Once upon a time there was a princess...

Tonight, after dinner, while discussing family histories and weddings and the like and looking through old photo albums, Mom was inspired to bring up from the basement a huge box full of Isabel-related paraphernalia. We're talking book reports, drawings, report cards, critiques from piano competitions, the whole kit and kaboodle. I don't think we made it through a quarter of what-all was in there, but you know what we did find?

Stories. Lots and lots of stories.

All about princesses, usually who lived in castles, who were kidnapped by "bad guys" or "yucky animals" or dragons, and put in either a net or a cage until they were rescued by the prince, whom they subsequently married, and lived happily ever after. Most often the princesses were human, but we definitely also found the stories of the Zebra Princess, the Crab Princess, the Walking Talking Castle Princess, The Walking Talking Hat Princess, and the Squid Princess (all of which, despite their nonhuman nature, still managed to encounter similar fates as their human counterparts).

Pretty much all of these were written in a two-month stretch from Feb-March 1988. But still, it would seem that in my youth I was (perhaps unhealthily) obsessed with princesses.

(I'm unsure what conclusions to draw from that, really. And in fairness, there were also *lots* of stories from my junior high years wherein I was particularly concerned with gender reversal in fairy tales. But at the moment, I'm not too concerned.)

I ended up picking out a couple of my favorite princess stories, and posting them on the refrigerator. One of them goes like this:

"Once upon a time there was a lovely princess. She lived in a lovely castle. All of the princes loved her so she married the one she loved and they lived happily ever after. The End."

The Zebra Princess story made it on there, too: one of the few stories that didn't involve a prince. I would share it here, but to be honest the brilliance of it lies in its illustrations.

Anyway, the point of this entry is that I had a really lovely evening tonight. Mom and I were in hysterics reading princess story after princess story, and just had such a great time. Royalty we may not be, but we know how to have a royally good time.