S4 E4 Humpty Dumpty Revisited

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Good evening and welcome to the Comforting Voice podcast. I'm your host Chastaray, and I'm joined in the studio by Emmy the Minimacaw. She is hanging off of my shirt once again, and she's got her toy box down here with some snacks and some water, and she's stuck to me. So, um yeah, that's what we're doing. So, how are you? It is rainy here. It is gross outside. I mean, we need the moisture, we need the rain, but it is gross outside. So I'm happy to be inside tonight. Anyway, I hope your week is going well. I hope the weather is to your liking wherever you are, and I hope you're ready for a really good episode. This is what I feel would be the most necessary episode to date of the comforting voice. And welcome everyone that's here. Welcome anyone that finds this in the future. I think this is a much needed, very, very, very necessary episode because we're going to revisit something that we've talked about more than once in the past. So it's it's coming together. And it was actually inspired by one of the countries on our join the fun three listener-based countries tonight. So let's just jump right in here. Um, yeah, we got to get started. We got a lot to talk about. So I think what's most important at this particular point in the episode is just to remind you: if you haven't been over to the website, to the headquarters, check it out, comfortingvoice.com, and tell the others. It's the join the fun challenge. We started this not quite a month ago. We've already had 50 cities and one country join the listener base in less than a month. That is amazing. So welcome all new listeners. Welcome everyone that's been joining the fun all along. And let's continue to spread the love and just tell others it's the best way to get the word out about a podcast and expand the listener base. And then the other way you can participate in the Join the Fun challenge, if you don't have anyone to tell, is if you happen to be listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or any podcast app that allows you to leave a positive comment or a like type action, click a happy button or a heart or something, thumbs up. They're all different. They all do the same thing. But what that does is it tells the algorithms on whatever podcast app that you're enjoying the show, and then that signals the apps to refer us to anyone that's searching for podcasts in the same categories, genres, that sort of thing. And we get seen a lot easier. So thanks in advance, and I appreciate you. Next, let's make sure that you're ready to go. Put your feet up, get cozy, get comfortable. Are you here to fall asleep? Are you here to just hang out for a while? Whatever you're doing, get cozy. Make sure that everything you need is at your fingertips. You've got your listening device set at that perfect volume so you don't have to fidget with anything or go hunting anything down or whatever the case is, and squish your pillow up into that perfect shape so you're really, really, really comfortable. Somewhere in the mix, you're gonna start your sleep prep. And that's where you engage in an amazing stretch. Reach through your arms and legs, into your hands, feet, fingers and toes, really engage all those muscles, wiggle your fingers and toes really quick, and then release that stretch. And what that does is it helps you shrug off the stress and the toxicity of the day instantly. You'll just feel it kick in. It's wonderful. Now we've added another step to our breath of air, and this is awesome. So there's kind of a pressure point right between your eyes on the bridge of your nose, kind of where your nose starts to dip down. And when you do your deep breath of air, I want you to put your finger there and just apply some very, very light pressure. You don't need to push, just like the weight of your finger, not much. And between that and the deep breath of air, that's gonna really kick in your relaxation. So when you're ready, touch that little spot between your eyes on the bridge of your nose, gently. Don't push really hard, but just put a little tiny, tiny bit of pressure there. Inhale to about the count of four, hold it to about the count of three, take another quick little inhale, hold it to about the count of two, and then slowly exhale through your teeth to about the count of eight. Kind of like you're hissing. You can do that however you want. Stretch first, deep breath of air first, mix and match, do one, do the other, repeat both. But try to do at least the stretch and at least the deep breath of air with that little little bit of touching right between your eyes, and you're gonna fall asleep before you know what hit ya. You're not even gonna hear this episode. Okay, now that you're all ready and the pickle chicken is sitting here looking at me inquisitively, let's take a second for your tea tag and your fortune cookie slip. I had to draw these earlier when I came down here and was turning on the lights and stuff down here. So your tea tag, every beat of your heart is a rhythm of your soul. And your fortune cookie slip. He that can't endure the bad will not live to see the good. Hmm. And the lucky numbers off the back of the fortune cookie slip for those of you who like to play the lottery or number games fifteen, thirteen, fifty-four, forty-three, seven, and thirty-one. Good luck if you play number games. I hope you win big, or at least win something. Get that in the archive receptacle. And the pickle chicken seems a lot less confrontational about the archive receptacle these days. Did you have something to say to everybody? Did you want to say hello? Okay, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go check in with Lawn and see what he sent in for this week's Got a Minute. Then we're gonna come back for join the fun, because here again, one of the countries on our listener base for this week actually inspired this week's whole episode. So let's see what Lon has, and we're gonna get down to business on this very, very serious topic tonight.