Bedtime Stories

As far as I could recall, I don’t think I could remember my parents reading me a bedtime story before I went to sleep. What I do remember is that I used to watch a lot of TV at night until I felt the fatigue slowly crumble by defenses and leave me knocked out in minutes. Bedtime stories aren’t really part of my culture. At a young age of three, I already knew how to read. I was the one who picked my own bedtime story, and then I read the book myself. However, books never made me sleepy, nor had they affected my dreams when I was young. Whatever I know about bedtime stories, I learned it from the boob tube and through reading. No one really told me anything, nor did anyone sing me a mere lullaby. My parents were both busy with their work. I never got to hear any bed time story from them. I have no bitterness, whatsoever, but it would have been nice to at least remember being tucked in by either my mom or my dad, and at least recall a bedtime story they told me before I went to sleep. They could object to my sentiments if their memory hasn’t yet failed them and they could prove that I have infantile amnesia. However, that is not the case. Even if I try hard to backtrack the events in my childhood, I can’t remember any bedtime story. Not even one. I watched Walt Disney’s Bedtime Stories (starring: Adam Sandler, Keri Russel) with my kid last Sunday and both of us enjoyed the movie. Skeeter (Adam Sandler), a hotel handyman, was asked by his sister to babysit for his nephew and niece for a week. He has been a handyman for the hotel for 25 years and he yearned nothing more but be recognized for his efforts and be rewarded by the tycoon to be the manager of the hotel. During his stay with his sister’s kids, he told them bedtime stories closely related to his life. Skeeter would use fictional characters and storybook-kind of settings to give color to his stories. The children modified some parts of his stories and by some strange coincidence, the bedtime stories he told the kids would come true the next day. At the end of the film, Skeeter got what he wanted and lived the life that he was supposed to live. The film showed the concept of positive visualization. Through stories, we could bring to life all the hidden desires of our heart. By believing the stories we made, we unconsciously make our own wishes come true. Skeeter has done that through creating bedtime stories for the kids. Although in real life, our positive visualization doesn’t really happen in a too uncanny way, there are some instances that what we wish for happens to us unexpectedly through weird circumstances. I guess my parents didn’t tell me bedtime stories from their own experiences because they are way too accomplished to ever dream of anything else. Positive visualization wouldn’t work on my mom because she has always been a doer and not a dreamer. I have never seen any literary creativity from them so it was understandable. Now I have my own son to worry about. One day, he will ask me to read him a bed time story. Being an English teacher, and being someone who supports reading literacy, I hope I will not fail him. I pray that I wouldn’t be too busy preparing my lessons for the next day or too tired to even tuck my son in bed and read him a goodnight story. If ever I have memory gap and that my parents would contest that they did really tell me a bedtime story when I was young, I would take this as a challenge to make the bedtime stories that I’m going to tell Ken be memorable so he would not forget them.