Tale As Old As Time

I’ll tell you what I don’t appreciate.

I do not appreciate people telling me how I should or shouldn’t be feeling.

It was not my--Let’s get this right--It was not my choice or of my choosing to come to the castle. I was placed in a very uncomfortable position, wherein, I was asked to come rescue my father, because he went somewhere he shouldn’t have.

Now, yes, that was a bad choice that he made, but what I did was simply the result of a reaction to a bad decision.

And so what happens is--

An umbrella forms.

Once you are put in a position where--where--where you have been forced into a spot you would otherwise not be in, all your choices from that point on are not good choices or bad choices, they are choices you were forced to make as the result of your what?

That’s right.

Your circumstances.

So yes, I did move into the castle, thereby taking the place of my father, and yes, I did get to know the owner of the property, a very furry gentleman, and we exchanged pleasantries a few times, and ate dinner together, and one time I threw a snowball at him, which I know some people consider to be flirting, but isn’t, because a woman should be able to throw a snowball at a dogman without it needing to mean something.

But essentially, when you break it down, we were roommates.

That’s what I was.

It was Beauty and Her Roommate the Dogman.

I never even learned his name. I couldn’t tell you what it was.

Hans? Could it be Hans?

Sure, why not.

We can call him Hans.

Remember. For the first few days I was there, I didn’t even see him.

But you know who I did see?

You know who comforted me, and sang to me, and tended to me when I was experiencing an untold level of distress?

Barry the Talking Can Opener.

I cannot begin to tell you what that enchanted can opener has done for me. The long nights spent in my room, opening cans of peaches, singing me songs about how he used to be really rich and famous, but then one day he decides to go to a party at the castle, and a woman shows up, I think she was a matador or something, I never really got the full story, but the next thing Barry knows, he’s in the kitchen prying open a can of pearl onions.

My heart broke for him.

And you know, Hans the Dogman never took proper care of him. He would use him, then rinse him off, then throw him right back in the drawer. Poor Barry was covered in rust by the time I found him, and then I would hear Hans screaming downstairs, because Barry couldn’t get the tomato sauce open fast enough.

Well, of course he can’t, Hans. He’s basically an old seesaw left out in the rain at this point.

Luckily, I am very savvy when it comes to cleaning metal, so I had him back in top-notch shape in no time, and as you can imagine, he was very grateful to me.

One thing led to another, and yes, I admit, feelings began to develop.

I can still remember the evening I retired to my room after dancing in the ballroom with what’s-his-name, and there was Barry, next to the bed, with several cans of black olives just waiting to be opened.

“Barry,” I said, feigning confusion, when really I knew exactly what was about to happen, “What am I going to do with you and all those...cans?”

He had me pick him up, and slowly, carefully, we opened seventeen cans of olives that night. One after the other. Small olives. Medium-sized olives. And then, finally, the jumbos.

By the time we were through, the sun was coming up over the East Wall of the castle, and I had to return Barry to the pantry before it was time for me to take Hans for his morning walk.

Oh, I know I was supposed to fall for the disfigured wolf-prince, but he was so grumpy all the time.

And the fur!

God, I can’t tell you how much fur there was everywhere. I was constantly picking it out of my hair and my soup and once I found a tuft of it on my bed and I confronted Hans the Moose-Man and told him that under no circumstances was he to come into my room without being invited, and he acquiesced, but I could tell I had hurt his feelings, and really, I just didn’t want him in there, because I was hiding freshly opened cans everywhere.

Sara-Mary, the ladle, was always remarking on how often cans were going missing, and how I was always coming down to the pantry to skulk around.

That was her word-- “skulk.”

With an attitude like that, is it any wonder Hans found her in the fireplace one evening, nearly melted down to nothing?

I mean, if you’re going to accuse people of stealing meager cans of tuna, and all the while, you’re dipping yourself into every soup and sauce you can find, I wouldn’t expect that you’d last very long in any given community, let alone an isolated castle where we all have to try our hardest to get along.

Despite that little incident of violence, which I still maintain I had nothing to do with, I was totally innocent as far as the angry mob goes.

By the time they arrived at the castle, Barry and I were long gone.

I had escaped during the night with nothing but the clothes on my back, my love in my pocket, and forty-nine cans of anchovies and sliced pears.

So I really don’t know what happened to Hans and the other enchanted objects.

People ask if I would have at least stuck around had I known that Louisa the Village Donkey Groomer, who was always a little off-center if you ask me, would take one look at Hans and fall madly in love with him, thereby leading to his transformation back into a prince, and all the other residents of the castle being given back their human form.

I tell them “Not at all.”

When you fall in love with a can opener, you want to stay in love with a can opener.

Barry might have been a wonderful human being, but the point is, I’ll never know, because I didn’t know him back then, and the spell reversal only seemed to work if you were within a mile of the castle when it happened, so now Barry and I live very happily at this goat farm, where we’re in charge of opening and emptying cans, which we then feed to the livestock here.

Between you and I, Barry doesn’t know about the goings-on at the castle the night we left, and I intend to keep it that way.

Why let him think about something that could never be? 

A life he can never have back?

A path he isn’t able to walk?

As for me, I’m very happy, I can assure you, and no amount of judgment or strange stares from the goats will ever change that.

After all, a good man is hard to find, but a good can opener?

Nearly impossible.