Chapter nine: Is Everyone and Everything a Story?
Dave the Cleaner and Dave the Cleaner sat down on the park seat together.
“Hey, put your bag of litter in the park rubbish bin. That will help The Economy by keeping rubbish truck drivers in their jobs.”
Dave the Cleaner was still carrying all the garbage he had picked up in the park. He had been thinking about the three reasons for tossing it back all around the park. Now there were four.
One: It might keep rubbish truck drivers in a job.
Two: It might keep park cleaners in a job.
Three: It might help this thing or person called The Economy feel good.
Four: It might keep money going around and around.
At the same time it seemed a very, very silly thing to do. Why clean up the park and then make it filthy again just so someone else can be paid to clean it up again and keep money going around.
Surely, he thought to himself, there are much better ways of sharing things and much better things for people to do? “Oh, I do wish the children of the Mahoe tree were here,” he said thinking aloud. “I feel sure they would know what to say and do.”
“Bah! What do a bunch of five-year-old kids know about The Economy! Nothing! “
“Well, they did a mighty fine job of rescuing me when I turned into a liquid. They had to know and care a lot about the ways of the universe to save me like they did.”
“Bah! Only grown-ups who are extremely clever can understand The Economy!”
Dave the Cleaner held up his bag of litter. “Hmmm, how clever is all this waste and pollution?” he asked, “Perhaps a great question is this: are these extremely clever grown-ups you speak of as wise and caring as the children of the Mahoe tree? Our children often ask questions which we adults never imagine to ask. They see lots of things are silly and wrong that we adults don’t even care to notice. They will say something is silly when we adults dare not. Do you know the tale about the little boy and the Emperor who wore no clothes?”
“Bah! The boy and the naked Emperor is just a story and a story for kids at that. Kids love making up stories about everything. They don’t know what the real world is. They are always saying “Let’s make-believe” and playing “let’s pretend”. They are always saying “what if?” and dreaming up fantasy worlds. Stories are stories and nothing but stories.”
Dave the Cleaner thoughtfully rubbed the chin that the Mahoe children had dreamed up for him with the hand that the Mahoe children had dreamed up for him and finally replied, “Yes, well, it is true I am the children’s story, aren’t I?”
“Yes, indeed you are and that’s all you are. You are just a story, not like me!”
“But everyone is a story, aren’t we? Everyone and everything is a story, aren’t we?”
“Rubbish! You are just a walking bundle of make-believe, just a fantasy of the Mahoe children, whereas I am the real deal!”
Dave the Cleaner rubbed his chin some more for he did not know what to say. What would the children of the Mahoe tree say? He felt sure they would have wise suggestions. He also felt certain they did not want to grow up and inherit a world fall of waste and rubbish.
He closed his eyes so he could better imagine the children of the Mahoe tree seated on the classroom mat at Houghton Valley school.
He saw them waving their arms and calling out to his Mum, “Don’t sit down on the bed. You will sit on Dave the Cleaner – he’s turned into a liquid.”
He could hear their deep silence while they thought and thought how to save him. Wring him out of the mattress onto the hard table. Put him in a glass jar with a lid. Freeze him. Store them in a special pipe frame that looks like his bones. Cover it with skin. Make holes eyes, ears, nose and mouth… What would the children of the Mahoe tree do now?
Meanwhile Dave the Cleaner sat looking smug. He now felt certain he was in charge of the situation. He knew he was real whereas his companion on the park bench was just a kids’ make-believe invention, a children’s fairy tale. So he put his nose in the air and said, “Sniff! Yes, I am real. I am not just a mere story like you are.”
You can imagine how you would feel if someone spoke to you like that. What would you say? Dave the Cleaner sat clutching his bag full of litter. It felt very real in his hands. It smelt real to his nose. What might he say? How should he reply? “Help me, children of the Mahoe tree,” he prayed to them. He was bursting with so many questions for them.
“Please tell me, am I really just a story? What is a story? Does it matter who is telling a story? When is a story true and real? When is a story a big, fat lie? When is someone and everything not a story?”
The last question made him try to imagine something that is not a story. He could not think of anything and so he finally said in reply to old Dave the Cleaner, “Surely everything, including every human being, is a story?”
“Bah!” retorted Dave the Cleaner in his know-all way, “I know for a fact not every thing is a story. End of story! End of dream! End of pesky you!”
Suddenly, as if by magic, the bag of rubbish seemed to rustle and rattle in the hands of Dave the Cleaner and he imagined he heard a distant chorus of children’s voices. He listened so hard he went cross-eyed. “Look in the bag,” they seemed to be calling, “looooooook in the bag.” So he opened the bag, peered inside and called back in a puzzled voice, “Hey, what am I searching for? What’s the story?”
