Stories

Johnny-cake

(a loose interpretation of the famous fairy tale)

Once upon a time there lived an old woman with her little son. One day the woman was invited to visit a house warming party somewhere in their neighbourhood. She put on her best dress and was about to go, when, all of a sudden, she remembered that a cake was being baked in the oven. But she didn't want to put off the visit even a little while, so she called up her boy and said:

"You must take care of the cake while I'm out. Take it out in an hour. And don't forget to put out the fire in the oven afterwards! And, please, cover the cake with a towel after putting it on the table."

Her son was an obedient boy. He put down meekly all he needed to do and put up with his new duties, not uttering a single word. Hereon, the woman went out, promising him to be back soon. But the party was so exciting and the people were so interesting to mix with, she completely forgot about her son and the cake in a jiffy and soon she was all for staying there until the cows came home.

At the time, the boy was doing household chores. He put out the fire after an hour, as he had been told, and took the cake out of the oven. Then he got a clean plate and put the cake carefully on the centre of the table. Then he covered the cake with a towel and that was it.

"Well, the work is done. It's time to relax now", - he thought and ran to watch another cartoon before his mom came home and turned off the TV. Surely, he couldn't suspect he should have looked after the cake right along. What could happen with a cake, after all?

But, as it is supposed to be in this story, at that very moment Johnny-cake opened his eyes, moved the towel aside, noticed he wasn't watched over, leaped first off the table, then from the window and finally rolled away as fast as he could.

Unfortunately, the boy hadn't ever heard the fairy tale on Johnny-cake and that was why he couldn't predict that. Nevertheless, he was a sensitive boy and he smelt a rat. He looked at the table and saw just an empty plate and no cake there. Then he looked out of the window just in time to see Johnny-cake, rolling away in a terrible hurry.

"Hey, Cake! Stop! You can't let me down like that! What will I say my mom when she's back?" - he shouted and then took after the cake at full pelt to the woods to take him back home.

You certainly know the rest of the story with all the animals that tried hard to eat Johnny-cake and with the cheeky fox which managed to do that in the end. But then you don't know what happened to the boy after that.

The boy came home only early in the morning the next day, breathless, tired, quite hungry... and without the cake. He was scared stiff of being told off for such a long absence and he could never bear a scolding like water off a duck's back. But this time his luck was in. Happily, his mom came home only at noontime and, after a good party, she made no reckoning of losing the cake at all.

© Ally, 20091114

original version by Joseph Jacobs:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/English_Fairy_Tales#Johnny-Cake

The homeassignment, which was the reason for telling the story

1. Write samples for the three idioms:
   
   
   • until the cows came home
   • to smell a rat
   • like water off a duck's back
   
   
2. Write samples for 8 of these phrasal verbs:
   
   
   put on; take off; take after; take out; put off; take back; put out; put away; put down; put up with; take over