Politically Correct Bedtime Stories
Goldilocks by James Finn Garner
Through the thicket, across the river, and deep, deep in the woods, lived a family of bears - a Papa Bear, a Mama Bear, and a Baby Bear - and they all lived together anthropomorphically in a little cottage as a nuclear family. They were very sorry about this, of course, since the nuclear family has traditionally served to enslave womyn, instill a self-righteous moralism in its members, and imprint rigid notions of heterosexualist roles onto the next generation. Nevertheless, they tried to be happy and took steps to avoid these pitfalls, such as naming their offspring the non-gender-specific “Baby.”
One day, in their little anthropomorphic cottage, they sat down to breakfast. Papa Bear had prepared big bowls of all-natural porridge for them to eat. But straight off the stove, the porridge was too thermally enhanced to eat. So they left their bowls to cool and took a walk to visit their animal neighbors.
After the bears left, a melanin-improvised young wommon emerged from the bushes and crept up to the cottage. Her name was Goldilocks, and she had been watching the bears for days. She was you see, a biologists who specialized in the study of anthropomorphic bears. At one time she had been a professor, but her aggressive, masculine approach to science - ripping off the thin veil of Nature, exposing its secrets, penetrating its essence, using it for her own selfish needs, and bragging about such violations in the letters columns of various magazines - had led to her dismissal.
The rogue biologists had been watching the cottage for some time. Her intent was to collar the bears with radio transmitters and then follow them in their migratory and other life patterns, with an utter disregard for their personal (or rather, animal) privacy. With scientific espionage the only thing in mind, Goldilocks broke into the bears’ cottage. In the kitchen, she laced the bowls of porridge with a tranquilizing potion. Then, in the bedroom, she rigged snares beneath the pillows of each bed. Her plan was to drug the bears and, when they stumbled into their bedroom to take a nap, lash radio collars to their necks as their heads hit the pillows.
Goldilocks chortled and thought: “These bears will be my ticket to the top! I’ll show those twerps at the university the kind of guts it takes to do real research!” She crouched in a corner of the bedroom and waited. And waited, and waited some more. But the bears took so long to come back from their walk that she fell asleep.
When the bears finally came home, they sat down to eat breakfast. Then they stopped.
Papa Bear replied, “Yes, it does. Does yours smell off, Baby?”
Baby Bear said, “Yes, it does. It smells kind of chemical-y.”
Suspicious, they rose from the table and went into the living room. Papa Bear sniffed. He asked, “Do you smell something else, Mama?”
Mama Bear replied, “yes, I do. Do you smell something else, Baby?”
Baby Bear said, “Yes, I do. It smells musky and sweaty and not at all clean.”
They moved into the bedroom with growing alarm. Papa Bear asked, “Do you see a snare and a radio collar under my pillow . Mama?”
Mama Bear replied, “Yes, I do. Do you see a snare and a radio collar under my pillow, Baby?”
Baby Bear said, “Yes I do, and I see the human who put them there!”
Baby Bear pointed in the corner to where Goldilocks slept. The bears growled, and Goldilocks awoke with a start. She sprang up and tried to run, but Papa Bear caught her with a swing of his paw, and Mama Bear did the same. With Goldilocks now a mobility nonpossessor, Mama and Papa Bear set on her with fang and claw. They gobbled her up, and soon there was nothing left of the maverick biologist but a bit of yellow hair and a clipboard.
Baby Bear watched with astonishment. When they were done, Baby Bear asked, “Mama, Papa, what have you done? I thought we were vegetarians.”
Papa Bear burped. “We are,” he said, “but we’re always ready to try new things. Flexibility is just one more benefit of being multicultural.”
