Week 11 Storytelling: The Tale of the Sleepwalking Moon Man

The Tale of the Sleepwalking Moon Man

Tumblr: The Man in the Moon

Once long ago when the Gods of the skies could walk the earth, there was a half God half human who lived on the moon. He loved living on the moon. He could keep watch over the humans on earth. He loved that he could watch the humans from his peaceful home on the moon.

            The moon man had one problem though, he would constantly sleep walk. The worst was when he would dream of coming down to earth to visit the humans. Fortunately he would always wake up before he floated all the way down to earth. This was a very scary problem for the moon man. He was a very shy man.  He loved that he could still watch the humans from the moon without interacting with them. He had lived on the moon his whole life.  He had never met an actual human and didn’t know how they would react when they saw him.

            One summer night, the man on the moon fell asleep while watching a few humans running around catching fireflies. He longed to go down and have fun with them. Instead he just fell asleep.

            All of a sudden the man on the moon was jolted from his sleep. He looked up through his sleepy, blurry eyes and saw the bright night sky and little lights flying around him. He could smell something fresh. He had never experienced anything like it in his life.

            “Hello, Mr.?” the moon man heard. “Hey Mr., are you okay?” the voice said again.

            The moon man looked back and saw a group of children standing around looking confused.

            “Maybe he can’t hear,” one boy said.

            “He can hear, I think he might just be in shock. He did just fall from the sky,” another child said.

            “Hey Mr., what is your name? Where did you come from?” another child squeakily asked.

            The moon man didn’t know how to respond. He had never interacted with an actual human before. Before he could process what was going on, he shot up to his feet and turned to the children.

            “Hel… Hell… Hello,” the moon man shuddered. “I’m the man in the moon. I guess I must have fallen from my house right up there,” he said pointing to the full moon.

            “You live on the moon?” one of the children asked with a perplexed look.

            “Ye.. Yes. I’ve lived there for many years,” the moon man said.

“Holy cow! You’re coming with us. My parents have to meet you!” a smile child shrieked.

            The man in the moon met the children’s parents and they offered a bedroom to him, and from that day on the moon man walked among the humans and never returned to the moon again.

Author's Note:

I chose to make my own story based on the nursery rhyme The Man in the Moon.

"THE man in the moon,
Came tumbling down,
And ask'd his way to Norwich;
He went by the south,
And burnt his mouth
With supping cold pease-porridge." 

-The Nursery Rhyme Book

As you can see it was a very short nursery rhyme so it was pretty difficult to write a story around it. I had fun coming up with the story of the man in the moon. I think writing to short stories is easier  

Bibliography:
The Nursery Rhyme Book
Edited by Andrew Lang
Illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke
Year: 1897