By Robin Hoselton

Once upon a time, grownups thought kids were really dumb. They told these silly stories called fairy tails. I don’t know why they called them that ’cuz none of the stories had anything to do with fairy’s tails.

I know ’cuz Mikey told me that tails is another word for your sitting down part, and a fairy is a guy who takes naps with another grownup. I guess my daddy’s a fairy, too, ’cuz he’s always taking naps with mommy.

Like I said, none of these stories have anything to do with a sitting down part, so I asked Mikey to ’splain one to me. Mikey is five years old and he knows everything.

The one he told me about is named The Elves and the Shoemaker. Mikey says there was this cobbler shop where custom shoes were made. I know a cobbler is kinda like a peach pie, so this must be a store where, if you bought a piece of cobbler, you got a pair of shoes, too.

I’m not ’zactly sure what custom shoes are, but Mikey says they’re probably a special kind of washable shoe, so it wouldn’t matter if you spilled some of the cobbler on them.

Anyway, Mikey says this cobbler place wasn’t very big, so instead of regular people working there who wouldn’t fit inside a little store, the Mom and Pop shoemakers got a bunch of migrant elves to work for them.

Elves are like little children that don’t have any clothes. Mommy gets migrants sometimes and she takes aspirin for them. So I guess all these elves had headaches.

The shoemaker and his wife made these elves work at night so nobody would see them. Every night these naked little elves would come in and make shoes out of the leather that the shoemaker gave them. They worked real hard but the shoemaker and his wife got all the praise and all the money for these wonderful shoes.

Then one day the cobblers union found out about this sweaty shop. Mikey said his dad said a union is a bunch of people who want to make jobs better. So all these peach pie people called a meeting of all the elves and told them that they didn’t have to sweat so much and go naked.

So the elves went on strike. Mikey says that’s like playing hooky. The shoemaker and his wife wanted the elves to come back to work so they made clothes for them and put a fan in the shop. But, it was too late to try being nice. Nobody would cross the pickle line.

The shoemaker went out of business so all the elves got on their tricycles and went to the North Pole. Mikey says they all got jobs at Santa Claus’s workshop and lived happy ever after.

Amen.