Week 1 Storytelling: A Painful Vacation

 The man in the moon,
Came tumbling down,
And ask'd his way to Norwich,
He went by the south,
And burnt his mouth
With supping cold pease-porridge.

Oh, did he need a vacation. Nearly every night of the month was spent looking out into space, keeping an eye on the planet he was held to by gravity. And the people of the earth looked up to him on all of those nights, expecting him to be there. Even on the nights when he was not expected to shine down on the humans, he spent it sleeping and resting for the next phases of the moon. But the man in the moon was getting tired of being stuck up there.

On the next new moon, he decided to come down. He hadn’t been to earth since the last ice age, so he did not know what to expect. Nor did he remember how to get down. All he could remember was falling and landing quite painfully.

Oh, he had been sore for days and days after that trip.

This time, he surmised that it would be different. So, the man in the moon pulled himself from the moon and looked to the planet below him. He saw a cloudy sky and used it to his advantage, he jumped from the moon, hurdling through the atmosphere in only the way that he could do and landed on the top of a soft cloud.

However, the cloud began to move suddenly, having been caught in the winds of the upper atmosphere and he lost his balance, tumbling to land.

The man in the moon—who was now a man on the earth—landed in a field. Groaning, he stood up and rubbed at his back, oh he would be sore again. In that field sat two children who were eating some kind of soup. It smelled delicious, and it had been quite some time since he had eaten earth food.

“What is that?” He asked the two children, who looked at him with wide eyes. He had fallen from the sky right in front of them after all. He began to get impatient when they didn’t answer. “Come on, now. Out with it.”

Still afraid, one of the children answered him, “It’s cold pease-porridge, sir. Our mother brought it to us special from town. Norwich is where she got it.”

Yes, it did look quite tasty, so he thanked the children and moved on. He found a sign that read ‘Norwich’ which pointed southward, and he followed it.

He was sweating the entire way there, because earth, of course, was much much warmer than the moon. He was not quite used to being in this heat (although it was in the middle of winter) but he was determined to have his vacation and traveled on to Norwich.

Upon finding the city, he asked around for the shop that sold the porridge and was delighted to be pointed in the right direction. Yes, the shop smelled just as good as it did in that field. Sitting at a table, he ordered a bowl, oh, he felt ravenous. And when it came, he starred down at it in delight before taking a big bite.

Pease Porridge. Wed Source: Wikimedia Commons

“OUCH!” He exclaimed. The cold pease-porridge was much too hot for him. Taking another spoonful, he blew on it to adjust the temperature before trying another bite. It was just as steaming hot as the first bite!

He complained to the cook, only to have the person stare at him in wonder, “But sir, it’s cold pease-porridge.”

To the man in the moon, it wasn’t though. He was used to his food on the moon being much cooler than this. The temperature there was much colder, so of course his food was too. It smelled so delicious, but he couldn’t eat it because it was not cold enough for him.

And that was when the man remembered, the reason it had been so long since he had last visited earth was for this reason. His life on the moon left him craving the absolute coldest temperatures, ones that the earth just didn’t have. So, he asked for his soup to go and returned to the moon. But of course, human food did not last like his food on the moon and it froze.

He was so sore from his fall, and his tongue was so terribly burned that he was in pain until the next new moon.

Author's Note:

This story was adopted from the nursery rhyme which was posted at the top, about the man in the moon burning his tongue on some cold porridge. The story was inspired by me wondering why the man in the moon would want to come to earth in the first place, and because when I read it I wondered how he would survive since the moon is so much colder than the earth. So, I expanded on those ideas to create my story. It made perfect sense to me that the cold porridge would be too hot for him, since the moon is so cold. 

Bibliography:

  The nursery rhyme about the man in the moon was taken from The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke (1897) P. 55

Image Information: The image is of pease porridge by EKez from Wikimedia Commons.