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Hey, it's Lawn. Got a minute. Today we are speaking again of cessation because I didn't really give a lot of detail. I've spoken of it, we've talked about it here on the Comforting Voice. Cessation. Ceasing to accept those negative, harmful thoughts, people's actions, their words, even events can be one of our power tools. Now, understanding cessation. Some have found that suffering and anxiety can cease, at minimum, be controlled using cessation. It isn't just a head-in-the-sand approach, not just the absence of anxieties or suffering. It involves the elimination of the causes most often brought on ourselves from cravings and ignorance. Even our own past can be an anchor, and the longer we hold on to some things, the heavier they get. But becoming increasingly aware of past and current projected angst and triggers, the huffs and groans, verbal oh my gods from some people, slamming doors and drawers from those simply wanting to share their stresses, those uninvolved in our past, we can choose to cease accepting them, taking those deep breaths we speak of, letting go with a sincere, not my issue, and moving on. It can be exercised in other simple daily forms, for example, someone passively saying so and so needs to be done, can be met with, yes it does, and moving on. That person that cut us off or raced to get in front of us in traffic can be met with a quiet indifference. A recent personal experience and incident from me, while riding my e-bike for exercise, I was going strong when a diesel pickup roared past within inches, first of all, believing it would both scare me and to dump a cloud of exhaust. I just laughed, slowed down to avoid the cloud, shortly blew past them just as a light turned green at the next intersection. Well, they got all butthurt about it, creeped up to get alongside me. I heard the acceleration and took a hard right, leaving that blue cloud lonely in the road and me laughing at their junior efforts, ceasing to accept outside manipulations. Like the use of most power tools, however, it does take time and practice learning to become skilled at the use. Cessation can become easier when we make efforts to reach it through certain proven disciplines. Sincere efforts to understand all sides. Intentions carry us toward positive ends. Words alone are simply an exchange of air. Actions are always what produce results. Livelihood is much more than income. It's our view and how we approach life. Efforts must be made to seek improvements, mindfulness of others, but remaining deeply focused on our own needs. Finally, concentration on becoming efficient at ceasing to accept dark, negative, self-absorbed toxicity, deep breathing, letting go, moving forward. When diligently followed, these proven efforts can help nourish our insight and wisdom, leading to strength in saying no to cravings, demands, and ultimately the ceasing of anxiety and suffering. Cessation can be described as a learned state where our mind is free from angst, disturbances that are caused by those cravings and attachments. It can become transformation where the habits, the patterns of desire, cravings, even aversion fade away. The ideal state of mind brings clarity, peace, and less suffering. That allows us the chance to rise. And finally, through meditation, if we focus on ceasing to accept the energy vampires, we can lead ourselves to a temporary cessation of conscious awareness. The current moment, the only importance. We can reach that at-ease feeling just as we slip into a dreamful sleep, even a short daydream state. This allows us mental clarity and insight for understanding our abilities to cease accepting negative influences both from within our own thoughts and the outside world, allowing us to thrive.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Thank you, Lon. Thank you very much. Very good advice, very good words of wisdom, always appreciated. And um, you know, I I do owe Lon an apology because I did kind of traumatize him last night. I let him know that tonight's episode was not about a canon. So we'll get into that in just a minute. So let's let's get into join the fun and then we'll see what we're talking about with all of this. So join the fun is our segment every Tuesday where I select three countries from our listener base, and we talk about a couple interesting things about those countries, and it's how we get to know each other across the miles, and um yeah, it's just one way that we can hang out when we can't actually hang out. So to start off, join the fun this week is Lithuania. Lithuania was once huge. In the 15th century, Lithuania was the largest state in Europe stretching from the Baltic Sea all the way toward the Black Sea. Lithuania has a serious relationship with amber. Amber has been gathered along its Baltic coast for thousands of years, and it became such an important trade item that Lithuanians sometimes call it their gold. Lithuania has helped bring down the Soviet Union without firing a shot. In 1989, about two