Some Unprobable Stories Involving Mr. Tokay

I babysat over the weekend. Saturday night the Ashlock girls wanted a story before bed so I had to make up a story on the spot since earlier they hadn't been particularly wowed by my "true" stories. Really, I thought the story of seeing a shark while swimming was exciting. (Katie told me I had already told her that story. Sigh.)

As I was grappling for a story when I remembered my own childhood stories. My dad always told my siblings and I stories about a worm named Mr. Worm and his friend Mr. Bumble Bee. Mr. Worm got himself in a lot of trouble and Mr. Bumble Bee often saved Mr. Worm's life.

Since I live in Thailand I decided to go for something similar but well-adopted to the climate. So I started telling the story of a man named Mr. Tokay. This is the condensed version I told the girls:

Mr. Tokay was short and skinny and lived in Chiang Mai. One day the city was surrounded by enemy soldiers. Since Mr. Tokay was so tiny the king of Chiang Mai (this is story occurred in some distant not-so-historical past) asked him to save the city by crawling through a tunnel and getting rice from a farmer outside the city walls. Mr. Tokay after many terrifying encounters with mice in the tunnel escaped from the city and found a safe house with a nice farmer who fed him mangoes and sticky rice. After resting for a night and a day with the farmer he returned to Chiang Mai and crawled back through the tunnel (with the rice bag tied to his feet) and saved the inhabitants of Chiang Mai. They all sang his praises and they even knighted him Sir Tokay. I ended the story by having a Chiang Mai resident tell Mr. Tokay, "Thank you for the rice. Next time can you please bring us bread?"

Well, the story went over well with the girls. And this morning at 7:00 am they came into the room I was sleeping in and said, "Ms. Julie, it is morning." They even went to the curtains and lifted them up just in case I had any doubts about the matter. They asked me for another Tokay story. As usually happens the sequel is not as good as the original and also--my story telling capacities are quite limited in the morning so I told the following story:

There was a man named Mr. Tokay who took a train to Bangkok from Chiang Mai. I asked the girls, "What do you think he did when he went to Bangkok?" They didn't know. I said, "Well, he went shopping at MBK." "And what was he shopping for?" I asked them. I told them, "Baby clothes, of course..." The story got more pitiful the more I told it so I decided to spice it up by throwing in an earthquake.

Because of the earthquake, Mr. Tokay was stuck on the 5th floor of MBK in complete darkness with people screaming all around them. Mr. Tokay was very brave and told everyone to shut up. Then he had them find their way through the darkness by asking them to follow his sounds, "Toooook kay....Tooook....kay." They all came to him and he had them hold hands so they could walk out the exits together. At this point in the story, Mr. Tokay befriends a scared little girl who finds courage to leave the building by singing, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." (The girls picked out the song.)

So that was my weekend. Babysitting and telling improbable stories about a man named Mr. Tokay who eats mangos and sticky rice on his adventures and sings "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with scared children in MBK.