Little Red Riding Hood

Yesterday after finishing Carla's Zen Luggage exercise I noticed she'd posted something more on Wings 4 You Coaching. Its a fascinating insight into the difference between self-esteem built on one's own self-perception and that built solely on other's approval. She says that she's often encountered self-esteem written as self-of-steam! This seems like a wonderful eggcorn (Jim introduced me to these last month and I've still to entirely disentangle them from malapropisms) but Carla called it an oronym - yet another word with probably yet another subtle difference in meaning. What's more she provided a great link on oronyms.

I confess I only read the beginning of the link she provided at first... but when my first attempt at commenting on her post was refused by typepad (and indeed the whole post had disappeared too) I went back to the link and read it properly. At the end is the story of Little Red Riding Hood written out in oronyms (or homophones). This is Ladle Rat Rotten Hut. (I've provided the wikipedia link to it there). And here you'll find a spoken version.

And so another string of synchroncities begins...

I was struck by Ladle Rat Rotten Hut because in 1986 (±1) I narrated this at a works do. The rest of the team I was in played the parts. I've not seen this strange variation on the story since.

I've mentioned fate and my struggle to understand how much or indeed whether its fixed and one of the books I've been idly reading is the one in the photo above - Chance, Luck and Destiny by Peter Dickinson. It was written in the mid-70s and came, as so many of my books do, from the Amnesty second-hand bookshop, a few days ago.

Last night I got to the third section - Destiny - and he gives this diagram of possible alternative happenings for Little Red Riding Hood:


I'm wondering what the moral of this is...

Don't trust a wolf dressed up in your grandmother's clothing?
Only interesting versions of stories are told, the rest are ignored or forgotten.
Don't wear a red hoodie.
Don't trust the wild things...
All the better to see you...

Any more suggestions?