The story about the beggar lady in the introduction still confuses me. It's all about the importance of charity and hospitality, but nowadays kids are warned not to talk to strangers. The prince may have seemed selfish, but to be fair, if an old beggar woman came up to your house and asked to stay the night, you probably wouldn't even open the door.
"Go away, old woman!" you'd shout. And even if the woman began to cry, and rolled about on the lawn, and intercepted your mailman, chewed up all your mail and then spat it out onto your begonias, you still wouldn't show her the least bit of hospitality.
But the prince did talk to the old beggar woman, and he was turned into a beast for his trouble.
Whenever someone comes knocking on my door, I creep away into the bedroom until the door opens and it's the maintenance guy and I holler, YOU CAN'T JUST BARGE IN HERE, and he says, "But I had a key. I'm here to fix your window. You called like an hour ago." So I shout, I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO BURGLE ME. NEXT TIME MAYBE ANNOUNCE YOUR INTENTIONS. And then he asks why I'm not wearing pants.
"That's rude," I say. But I still offer him a bite of my grilled cheese and a sleeping bag, just in case he considers cursing me.
The moral of that story is: Get a padlock for your front door. Can't nobody open those bad boys from the outside.
Image via Desktop Nexus.