However, he could now no longer hear the children’s voices because Dave the Cleaner sitting beside him was laughing so loud. “Hahahahahaha! Now you’re talking to a bag of rubbish. Hahahaha, so that’s what the Mahoe children taught you to do. Hahahaha I look forward to hearing the stories that those stinky old pieces of rubbish can tell us. Hahaha, sniff, I will listen with my nose!”
After putting on the gloves he happened to have in his back pocket, Dave the Cleaner slowly put his hand in the bag and felt around. For a moment he wondered if he heard the Mahoe’s children chanting, “Lucky dip. Lucky dip.” So he pulled out the first thing he felt and placed it on the bench between them. It was a torn, tattered page from a magazine. “Stay there.” he told it when a passing breeze nearly blew the scrap of paper away. Again he reached into the bag, felt around in this time he pulled out a glass bottle. He put it on the piece of paper to stop the wind whisking it away.
Dave the Cleaner look down his nose at the bottle and the piece of paper. He laughed and said to them, “Hahaha, my friend here tells me you have this story to tell me. I am all ears and nose. This I must hear.”
There was a long silence. The only sound was the paper being rustled by another little breath of air. The bottle remained silent. It did not hoon in the wind, as bottles can, because it had a lid screwed on it.
Finally Dave the Cleaner suggested, “Well, maybe, perhaps, lets say the rustle of the paper is a story of how, once upon a time, it was part of a tree that grew from a seed and reached upwards towards the Sun and its leaves danced and rustled in the wind and children climbed up and played in its branches. Maybe it was a Mahoe tree or a Pohutukawa tree?”
“Piffle! Now you are dreaming up a load of rubbish!” interrupted Dave the Cleaner, sniffing and flicking his hand in the air as though swatting away a swarm of annoying flies.
You may have noticed some adults can do this in a most superior, know-all, businesslike, no-nonsense way. It can stop any story dead in its telling. Maybe people have done this to your story too? If so, you can imagine how Dave the Cleaner felt when his story was chopped off just as he mentioned the possibilities of the Mahoe and Pohutukawa trees.
He sat for some moments in a hopeless silence until he remembered to listen out for the voices of the children of the Mahoe tree.
Meanwhile Dave the Cleaner sat in a smug, superior silence. He felt in complete control now. He suddenly remembered a song he first heard in 1953 when he was a five-year old boy. He decided it would be funny to sing it to the garbage on the bench.
Tell me a story tell me a story
Tell me a story, remember what you said
Tell me about the birds and bees
How do you make a chicken sneeze
Tell me a story then I’ll go to bed.
He found this so funny he decided he would be very clever and change the words in the last line. He now sang to the bag of garbage:
Tell me a story tell me a story
Tell me a story, remember what you said
You promised me you said you would
You gotta give in so I’ll be good
Tell me a story before I drop off this bench.”
Even though it did not rhyme he found this immensely funny and clever. In fact he found it so funny and clever that you can guess what happened. Yes, he laughed so hard he actually fell right off the bench onto the dusty ground.
Dave the Cleaner was aware Dave the Cleaner was mocking him with the song. However it did not bother him now for he had spotted something really interesting. In fact it was so interesting he neither heard the last verse nor noticed his companion had fallen off the park bench. He was too focused trying to read the story on the torn, dirty magazine page.
He slowly pieced together and spelled out the title:
G L O B A L…. W A R M I N G …. THREATENS…. U S … A L L
The story began thus: “All our children are now are in danger because of the actions of some human beings.”
“Woh,” he exclaimed, “This surely it is a big story. In fact this is a humungeous story. Listen to this story. What do you say about this story?”
However a very worried Dave the Cleaner did not hear him because he was too busy clambering up off the ground and wailing, “Oh no! The seat of my pants is all dirty now. Oh dear! Oh dear! My image. My Clean, Clean Image. What will people think of me! People will point and laugh at me! Oh woe is me.”
End Chapter Nine
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Please note: this is a first draft script (Jan 2020) and prototype format of How the Children of the Mahoe Tree Saved Our World. I plan to create illustrations to complement each chapter as soon as possible.
Please enjoy tolerance – my diplopia means I struggle to read what I write.
This story is based on a true event. A class of five-year olds created the central plot. In the process they showed young children, unlike many adults, retain the vital spirit of inquiry and comprehension of the fundamental thermodynamics required to care for Earth’s atmosphere.
Some grand ideas and questions from Chapter Nine
Idea: pending
Question: pending