By Sarah Levesque (Rated G)
Once there was a boy named Jack, who planted a bean. From this bean grew an enormous beanstalk. The beanstalk grew higher and higher until Jack could not see the top! One day Jack decided to climb the beanstalk. So he climbed and he climbed.
“I wish there was an elevator,” Jack said to himself, and he kept climbing.
When he was about halfway up, he stopped and ate his lunch. He could see his house – it looked smaller than a corn kernel! Then he started climbing again. Eventually he came to a wooden ceiling, or so it seemed to Jack. It was painted black. Jack realized he had reached the top of the sky! He looked down and gulped. He could not see his house anymore. Looking up, he noticed that the beanstalk grew through a hole in the ceiling. So he climbed up to it. He realized the ceiling was really a floor – the floor of a gigantic floating house. This house was filled with huge furniture, and Jack guessed that the owners of the house were giants. Walking around, he decided he must be in the giants’ living room, as there was a huge couch, giant-sized chairs, and… Was that a giant TV? Yes, it was! There was also a huge fish in a gigantic fishbowl. Jack noticed that there were three light switches in the room, but only one light.
“Three light switches for one light?” he thought. “That’s odd.”
Suddenly, three giants charged into the room. Jack ran to hide under the couch. Peeking out, he realized these must be giant CHILDREN! The oldest one was looking for something – he was opening doors and drawers and slamming them shut, moving the furniture and tipping it over. He even tipped over the fishbowl, and the water went everywhere. Jack was afraid it would drown him, but it seeped through cracks in the floor, and Jack didn’t even get wet. But he was scared that the boy would tip over the couch and find him, or that he would go deaf from the noise.
The other two – a little girl and an even smaller boy – were chasing each other around. The boy was racing around the room, flicking the light switches down. The girl chased him, flicking the switches back up again. The light was flashing on, off, on, off, on, off. Jack was afraid the light would blind him. Just as Jack thought he would faint from fright, a huge giantess stomped into the room with her hands on her hips. Jack guessed she was the mother.
“Hey!” the giantess yelled, nearly finishing off poor Jack’s ears. Nobody listened. Jack watched as she stamped over to the oldest boy. She grabbed him, turned him over her knee and spanked him, yelling, “Stop making so much noise! And fix the furniture!”
Next she pounced on the younger boy and girl.
“Stop playing with the light,” she growled, spanking both of them. All three children wailed. Their tears dripped through the floor like the fishbowl water had done.
“Stop crying or you won’t get any desert,” the giantess told them. Then she noticed the fish. “What happened to the fish?” she boomed.
“Johnny knocked him over!” the little girl said.
“I’m gonna give you another spanking for that!” the giantess said. But Johnny ran away, and his mother ran after him. The younger giants followed.
“Phew!” Jack said. “That was close!”
He looked out one of the giants’ windows and noticed it was almost dark outside. “I should get home,” he realized, speaking aloud. So he slid all the way back down the beanstalk.When he got to the bottom, both his parents and his brothers and sisters were waiting for him.
“Where did you run off to?” his mother asked him.
“I climbed the beanstalk,” Jack said.
“Did you get stuck in the thunderstorm?” Jack’s little brother asked.
“What thunderstorm?” Jack said. “I haven’t seen one.”
“It was like BOOM, KABOOM, ZIP, ZAP, FLASH, BOOM!” his brother said.
Jack thought for a moment, and realized they had heard the noise of the oldest giant child’s furniture-tipping and seen the light from the younger giant children’s light switching. So he told them what it had really been. But they didn’t believe him. He told his friends, but they didn’t believe him, either.
Do you?
LogoSophia Magazine 