We were driving to the grocery store from ballet class; OmegaDotter had a small scrapbook of photos from one of her grandmothers.  It being too dark for her to see it, she declared, "Now.  Pretend I'm Miss Bethany, and I'm reading a story."

"Okay!  Tell a story!"

"Once upon a time there was a little mouse, who didn't have a hole to live in..."

"Oh, no!  Poor mousie!"

"No hole.  So she went looking for a hole.  She found a mitten.  She crawled in and cleaned it up and it was clean and nice and she lived there.  Then there was a frog, who didn't have a hole, so he went looking for one.  He found the mitten, too, and he went in to live there.  But the mousie got angry.  "You're mean and bad!  You didn't knock on the door or ring the doorbell!  You go away!'  Then he began to cry--"

"The froggie?"  (Mom is confused.)

"No!  The mousie.  Then..."

Silence.

"FIRE!!!"

(Mom almost yanks the car off the road, then realizes it's still the story.)

"Oh, no!  The mitten was on fire!  The fire was getting bigger and bigger!  But then it went away."

"Whew!"

"Theeeennn...something strange happened..."

"Oh, my!  What?"

"A big, bad storm!  Mommy, what's a 'storm'?"

"It's a lot of wind and rain and thunder and lightning."  (Mommy turns onto the expressway.)

"Oh.  Well, the storm blew away!  And theeennnn...something strange happened..."

"What?"

"A giant!  He tried to catch the mousie and the frog!"

"Oh, no!"

"Yes!  But they got away.  Theeennnn...something strange happened..."

"Hmmm.  What now?  Poor mousie and froggie!  They're having a very bad day.  Can't they go to sleep or something, and stop having horrible things happen?!"

"A truck ran over them and they were squashed flat!"

"Um.  Oh, dear."

"Theennnnn...something strange happened..."

"MORE?!  They're already squashed flat!"

"Shhh!  A fly was flying around their heads, and the frog caught it and ate it, and they weren't squashed flat any more."

The End.