million people joined hands in a human chain stretching through Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. It became known as the Baltic Way, and it was one of the most remarkable peaceful demonstrations in modern European history. So if you're joining the fund from Lithuania, you represent a country with a giant history, golden treasures washing ashore, and a people who literally joined hands to change history. Next on our list is Indonesia. Indonesia is made up of more than 1700 islands, it's one of the world's great island nations, and because of that enormous spread of land and sea, it has an astonishing variety of landscapes and ecosystems. Indonesia is home of a Komodo dragon, the largest living lizard on Earth. These enormous reptiles can reach around 10 feet long. Komodo National Park was created specifically to protect them and was later recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Indonesia has the world's largest Buddhist monument on the island of Java. It's an enormous 19th-century Buddhist temple complex and is recognized as the UNESCO World Heritage Site. So if you're joining the fun from Indonesia, you represent thousands of islands, dragons that sound like they belong to mythology, and one of the greatest monumental achievements in the Buddhist world. And last on our join the fun list tonight that's going to usher us into the entire episode is well it has two pronunciations. Here in the United States we have always traditionally said Turkey, but it is actually pronounced Turkey. Turkey is where continents meet. The country sits in both Europe and Asia, with the two parts separated by waterways running through Istanbul. It's literally a country straddling both continents. The tulip has a surprising connection to Turkey. Tulips became enormously popular in the Ottoman Empire long before they became a Dutch icon. The flower eventually made its way from the Ottoman world to Europe, and yes, the Dutch eventually became famous for them. Turkey is home to one of the world's oldest monumental religious sites. Oh, here we go with one of those things that I hope I don't butcher. Gebekli Tepe. Did I say that right? It dates back roughly eleven thousand years, making it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. Wow, I didn't know that. So if you're joining the fun from Turkey, you represent a country where two continents meet, flowers traveled halfway around the world, ancient history keeps rewriting what we thought we knew, and apparently you also inspire podcast episodes by way of Humpty Dumpty? Oh my gosh, we have to talk about Humpty Dumpty again. Yes we do. So what does this have to do with turkey or turkey yay? Okay, we've got a lot to unpack here. And don't forget, this started with Join the Fun Tonight. Turkey Yay. So back in mid-May, on May 19th, this year, 2026, season 3, episode 22 titled Unpacking Nonsense on a Quiet Tuesday Night. I touched on some of the nonsense and what it all means in the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, because people today have no concept of most of the jokes that were in it or what's being referenced or anything, and people think it's just a bunch of nonsense because we can't relate to it. Too many years have passed, and we're in a different culture and all sorts of stuff. So we had that one. Go back and listen to it. Excellent, excellent. Again, the date on that one was May 19th, 2026, season three, episode 22, unpacking nonsense on a quiet Tuesday night. Then it all got started with July 11th, 2026 in Through the Looking Glass, Season 3, Episode 37, Humpty Dumpty is in the house, and that was chapter 6 of Through the Looking Glass, so check that one out. The episode that followed it, season three, episode 38, Humpty Dumpty, an analysis. I thought I unpacked everything we had to know about Humpty Dumpty. That one published on July 14th, 2026. I encourage you to go back and listen to it. Again, it's called Humpty Dumpty An Analysis. And I thought it was a closed topic, but oddly enough, I have run across a couple articles since then about Lewis Carroll. And people today say some nasty things about the guy, and I've got to defend his honor, okay? And we're gonna get into that. But um I was also very inspired by our current book, you know, The Hardy Boys, The Tower Treasure, and I'm just jumping into this whole detective mystery thing. I'm getting in the zone, people. So I thought I would just kind of attack the whole Humpty Dumpty topic again. Again, I want to apologize to Lon. He has believed for so many years that Humpty Dumpty is actually a poem about a canon, and I just don't think that's what it is. And I I want to prove why I don't think it's possible. And I think I have solved the mystery finally as to what Humpty Dumpty actually refers to. And it's very simple, really, and you need to ask yourself, what can Humpty Dumpty do for you? I think it's actually kind of a public service announcement, is what I think it is. And I think it's um basically boils down to don't drink in excess and put yourself in danger, is what I think it boils down to. So let's let's see why I feel this way. If you go back and listen to the Through the Looking Glass chapter six episode with Humpty Dumpty, there is a phrase in there when they introduce Humpty Dumpty, Alice encounters Humpty Dumpty sitting on top of a wall. Lewis Carroll describes him as sitting cross-legged, like a Turk. So I had to what was this about? And then of course, Turkey came up tonight for join the fun, and it just came back to my head, and