Hello! You may have heard of me. My name is Goldilocks. No, please, don’t look at me like that! You have heard that I am a spoiled girl who breaks into houses, eats others’ food, breaks their furniture, and takes naps in their beds. That is not true! Please give me a moment to tell you what really happened on that fateful day in the woods.

It all started when mama suggested I go play outside. We live in a very wooded area and I always enjoyed climbing trees, hiking the hills, and making my own fun. This day was no different. I took off into the woods, following one of my bluebird friends, when I came across the most delightful little cabin. It was so quaint with its red door and thatched roof. I had never seen anything like it, and I wanted to tell the inhabitants how I loved it so.

I gently knocked on the door, and to my amazement, the door opened. “Well, that’s odd. If the door is already open, I should go inside and check that everyone is okay,” I thought to myself.

I walked inside, and noticed that the dining table was set for breakfast or maybe brunch, for it was late in the morning. There were three bowls of porridge on the table. Mama had told me that porridge was made with milk, and if milk is left out too long, it will spoil and make you sick. I did not want these sweet people in this adorable cabin to take ill! I tasted a spoonful from each bowl. The first bowl tasted fine, but a tad too hot. The second was fine too, but I felt bad for that person because it was already ice cold! Then I tasted the last bowl. It was just an itty-bitty bowl, so I assumed it belonged to a young child. Imagine how sad that child would be if he got sick from eating that porridge. I took it upon myself to help him out, and I finished the porridge for him.

Next, I wandered into the living room. “Oh my!” I exclaimed. “Look at this quaint furniture! Three chairs all different sizes!” I thought it would be a nice gift to the family if I just rearranged the furniture a little bit. I moved the giant chair closer to the fireplace. My that was heavy! Then, I moved the middle-sized chair. It was so light, like a feather! Last, I went to move the little, wooden chair, but when I looked closely I noticed that some of the wood was splintering. “Oh no! This little child will fall right on his bottom if he sits in this chair!” I decided to save him from an awful spill, and I sat in it myself. Luckily, I was prepared for the fall, so I only got a small scrape on my leg.

I did not want to bleed on these nice people’s things, so I went upstairs to the bathroom to try to find a bandage for my leg. I could not find what I was looking for in the bathroom, so I went to the next room.

“How odd! This room has three beds, and they are all different sizes! One large, one medium, and one small!” What do all kids like to do when they see beds side-by-side? Jump on them of course! I know I should not have, my mama would be so disappointed to find out that I did. But, I could not help myself! I jumped from bed to bed, over and over, bounce… bounce… bounce. When you do that for many, many minutes, you get very tired! In fact, I felt exhausted, and I think the spoiled porridge was messing with my tummy. “You deserve a little rest,” I told myself. “You have saved a boy’s life today!” I knew from bouncing that the big bed was way too hard for a rest, and the medium sized bed was way too soft, but the small bed – in fact, it was just the right size for me – was just right. I climbed under the covers, telling myself that it would just be a short rest, for five minutes or so.

“And there she is!” I heard a small boy yelling in my face.

I rolled over to see who was yelling at me in such a rude manner. Can you imagine my surprise to see it was a talking bear and his parents? Of course, I ran out of the house without telling them of my life-saving efforts. Wouldn’t you do the same thing if you were put into that situation?

Unfortunately for me, the bears got to the news before I could make it home and tell my side of the story. Funny that no one paid attention to the fact that they were talking bears, but they were certain that there was something wrong with me.

Source: A Retelling of Goldilocks
Retold by Exploros, CC BY-SA 4.0