Jane and Freddy

I recently received a long-lost travel journal (pre-blog days) from our 2002 trip to Costa Rica. I thought I had lost it forever after a combination of my laptop getting stolen years ago, an assortment of fatal hard drive crashes, and a stubborn failure to back-up my files on CD or DVD. But luckily, I had emailed it to a bunch of family members and friends, and luckily my mom found it. So she emailed it to me about a week ago.

As I read through it, I was struck by how detailed I had been. I even went so far as to record what bedtime stories I made up for Sofia or Alex. That's pretty cool, because some of those stories are fun, but there's no way I'd remember them if I didn't write them down.

With that in mind, last night I was putting Bella down, and she requested a story. I didn't feel like telling a story, but I summoned something off the top of my head. It wasn't great, but it made me think of that journal. I thought as soon as she's asleep, I should write it down so I don't forget it. So here it goes...

Jane and Freddy

You know how many arms an octopus has? Eight. And do you know how many arms a spider has? Eight also. But you probably don't think of octopi and spiders as being friends, do you? Well, I know a spider and an octopus that were best friends. And here's their story.

Freddy was an octopus that lived in a tide pool. He lived in the warm sea water amongst the rocks and shells and critters. Beside the tide pool was a tall palm tree. It was so big and tall that it leaned out over the tide pool. At the top of the tree was a little gray spider web. And in the middle of the spider web sat a little gray spider. Her name was Jane.

Jane would sometimes let a long line of silk out of her spinneret and drop down towards the tide pool. She'd go all the way down until she was right above the water. And if the tide was out, she'd sometimes land on a rock and crawl around. She liked to look at all the stuff that was in the rocks and nooks and crannies. One day she was walking around like this and stepped on something soft. She looked down and saw that she was standing on something wet and squishy and she saw suction cups and an eye looking at her.

"Who's walking on me?" a voice asked. It was Freddy the octopus!

"Oh! Sorry," Jane said as she crawled off of Freddy. The two talked for a while and soon become good friends. You wouldn't think that a spider would have much in common with an octopus, but Jane and Freddy, apart from both having eight arms, both loved polka music, both had three siblings, and both their mothers were named Greta! Can you believe that?

So for years and years, Jane and Freddy would meet at the tide pool and talk about what was happening in their lives. And they were happy. The end.

{Copyright 2007 Wayne Eury}

I wish I could say that when I finished the story Bella was sound asleep. She wasn't. I asked her if she liked the story and she was kind of noncommittal. Oh well. It at least satisfied her desire for a story and she then got busy tossing and turning for 30 minutes while I fell asleep.

When I woke up an hour later, she was asleep, and I really didn't feel like doing anything, especially writing down a story. But today...I made a point to record it. Someday Bella might be glad I did.