Prelude
My daughter loves Peter Pan, and in that capacity I have read it easily a hundred times or more. Probably more. Occasionally I get to wondering about things, little things, that show up (or don’t) in the various variations of the story that I’ve read, and I’d like to go ahead and think about those things out loud, if you don’t mind. Rather than trying to spell out the individual things that need pondering and then having to explain their individual contexts, I guess I’ll just retell the story as I remember it (should be pretty close to accurate by now) and ponder those things as I go along. I'm going to break it up into a lot of sections lest they grow too cumbersome.
Alright here I go.
Part I
On a quiet street in London, lived a family called the Darlings. "Darling" was their actual name, it wasn't just what they were called, and they didn't actually live on the street; they lived in a house which was situated more or less next to the street. If they lived on the street, the idea that they'd have a nursery (which they do), might seem strange or even ludicrous, depending on how intense your reactions to things like that are. At the very least it would seem unlikely. The fact that the street was quiet seems moot, considering that streets don’t make a lot of noise, except during an earthquake or a volcano or something like that.
There was a little yard separating the house from the street, with a fence around it. A buffer, if you will, from what little activity transpired on the street, e.g. the passing clip clop of a horse-drawn buggy and the dangers of chasing a lost ball, or shuttlecock perhaps, under the iron rims of spoked wheels as they rumble by. The yard also housed a house, a small house, for the family dog, Nana.
Nana's house was a lovely cottage on the outside, and a shitty, undecorated, unfurnished, dirt-floored, empty wooden box on the inside. Empty, that is, unless Nana herself was home, curled up alone in the dirt with a ridiculously large decorative pink bow on her head which she didn't put there herself, for lack of thumbs and a general indifference towards keeping up with human fashion trends.
Inside the much larger (and much more comfortable) house adjacent to Nana's house is where the Darlings lived. Mr. and Mrs. Darling had three children; Wendy, John, and Michael, listed here in descending order of age. Also height, weight, and affinity for clowns, incidentally. The children spent the majority of their time in the nursery, which is where their toys and beds were kept, and which was the kind of place where children can be free to do the sorts of things that children do. The rest of the house, presumably, was tidy and boring and filled with fragile and expensive things, and therefore reserved for adults and adult sorts of things.
Wendy had a colorful imagination, and at night in the nursery would tell stories to John and Michael about a kid named Peter Pan and all the shenanigans effected by he and his rough and tumble crew of lost, but free (also undoubtedly unwashed and smelly), boys. Michael and John listened intently as Wendy spun tales of pirates and Indians and mermaids and that sort of thing, and then rampaged around the place with swords yelling "avast!" and "bilge-rat!” and other such piratey things.
This was fine, and didn't piss anybody off until Michael in his boyish innocence drew a treasure map on his dad’s shirt, right when he was already ranting and raving about having lost his cuff links. This set Mr. Darling to stomping around, doing the dance and singing the song of indignant rage to the point where he blamed Wendy for telling the stories, kicked her out of the nursery effective the next morning, and told her she had to grow up despite the fact that she's not the one who drew the map and was by all accounts just minding her own damn business. Michael escaped the whole thing without so much as an ass-whooping.
Mr. Darling never did figure out that the treasure map probably would have lead him to his cuff links, which were gold and treasure-like. He also never stopped to appreciate that a kid who was still in diapers had drawn a treasure map, which is kind of impressive and suggests that either Michael was a prodigy of some sort, or that John had done it and was blaming his toddler brother like a proper git.
Exit the parents, stage right, all gussied up to attend whatever function it was to which they had promised themselves. This leaves the children in the nursery, all weepy about Wendy having to move into her own room where she will doubtlessly hang punk rock posters on the walls, write dark poetry, secretly get an innocuous tattoo of a ladybug that she thinks is rebellious and hard-core, feel sorry for herself, and generally be a pain in the ass, tragically misunderstood teenager.
Once they are all asleep, a homeless kid with a knife breaks into their house through the window, sneaks into their room, and starts skulking around in green spandex pants looking for his shadow in the dark.
Next (Part II): http://extremenoob.blogspot.com/2014/05/peter-pan-part-ii.html
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