Suspension story

There is a move that you do as a parent, I’m going to call it the suspension story. A suspension story is employed to suspend all other business that a child is otherwise engaging in so that something can be achieved. You might tell a story as a nurse takes a wriggly child’s blood pressure. In the last few minutes of a long drive you might try and suspend the yelling from the back seat with a story about the ocean and the mountains; “did you know the oceans love to dance in the moonlight?” Often you just want to keep your 2 year old from running out of the cafe door and down the footpath again so you can shovel down the leftover breakfast roll of your 6 year old.


“Hey! Want to hear the story of the 3 animals?”
“Yaaay.”
“Then sit on your chair.” I barked the other day, then began a suspension story.


- - -


Once there were 3 animals living in animal town. A dragon, a goat and a fox. The dragon was sure he was the best, he could fly, shimmer, blow fire and look cool, the other animals were kind of on board with this but they also thought the dragon was a bit much at times. Even a little garish and vulgar.


At this stage I was in business, full suspension; the 2 year old was into the flying and fire, the 6 year old wanted to know what vulgar meant. I was demonstrating this effectively at the time by talking and shovelling food at the same time


The goat was steady, stubborn and extremely effective. He had spent the majority of his life collecting toys. He had the most toys in all of animal town, every time someone left a toy behind or fell on hard times and needed to offload a toy the goat would find or buy it. Nobody really liked this, but they did respect the toy wealth.


The fox was young and clever, he spent his time making good arguments about tricky animal issues and most animals in town thought he was impressive.


The goat and the dragon did not get along. Each wanted to be loved as the best animal and each dearly wanted a social triumph in front of the other. The other animals looked to them for guidance but they couldn’t work together.


By this stage we were out of the cafe and ambling home up the street, the 2 year old had completely checked out, hence the emerging social triumph narrative. The big boy though, was invested.


This is where the fox chooses to make a move. He speaks first to the goat and then the dragon, his suggestion is a secret partnership which would allow them to gather toys and glory in equal measure and take over animal town. They liked the plan and agreed to form a team. The fox had managed to appeal to their shared ambition, little did they know his plan was to surpass them both.


At this point we’d successfully arrived at the front door and I’d kind of run out of narrative energy. Also, the suspension story had done its work again, we were home safely, no one had veered towards the road and we’d made it past the local toy store with no requests or arguments. The story loving 6 year old had been listening closely and he broke in to say “oh, so this story is just Caesar, Pompey and the other guy, right?”


“Crassus” I said.
“Yeah, Crassus. I know this one.” he replied.
As we went downstairs the 2 year old spotted a balloon to kick. I finished the story.


Anyway the dragon was killed on a beach in Egypt, the goat in Parthia and the fox was assassinated by the other animals in the middle of animal town.


“Thanks dad.”