The ugly locomotive
Here is a fairy tale told by my son. I wrote it down exactly the way he told it. Alan is not a native English speaker. He learned English himself out of YouTube videos. I admire his creativity, because he is creating all the time, with disregard for any conventions, without any inhibitions, not being even remotely interested in sharing his work, but rather in entertaining himself. My son is my role model as an artist. Sometimes I secretly check what is he working on to save it for the future. Alan is living in symbiosis with the machines. For him new media are not new at all. They are part of his everyday experience, and a “natural” way of expression. And the story is reflecting his obsession with trains and trams:
Once upon a time there was an electric train family. The Mommy locomotive, had 7 train eggs. But one was bigger than others. First 6 green locomotives were born, but the bigger egg was still not popped. And the mommy train was sad, and she said: “because the last train is not born, it needs to be the fairest train in the world”.
The next day the last train was born. This train was an ugly locomotive. It was not green, but red and other trains didn’t like to play with him. And when the ugly locomotive was seeing the mirror, he said: “no one likes me, I’m so ugly”. So he wanted to go to the Upper Silesia and there he saw lots of trams from the “Konstal” Polish factory.
And then, when the ugly locomotive was going through the forest, he saw the railroad tracks for the trains. Then he saw old giant tower. That was the Quistorp Tower. Then Thomas The Tank Engine arrived, and said to the ugly locomotive: “hey, small locomotive, why are you here?”. And the ugly locomotive answered: “I’m here because my family doesn’t like me. But what’s that building?”, he said. And Thomas the tank engine answered: “This is the Quistorp tower”. So the ugly locomotive was climbing and climbing to the top of the tower. Then he saw the city and he said: “I was born in this city”.
So he run away from the tower to the puppet theater named “Pleciuga”. And then Thomas The Tank Engine asked again: “ugly locomotive, why are you so ugly.”. “Maybe ugly duckling had built you”. So the ugly locomotive was running away. And fell to the fountain next to the “Pleciuga”. When he was again on the sidewalk, he found another mirror. And he then was changed from the ugly locomotive to the beautiful locomotive and he said “yay”, and then he found 3 trams. And he was traveling with these trams. Then one of the boys said: “hey, can you see this at the end, this must be the prettiest tram in the world”.
And he was really a tram! Not a train.