of course, that just opened a whole can of worms. So this is for you if you live in Turkey or Turkey. And um, why would why would Lewis Carroll say this? Well, today, especially here in the United States, it sounds like a completely random sentence. Why would he suddenly bring the country Turkey into a story and why the egg? What is going on here? Um, but to a Victorian reader, the phrase sitting like a Turk, this was a recognizable expression for just sitting cross-legged. Europeans had long associated sitting cross legged on the floor with Turkish and other Eastern cultures, and the phrase Turkish fashion was used to describe that particular sitting posture. So Lewis Carroll wasn't making up just a bizarre thing or a bizarre reference. Um, he was using a cultural reference that his readers would Understand. Now, why would he bother to do this? There's a few reasons. First off, it's just a funny thought because he made Humpty Dumpty into an egg, but why did he make him into an egg? Okay, well first let's go back to the sitting like a turk. There's a book, and I've considered reading it for one of our Friday night bedtime stories eventually, and it's the book Jane Eyre. There's a little delicious literary coincidence here. Almost the same exact expression was used in Jane Eyre in 1847, describing somebody sitting cross-legged, like a Turk. So Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass appeared in 1871, about 24 years later. We cannot prove that Carol was deliberately giving that author, Charlotte Bronte, a little wink, but it seems like a little nod, okay? It seems like a literary reference that children would have picked up on. The reason why it's fun to wonder this is because Jane Eyre was not some obscure book that Carol may never have encountered. It was an enormously successful and influential Victorian novel, and it was widely read. And it wasn't specifically a children's book, but young people certainly read it. It was written primarily for an adult readership. And this is kind of where the modern idea of an Easter egg is useful. We love this kind of stuff today. People just grab that. You're reading a book or you're watching a TV show or you're watching a movie and suddenly there's an obscure reference to something totally unrelated that's another movie or TV show. People love that stuff. And the fact is we don't necessarily need proof that it was intended. Half of the fun is just noticing it and having that possibility of saying, wait a minute, was that a reference to that other book or movie or thing? This is something we have loved for decades and decades and decades. So maybe Lewis Carroll was simply using a familiar Victorian expression. Maybe he was making a literary nod to another famous book. Maybe he just deliberately echoed it for fun. We just don't know. But it makes Humpty Dumpty a lot more fun to speculate on. Now let's talk about Humpty Dumpty. What is going on here and why is it a canon? You know that that's in that Humpty Dumpty and Analysis episode. Go listen to all the theories about it. And that's a very popular theory. But I don't think it's quite right. I have to go back to something else. So Humpty Dumpty was already an expression before the famous nursery rhyme became the Humpty Dumpty we know today. In 1785, Francis Gross, am I saying his name right, published a classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue. And in that dictionary, Humpty Dumpty was defined as a short, clumsy person of either gender. Now think about that for a second. This was decades before Lewis Carroll wrote about Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass. So it was before the egg character had become firmly established in popular imagination. So think about it, the name itself already carried a visual image of a short, dumpy, clumsy human being. But then it was also the name of an alcoholic beverage. It was a mixture of ale boiled with brandy, so the phrase had an association with drinking, as well as a short clumsy person. And this is where it starts getting a little colorful. You already have Humpty Dumpty meaning a short dumpy clumsy person. Humpty Dumpty meaning an alcoholic beverage. So does that mean a humpty dumpty was also someone who consumed too many of the beverages and stumbled around clumsy-like? Maybe was a little on the round side. I'm kind of thinking there might be some stuff going on there with that. Somewhere, Lewis Carroll decides to make him an egg shape. So these meanings actually overlapped in periods of English history, okay? And this would have been very commonplace. You know, the making fun of people that are short and stout. Now we've done this traditionally in cartoons, TV shows, movies, plays, all through time. We make fun of the gravitationally challenged, don't we? So we can't prove that the original rhyme was deliberately making fun of a drunk person, but it seems to be a cautionary tale about a short, fat drunk who falls off of a high place, hurts himself. I think it's an interesting possibility here, okay? Here again, people have been making fun of round, short, stout people forever, we've been making fun of drunk people forever, just it's always been out there in comedy. So the image of a short, stout, round, red-faced, wobbly drunk is practically a universal comedy character. We still do it. How many of you watch the Andy Griffith show? Look at Otis Campbell. He is just an embodiment of this. Humpty Dumpty, okay? And Otis doesn't have to fall off a wall to understand the joke. He's lovable, he's a stout fellow, he's tied off one too many, and he's made questionable decisions as a result of that. Okay? So now imagine that sort of character in the 1700s. Give him the name Humpty Dumpty. Short, stout, round, clumsy, associated with poor decision making of an alcoholic, doing questionable behaviors that would endanger themselves? So suddenly the nursery rhyme looks a little bit different. