What My Childhood Fairytale Book Taught Me

Long before I knew what the inside of a classroom looked like, and even longer before children became tablet aficionados at age three, my childhood nights were spent tucked under pink covers as my dad read from my storybook. An old thing, it shined with gold-foiled edges and was held together with duct tape and prayers. It was during those late nights that my love of reading fostered, but that wasn’t the only seed planted in my developing mind. The worlds I’d never visit had a lesson to teach me—a lesson I’d carry with me for the rest of my life.

The practice of telling stories has been in existence for the entirety of human history. It doesn’t matter what side of the globe our ancestors came from, stories have always been how we share history. Some were told orally, evolving with each new person who told the story. Some were written down to maintain their integrity long after their writers had passed. Despite these differences, one important aspect remains the same—stories are told to bring us together.

My parents were busy people, which was fitting, for I was a very independent child. I got myself up and ready for school, I informed my parents about teacher workdays so they could find childcare for me and my brother, and I completed schoolwork without them having to ask. Both my parents worked long shifts in hospitals early in their careers, which didn’t leave much time during the day for us to be together as a family. But even after a long, stressful day, my dad still made the time to read a story to me before I fell asleep. We read every tale in that book more times than I could count, and eventually, I even began to read some to him.

To be part of a community is to be a village; to be part of a village is to be a villager. My parents could have stopped reading to me when I learned to do it myself, but part of being a family—of being a parent—is being a villager. Even if it didn’t serve them the way it did me, they still laid by my side every night. There can be no true community if people are unwilling to sacrifice their time to bond with another. Hence why storytelling has always brought us together, forging the strong links that would last for generations to come.

There is one story in particular I remember the clearest. The Princess and the Pea follows a girl who stumbles upon a royal family searching for a wife for the young prince. The prince believes the girl is a princess, but his mother is unconvinced. As many likely know, she places a single pea beneath twenty mattresses, because only a princess would be able to feel the pea that lay below. And you may ask, why did this story stick out to you? Because, this is the story that gave me one of the best experiences in my high school career.

Storytelling comes in more forms than words on a page. In this case, musical theater was my medium of choice. However, I didn’t always feel a sense of belonging within the theatre community. I was the socially-awkward, introverted band kid who practically lived in the band room down the hall—what place did I have on stage? Who was I to believe I deserved a place in a musical portrayal of a story I’d read more times than I could count?

I’d thought my place in storytelling lay with words on the page, but the storytelling on stage felt just as much like home. There was something comforting about shedding the frustrations of the day and donning a new character’s skin. It was by stepping into the shoes of new characters that I formed some of the closest bonds in my high school career. We were all taking a collective journey into this new world, preparing the performance for our entire school community to enjoy. To become someone new meant gaining a further understanding of ourselves and how we fit into each other’s lives. Even if many of our paths will likely not cross again, there’s nothing more freeing than the family I’d joined because of our desire to tell our characters’ stories.

During this time, my fairytale book with its tearing cover had been switched for the fantasy stories I still carry with me to this day. However, it made its comeback in a way I never would have guessed—summer camp. Not a summer camp I attended, but one at which I worked. It was my first ever job, working as a youth counselor at the local YMCA, specifically with rising first and second graders.

Anyone who has worked in childcare knows this age group is one of the more difficult. Most of them have only been through kindergarten, so they’re still learning to navigate an impossibly large and confusing world. Though as rowdy as they could be, the one thing that could calm them down and bring them together was story time. In a world of screens, it was heartwarming to see twenty-some pairs of eyes staring up at me while they voted on which story to read that day. For that twenty-minute period in our long day, they listened to the same stories my dad had read to me when I was their age—about worlds of magic carpets, sea witches, hair long enough to climb a tower, and a princess tested with a pea under twenty mattresses. 

Storytelling is a practice that has carried through time and will carry through the lives of those who engage with it. Though it’s not the story itself that makes it such a transformative experience, but rather the bonds formed in those intimate moments. Would I have met the incredible artists and musicians without joining the Once Upon a Mattress cast? Would I have found a new way to tell stories and express myself if I hadn’t taken the leap into musical theater? And would I have fallen in love with the fantasy genre without those nights spent with my dad reading a taped-together storybook? There’s no way to know, and I don’t care to know, because the communities I have touched and been part of are worth more than the answers to those questions.

Now, I’m entrusting you to find a community for yourself. Find people who love the same stories as you—the same storytelling method as you. It can be as easy as talking to that person on the bus reading one of your favorite books, going to see a local production, or even looking through F(r)iction and its website. There’s no right way to go about it, look at my roundabout journey! As hard as life can get, I know I will always have my community to fall back on, and in the future, it just might make for a fun story.