My kids loved the 1973 Disney animated "Robin Hood" with animal characters, and Phil Harris doing the voice of Little John. By Disney standards, it was light stuff. No orphans or forest fires. No nightmares about being swallowed by a whale or turned into a donkey. (No farting warthogs, thank you very much.) I actually purchased a VHS tape of the movie, (or maybe it was Beta!), and let them watch it once every month or so. Then my Merry Men mini-guys would go merrily off to wander in Sherwood Forest down the hall to outsmart the sheriff of Nottingham . Wearing sawed-off pillowcases over their PJs, green felt hats, paper towel tube quivers slung over their shoulders for the suction-cup arrows, a sockful of pebbles tucked into a $3.99 black plastic gun belt now missing its holsters and pistols, and maybe the "Special Bunny" or a sippy cup, they were ready for action. With only the slightest of adjustments and additions to this gear, the guys could also play Peter Pan, Camelot, the Oklahoma Land Rush, Plains Indians, California Gold Rush prospectors, and Ice Age cave men. For instance, my youngest might need a juice box and a cup of dry Cherrios instead of the Special Bunny and sippy cup. The sofa cushions might become a fort long enough for me to change the sheets on the bed with the stagecoachesque headboard, or scrub the bathtub moat.
The bed with the weird stagecoach headboard also made a very fine hook and ladder firetruck, or a covered wagon for Laura and Mary Ingalls, with Jack, the brindle bulldog, leaving the Big Woods of Wisconsin to travel to the Prairie or the Banks of Plum Creek. Didn't matter that Laura and Mary were girls. My sons knew good, brave characters to play when they heard about them.
Faint heart never won fair lady,
Little John advises Robin. Can't quite pin it down, but this seems to be a very old proverb. Faulty bridges don't seem to woo fair maidens, either. A young gentleman of my acquaintance is having trouble with his eight year-old dental Maryland Bridge falling out of his mouth at inconvenient moments. This causes him to hiss like the Terry Thomas narrated snake/henchman in the movie. It puts a dent in his self-confidence, and a crimp in his whirlwind romance when the fake tooth gets stuck in a sandwich.
Unfortunately, remedies are expensive. Might be time to trade in the quiver and sippy cup for a dusty felt hat and a Sara Lee Butter Streusel coffee cake aluminum pan for some serious prospecting.
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