Oh, My. I apologize for my snarky attitude.

Friends, I had an epiphany last night. A revelation, if you will...

Let me back track a bit...

This book featured prominently in my childhood:

Mine had the Checkerboard cover, but I loved this book. I did not read it cover to cover--some of them were just wierd, even then. But the rhymes that I loved, I read over and over, and the pictures were wonderful to me. When I had Big O, I had to immediately buy this book, so he could love it, too. He never touched it.

Working at the great Satan of bookstores, Barnes & Noble, I found lots of treasures over the years, and purchased several for my progeny, thinking that we'd eventually get around to them all...yeah. I have an eleven year old who is just now accepting that Captain Underpants is no longer age appropriate reading.

But I have a second chance in the form of his four year old sister, and last night we settled in to find a quick bed time tale from this little treasure:

The story Little O settled on was "Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse". The Honey raised a brow, but I silenced him with a look and an explanation--it's historical.

So these two mice did everything together. Quite frankly, it was a little Bert & Ernie-alternative lifestyle vibe, but whatever. The damned mice did everything together until they made pudding. Then poor Titty mouse was SCALDED to death by the pudding pot of death.

But our story was just getting started...

So all of the inanimate objects mourn the death of poor Titty mouse (with the Honey giggling in the background) until the little girl tells the old man the tale. Let me quote our charming tale...
(Keep in mind that with each addition the whole thing has repeated to get us to this point.)
"Titty's dead, and Tatty weeps, and the stool hops, and the broom sweeps, the door jars, and the window creaks, the old bench runs around the house, and the walnut-tree shed all its leaves, the little bird moults all its feathers, and so I spill the milk."

"oh!" said the old man, "then I'll tumble off the ladder and break my neck,"

Which, of course, he does, and then the house collapses on itself.

"...and poor little Tatty mouse was buried beneath the ruins."

The End.

WTF?

I realized that people learn to hate reading, because someone is making them read dreck like this.
Awful. I felt like I should have apologized to Little O for making her sit still until the end.
I owe several people in my life apologies if they had to listen to stories like these.
I could understand an unnatural loathing for literature spawned by this book.
ugh.