Prologue
A storyteller remembers a time he watched his young son come down a staircase with one of his favorite toys. It was a stuffed animal.
There was Winnie-the-Pooh, coming downstairs behind Christopher Robin.
As the back of his head went bump, bump, bump, the bear felt that there must be another way to go down the stairs. If only he could stop the bumping long enough to think of how to do it differently. Then again, perhaps there wasn’t any other way.
Whatever the case may be, he did finally arrive at the bottom of the stairs.
Sometimes Winnie-the-Pooh likes to play a game when he comes downstairs. Other times he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire and listen to a story.
“What about a story?” said Christopher Robin. “Could you please tell one to Winnie-the-Pooh?”
“I suppose I could,” I said. “What kind of stories does he like?”
“Let’s tell him a story about himself. He’s that sort of bear.”
“Oh, I see.”
“So, could you? Could you tell him a story about himself?”
“I’ll try,” I said, and then I tried.
Part 1
A Buzzing-Noise
Once upon a time, a very long time ago (about last Friday), Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself.
One day he went for a walk and came to an open place in the middle of the forest. There stood a large oak with no other trees around it.
A loud buzzing-noise came from the top of the tree, and Winnie-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the tree.
He put his head between his paws and began to think. After some time, he said to himself, “That buzzing-noise means something.”
He looked up. “You don’t get a buzzing-noise like that without its meaning something. If there’s a buzzing-noise, then somebody’s making a buzzing-noise. And the only reason for making a buzzing-noise (that I know of) is because you’re a bee.”
He continued thinking for a long time and then said, “And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey.”
He then stood up and stated his conclusion, “And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it.”
Part 2
Singing and Complaining
That is when Winnie-the-Pooh began to climb the tree.
He climbed and he climbed and he climbed. As he climbed, he sang a little song to himself. It went like this:
Isn’t it funny
how a bear likes honey?
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?
Then he climbed a little further...and a little further...and then just a little further. By that time, he had thought of another song.
It’s a very funny thought that, if bears were bees,
They’d build their nests at the bottom of trees.
That being so, then bees would be bears,
and we wouldn’t have to climb up all these stairs.
No, we wouldn’t have to climb up all these stairs.
He was getting rather tired, so that is why he sang a complaining song.
Part 3
Thinking While Falling
He was nearly there now. If he just stood on that branch...
Crack!
“Oh, help!” said Pooh, as he dropped ten feet onto the branch below him.
“If only I hadn’t—” he said, as he bounced twenty feet further on to the next branch.
“You see, what I meant to do was—,” he explained, as he turned head-over-heels, and crashed onto another branch thirty feet below.
“Of course, it was rather—” he admitted, as he slithered very quickly through the next six branches.
It wasn’t until he struck the lowest branch of the tree that he finally settled the matter in his mind. “I suppose...” he said as he spun round three times and flew gracefully into a gorse-bush, “I suppose this all comes from liking honey so much.”
Part 4
Turning to Christopher Robin
He crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from his nose, and began to think again.
The first person he thought of was his friend Christopher Robin.
Dear Reader,
At the mention of his name, Christopher Robin interrupted me in an awed voice, “Was that me?!?!”
I assured him it was. Crawling out of that bush, Winnie-the-Pooh had thought of no one else but him.
The boy could hardly believe it.
I continued on with the story. He said nothing more, but his eyes got larger and his face got pinker.
Any story about Winnie-the-Pooh will necessarily end up being a story about Christopher Robin.
- Your Faithful Storyteller
So, Winnie-the-Pooh went to see his friend Christopher Robin, who lived behind a green door in another part of the forest.
Part 5
Just Wondering
“Good morning, Christopher Robin.”
“Good morning, Winnie-the-Pooh.”
“I wonder if you’ve got a balloon lying about somewhere I could borrow?
“A balloon?”
“Yes, I just said to myself on the way over, ‘I wonder if Christopher Robin has a balloon?’ I just said it to myself. I guess I was thinking about balloons and wondering.”
“What do you want a balloon for?”
Winnie-the-Pooh looked round to see that nobody was listening. Then, he put his paw to his mouth, and said in a deep whisper, “Honey!”
“But you don’t get honey with balloons!”
“Maybe you don’t, but I do,” said Pooh.
Part 6
Green or Blue
Well, it just so happened that Christopher Robin had been to a party the day before. It was at the house of his friend Piglet, and there had been many, many balloons.
Christopher Robin had had a big green balloon given to him as soon as he arrived.
A little bunny of some relation to Rabbit had had a big blue balloon given to him, but he dropped it on the floor and forgot about it.
That little bunny was too young to go to a party anyway. So, Christopher Robin had brought home both the green balloon and the blue one.
“Which one would you like?”
Pooh put his head between his paws and thought very carefully.
“It’s like this,” he explained. “When you go after honey with a balloon, the important thing is not to let the bees know you’re coming.”
This much made good sense.
Pooh continued, “Now, if you have a green balloon, the bees might think you were part of the tree and fail to notice you. But, if you have a blue balloon, they might think you were part of the sky.”
It was beginning to require more and more imagination to make sense of what the bear was saying.
“Be it green or blue, they might not notice me in either case,” concluded Pooh. “The only question is: which is more likely?”
“Whatever color the balloon is, wouldn’t the bees notice you underneath it?”
“They might,” said Winnie-the-Pooh, “or they might not. You never can tell with bees.”
Part 7
A Small Black Cloud
It was very important that the bees not notice Winnie-the-Pooh under the balloon. He thought about it thoroughly and said, “I shall try to look like a small black cloud. That will deceive the bees.”