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall brings up the questions, why is this short, stout, clumsy fellow sitting on a wall? We don't know. Maybe he drank too many Humpty Dumptys. People that drink too much make questionable decisions. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Well, of course he did. He was clumsy, he was inebriated, possibly, and he was sitting somewhere dangerous. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. And back in the day, this kind of joke about that kind of person would have been grotesquely funny. He didn't just fall, he got thoroughly wrecked. After he drank a bunch of Humpty Dumptys and got thoroughly wrecked, okay? So what about the egg? Where did this come in? So I had to think about this too. The earliest versions of the rhyme are understood more as a riddle. Everyone thought the answer was an egg. They didn't know. It doesn't say Humpty Dumpty is an egg. But Lewis Carroll starts portraying this and it got put into his book from the illustrator. So I'm kind of thinking maybe the whole joke got completely layered. You've got this existing funny name, Humpty Dumpty. You've got the short, clumsy, round person meaning, you've got the drinking connection, you've got a character sitting somewhere he shouldn't be. Sets it up for a chapter, right? You know, maybe the the idea of Humpty Dumpty being an egg was part of the riddle part of that, and maybe that was a speculation of the day. I think this is what Lewis Carroll did. I think he took all of this and made it into one big visual joke to emphasize everything, and that's how he became an egg. I think he was originally meant to be an inebriated, short, round person. And you take someone like that, you put them on a wall, an egg is short and very round, very fragile. So you've got a really great kid's imagery right there, right? It takes the whole visual of an egg as a comparison to a short, stout, round person who's doing dangerous things because they're potentially inebriated, right? And then you add a cross-reference to a famous literary classic of the day with a ridiculous posture of sitting cross-legged on top of a wall when you're round and fragile. And think about it. In that chapter, Humpty Dumpty actually speculates that his name means exactly what his shape is and what a fine shape it is. So he makes a reference that his name is his shape, and that's why I think it was a reference to a short, stout, round person making questionable decisions, and layered with the idea of an egg, it probably became the most funny, silly crossover reference ever. But what about the canon? Well, it's a terrific story, but there just isn't good contemporary evidence for it. I cannot find a connection between the term Humpty Dumpty and a canon. I just haven't been able to find that. It's a great theory though. So by using some logic, diving into this subject, I really believe that maybe the original Humpty Dumpty was a joke about a short, stout, clumsy person. Maybe the drinking association added a layer. Humpty Dumpty would have evoked an image of someone stumbling around, wobbling around, making decisions, putting themselves in a precarious position, and tumbling down. They would have gotten totally hurt in the process, and then you add the fragility of an egg. Suddenly, the character becomes round, robust, very fragile, top of a wall, sitting precariously in a way that's going to make him topple over even worse. And you've probably got something that just made kids roll with laughter. And then of course, the whole thing was a dream. So he added the whole thing into a character that starts speaking to her. So why am I bringing this up again about Carol? Well, I wanted to just bring this up because I keep seeing articles, I keep seeing references about Alice in Wonderland through the looking glass, and people of modern day seem to think that this is evidence that Lewis Carroll did immense amounts of psychedelic drugs and um, you know, all kinds of mind-altering substances. But there's no there's no evidence that he did. He had spent an afternoon entertaining some children, and he was a mathematician, he was into logic, he was an academic, he was a photographer, and he was a writer. His imagination was extraordinary. But the problem is we're reading it from a modern day standpoint, and we don't understand any of the jokes that were written in there. And that's why I went back to Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty is a great example of this visual joke that he could explain and describe, and kids were probably just delighted with it. They probably thought it was extraordinarily funny. He wasn't writing the books for for adults to analyze or be entertained by. He was writing for children. And kids have a glorious ability to find things funny when they're ridiculous. The poetry, the moral lessons, everything that's referred to over and over and over in these books. Kids were expected to do outrageous amounts of memorization. They were expected to adhere to very strict rules about behavior, proper manners, and they had to exist in a very stern adult world. Imagine what kind of stress that is