Recursive Bedtime Story

If you know anything about how Maha Vishnu dreamt the universe into existence, you'll get this one.

I like to make shit up when I tell bedtime stories to little Linus (pic). Sometimes I just recount old children stories as some remixed version of the original. I remember retelling the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and completely missing the "moral of the story" part, well I don't really recall what I learned from the tale anyway...

I ran out of ideas one day so I just let it roll off my tongue and see what comes out (a rougher draft than this, of course):

Once upon a time, there was a little boy. His name was Linus.

Little Linus loved to dream. In fact, that's all he ever did, all day and all night.

He dreams about the little things, the big things and things of all sizes under the sun.

He dreams about the food that he ate; and he dreams about the poo-poo that he made.

He dreams about the toys that he'd played; and he dreams about the hankies that he'd frayed.

He dreams about his friends, or the ones he's about to make; and he dreams about his giraffe, oh for goodness' sake!

He dreams about stories -- of people and things -- and one of them went like this:

Once upon a time... (Go back to the beginning and change the things he dreams about.)

And then go for as many iterations as you want.

I feel this helps with a few things:

1. Challenges you as the storyteller, keeps you awake and makes things interesting.
2. The child learns more -- if you can get it out of you -- the more varied the vocab the better.
3. Incorporating things that happened in the past week or so into the things he/she dreams about. Stay relevant!
4. It's somewhat lulling, don't you think? And all this talk about dreaming and shit just makes people want to sleep.

I think it could be a good bookless story to whip out once in a while, feel free to add it to your parenting bedtime repertoire! :)