“Then you had better take the blue balloon,” said Christopher Robin, “since clouds go in the sky.”
So, it was decided. They set out with the blue balloon, and Christopher Robin took his gun with him just in case.
Pooh Bear led his friend to a very muddy place that he knew of.
He rolled and rolled until he was black all over.
Everything was ready, so they headed to the oak tree.
Part 8
Floating
Christopher Robin blew the balloon up nice and big.
At first, he and Pooh Bear were both holding on to the string. When Christopher Robin let go, Pooh Bear floated gracefully up into the sky. He stayed level with the top of the oak tree about twenty feet away from it.
“Hooray!” Christopher Robin shouted.
“Isn’t this great!” shouted back Winnie-the-Pooh. “Tell me, what do I look like?”
“You look like a bear holding on to a balloon.”
“Oh no,” said Pooh anxiously, “you mean I don’t look like a small black cloud in a blue sky?”
“Not really.”
“Ah, well, perhaps it looks different from the top of the tree. As I said before, you never can tell with bees.”
Part 9
Suspicion Swarms
There was no wind to blow Pooh Bear nearer to the tree, so there he stayed. He could see the honey, he could smell the honey, but he couldn’t quite reach the honey.
After a little while he called down in a loud whisper, “Christopher Robin!”
“Hello!”
“I think the bees suspect something!”
“What sort of thing?”
“I don’t know. But something tells me that they’re suspicious!”
“Perhaps they think that you’re after their honey.”
“It may be that. You never can tell with bees.”
There was another short silence, and then he called down again, “Christopher Robin!”
“Yes?”
“Do you have an umbrella in your house?”
“I think so.”
“Would go and get it? You could walk back and forth with it, look up at me every now and then, and say ‘Tut-tut, it looks like rain.’ If you did that, I think it would help the deception which we are practicing on these bees.”
Christopher Robin laughed to himself. “Silly old bear!” But he didn’t say that out loud. He simply went home for his umbrella.
Part 10
Deceiving Bees Is Not Easy
“Oh, there you are!” called down Winnie-the-Pooh as soon as Christopher Robin got back to the tree. “I was beginning to get anxious. While you were gone, I discovered that the bees are definitely suspicious.”
“Should I put my umbrella up?”
“Yes, but wait just a moment. The important bee to deceive is the queen bee. Can you see which one is the queen bee from down there?”
“No.”
“That’s a pity. OK, go ahead then. You walk back and forth with the umbrella, saying, ‘Tut-tut, it looks like rain.’ I will sing a little cloud song like a cloud might sing.”
So, while Christopher Robin walked around and wondered if it would rain, Winnie-the-Pooh sang this song:
How sweet to be a cloud
floating in the blue!
Every little cloud
always sings aloud:
“How sweet to be a cloud
floating in the blue!”
It makes him very proud
to be a little cloud.
Part 11
Time to Come Down
Pooh Bear’s song was delightful, and Christopher Robin was worrying as best he could about the weather. Still, the bees were buzzing as suspiciously as ever.
A line of them left the nest and flew straight toward the cloud about the time it began the second verse of the song.
One bee sat down on the nose of the cloud for a moment. Then it got up again.
“Christoph—ow!—er Robin,” called out the cloud.
“Yes?”
“I have just been thinking, and I have come to a very important decision. These are the wrong kind of bees.”
“Are they?”
“Yes, and so they are probably making the wrong kind of honey.”
“They are?”
“Probably so. I think I should come down now.”
“How will you do that?”
The fact of the matter was Winnie-the-Pooh didn’t know how he would come down. Until that moment, he hadn’t even thought about it.
Part 12
Why He Is Called ‘Pooh’
If Winnie-the-Pooh let go of the string, then he would fall. He didn’t like the idea of that, so he thought for a long time.
“Christopher Robin,” he said, “you must shoot the balloon with your gun. Have you got your gun?”
“Of course, but if I do that, it will spoil the balloon.”
“Yes, but if you don’t,” said Pooh, “I will have to let go and fall, and that would spoil me.”
When he put it like this, Christopher Robin saw how it must be. There was no choice. He aimed very carefully at the balloon and fired.
“Ow!” said Pooh.
“Did I miss?”
“You didn’t exactly miss,” said Pooh, “but you did miss the balloon.”
“I’m so sorry,” gasped Christopher Robin. He took aim again and fired.
This time he hit the balloon. The air came out slowly and Winnie-the-Pooh floated gently down to the ground.
His arms were stiff from holding on to the balloon’s string for all that time. In fact, his arms were so stiff that they stayed up straight in the air for more than a week!
Whenever a fly came and settled on his nose, he couldn’t bend either arm to swat it away. He had to blow it off.
I think—but I am not sure—that that is why he was always called Pooh.
Epilogue
This storyteller is like many other storytellers. He ends his story by promising more stories.
“Is that the end of the story?” asked Christopher Robin.
“That’s the end of that one, but there are other stories.”
“About Pooh and me?”
“Yes, and about Piglet and Rabbit and everyone else. Do you remember the day when Pooh and Piglet tried to catch the Heffalump?”
“They didn’t catch it, did they?”
“No.”
“I remember,” said Christopher Robin. “It’s just that Pooh doesn’t always remember very well. He likes having it told to him again. Then it’s a real story and not just remembering.”
“That’s exactly how I feel about it, too.”
Christopher Robin gave a deep sigh. He picked his bear up by the leg and headed back to his room. At the bottom of the stairs, he turned and asked, “I didn’t hurt him when I shot him, did I?”
“No, not a bit.”
Christopher Robin nodded and continued on his way. Winnie-the-Pooh went—bump, bump, bump—up the stairs behind him.