on a kid. And we're talking about, you know, England, the Victorian era. It was a different time, it was a different part of the world, things were done differently. We didn't have TV then, we didn't have electronics, we had books, we had reading, writing, and they prepared you to be adults and they expected you to act like adults. So this is where Carol becomes a genius in these two books. He takes something familiar and makes it so ridiculous that it's absurd. He takes serious lessons that kids had to learn and turned them into delightful nonsense. He takes ordinary words and twists their meanings. He uses logic and pushes it until it breaks. He takes nursery rhymes and gives them completely new meanings. He takes authority figures and makes them ridiculous. And he creates characters who confidently insist that absolute nonsense makes perfect sense. Kids back then would have loved this. It would have been a stress relief to them. Imagine being a kid in those days. You have to sit nicely, you have to listen, you have to memorize, you have to behave, you have to do your lessons, respect your elders, you're surrounded by all kinds of rules. And then your entertainment was probably sitting and reading nicely, right? Children should be seen, not heard. Go sit over there and read your book. So then they were provided a book that gave them concepts like what if a rabbit was late? What if a cat could disappear? What if a baby turned into a pig? What if a tea party went completely insane? What if words could mean whatever somebody decided they wanted them to mean? What if adults weren't automatically the smartest people in the room? What if logic could be used to make something completely ridiculous? What if you could just laugh? What if Alice's Adventures was a mental vacation for children? What if it was a vacation from manners? From memorization, from stern seriousness, from having somebody constantly tell you what you're supposed to be doing. Carol gave kids something they could read and an absolute mental escape while they were reading it. They could recognize the rules, they could recognize the lessons, the poems, and Carol gave them permission to break all of those. For a child living in a very structured Victorian world, it could have been a very liberating two books to read. They would have been silly, they would have been rebellious without actually doing anything wrong. They would have been able to laugh at rules without breaking rules. They could spend an hour somewhere being completely ridiculous, and it would have been acceptable because they would have been sitting there reading. And maybe that's why we're still here reading it today. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865, and through the looking glass followed in 1871. They have been reinvented over and over for more than a century and a half. Films, silent films, animated films, television, live action, cartoons, anime, stage productions, musicals, TV specials, modern reimaginings, Disney's 1951 animated classic, Tim Burton's 2010 live action Alice in Wonderland, and then he did Through the Looking Glass in 2016. The adaptations were being made as early as 1903, and that was only 38 years after the first Alice book was published. There have been so many adaptations and variations that Alice has effectively become her own little cultural universe, and it all started with a mathematician that was entertaining some kids on a boat. So one final salute to Lewis Carroll. Maybe he wasn't a man escaping reality through drugs. I think he was a man who understood reality very well. He understood how wonderful it could be to escape that reality. He understood math, logic, language, and kids, and he probably understood the importance of being a kid. And he understood something that many adults often forget, and that is that the brain needs to play. He twisted rules, he turned words inside out, he made lessons ridiculous, he took familiar stories and made them strange, he made a funny children's rhyme about possibly a clumsy drunk person and turned it into an egg to make it even more recognizable, strange, and it leaves an impression in your head. And what I think he did, he didn't give Victorian children nonsense in the least. I think he gave kids freedom. I think he gave kids freedom to laugh, to use their imaginations, to be silly, to question the rules, and to spend a little bit of time somewhere that didn't force them to sit up straight, behave properly, and memorize lessons and be so serious? He gave them something to read that probably also gave them an enormous break from stress of the day. So, what did the Alice books do for you? Did it give you a mental escape? Did it take you back to a different time? Did it give you a different look at absurdity? And what do you think Humpty Dumpty actually was? It's not really about what I think. I can have fun with it and I can talk into a microphone. But what do you think it meant? I encourage you to do your own research, have your own fun with it, think about it, or not. Maybe tonight was just a fun form of entertainment for you to fall asleep to, and that's okay too. Whatever the case, I think the most important thing to remember is take a break from the stress. However, you do it. Have fun, laugh a little, and don't be afraid to question the rules from time to time. I'll see you Friday night for our regular vintage bedtime stories for everyone. We are reading The Hardy Boys The Tempered Treasure. You don't want to miss it. Until then, sleep tight, good night, and bye bye.