. Still, I am willing to go along with the saccharine version if it helps achieve bedtime armistice.

Do something for me now, and you will get a reward later ... the tried-and-true technique of politicians, evangelists, and diet mongers. Sure, it's a bill of goods, but It works on the the toddlers, a man desperate for sleep can stoop pretty low. If you're lucky, she'll dream the sweet dreams as advertised and you'll jump a few points in the approval ratings, and get a good night's sleep while you're at it.

This was not a good week for me to make promises of sweet dreams to Emma. Between her cold, her new teeth, and the New Hampshire primaries, there have been plenty of reasons to wake up screaming. I just hope it wasn't the dragons.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.