Tricky Adults story

I have always believed that story telling is important. Blogging was supposed to be a place I could write stories about. Fortunately it’s one area that fatherhood has not interfered. My son now asks daily to make up a story. Usually with Rescue Bots and math but sometimes super spies or dragons. I do my best to put everything into a common story like goldilocks and the three dragons or I try to teach a skill like plotting Cartesian coordinates of a high speed chase. 

But sometimes I barely service those requests. Like tonight when he wanted Rescue Bots, math, and toys but I wanted to incorporate Tricky Adults, the modern equivalent of “stranger danger”. So here it is.  

Once upon a time, Cody, Frankie, and Jet wanted to go play outside. Chase warned them, beware of tricky adults or you may get eaten by space monsters!
So the three of them went outside and began playing. Before long, a tricky adult came along and said, “Do you want to play with some toys?” Cody said yes and left. 3 minus 1 is?

And how do we know it was a tricky adult? “Adults don’t just give away toys” replied my son. I was impressed!

Jet and Frankie were playing when another tricky adult came along and said, “please help me! My cat is stuck in a tree!” Frankie went along to help. 3 minus 2 is?

And how do we know it was a tricky adult? This one stumped him. I incorporated it because of the article I linked earlier so I said, “adults don’t ask kids for help when they are in trouble, they ask other adults for help.” 

Jet was playing when an adult came by and said, “your mommie and daddy are stuck in traffic and asked me to pick you up. They said the code word is (and here we gave him one)” and Jet knew this person and remembered the code word that nobody should know but mommy and daddy. So he went along and waited for his parents to pick him. 

Jet was the only one not fooled. The others were eaten by Space Monsters because they did not listen to Chases advice.
Then he asked, “do adults ever trick other adults?” Yes, they try. When I was little I lived in a house with two enormous trees out front. One day two guys came by and offered to trim the branches for $50. It was a good deal for my parents because they didn’t have the equipment or time to cut the tree themselves. (I made up the numbers since I have vague memories of this story.)

After a few hours, the doorbell rang and both were standing there, one with a sling on his arm. They said that an accident occurred while they worked and a hospital visit cost them lots of money. Could they have $500 to cover the bill? My parents felt bad if he was really hurt but also felt they were being tricked. They paid the money they originally agreed upon and the two men went on their way.