I Am Very Tall

Last night marked the end of my first year together with Lee. We went out, ate a nice meal, and went home. I was worried that things wouldn't come together, but everything worked out. It was a nice night.

On the ride home, I began to think about fairy tales - Cinderella in particular. It struck me that the tale of Cinderella may have the most resonance among all the fairy tales that I remember. Red Riding Hood speaks to our fears about the beasts that may be hiding in the dark and in plain sight. Sleeping Beauty has the "One day, my prince will come" aspect, which really only appeals to women, which is probably why it's a second-rate fairy tale. Snow White has weird stepmother/stepchild relations and freakiness with dwarves.

But Cinderella speaks to everyone's desire to be suddenly discovered, seen for our special qualities and pulled away from our daily drudgery. Again, the telling of the story is highly chick-oriented and the part of me that wants to be masculine is yelling at me to abort the writing of this post. But still, I think the Cinderella story is out there in full force, especially with the advent of reality TV. Now everyone has a chance to be discovered (except for that Daniel Lue guy from Survivor, who sucks).

All that being said, the one part of the story that I kept thinking about was the stroke of midnight, when the magic wore off, and Cinderella realized that her dress was really just a bunch of old rags, her horses were just a pack of field mice, and her carriage was a giant pumpkin. The part that saddened me was that for those of us not living in a fairy tale, no matter how much magic you cast over a night, there will always be the stroke of midnight to bring us back to the reality of daily life.