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The way to overcome them is to use your wits

When you’re a giant, and by now I might have overstated this certitude, size matters, not in its ambiguous meaning but quite literally, not ever to be overlooked or ignored, for we mean no harm and prefer to employ our powers for the good of all, or so we believe ourselves, but if you ask around you’ll probably find evidence pro and con, for nothing human is foreign to us and judgements fall hard on us either way.

Those who feel the need to slander our intentions find themselves in numerous company, since myths have almost always been unfair to giants, with the proverbial exception of perhaps Roald Dahl’s big friendly one and some other parvenus, pinpointed by this quote from Ruth Manning-Sanders, the Welsh-born English poet and author, well known for a series of children’s books in which she collected and related fairy tales from all over the world, including ‘A Book of Giants’, who said “You will notice that giants, wherever they come from, have one thing in common: they are all very stupid, and the way to overcome them is to use your wits.”

In my nursery lore this stupid colossus devoured the same spectacular stories, but somehow the natural identification process ensured a different perception of monsters and victors, not incontrovertibly associating big with bad, and my mother used to reinforce that thought by convincing me giants are never as gruesome as humans. She also generally played along with my misconceptions by not debunking any of my misinterpretations, for instance my inference that in The Three Golden Hairs, a celebrated chronicle marked by the Grimm brothers, the giant was not the devil but the boy, born with a caul hence setting him apart and putting possible hardship on his path, but eventually growing to be the hero of the heroes with an epilogue of the greatest happiness and contentment thinkable. I’m forever grateful for the lenience in her guidance, contributing heavily to accepting my fate growing taller.

For all gratification, life at Les Pierres could not be any more conclusive, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before. For the devoted skeptics: in this Hansel and Gretel cottage gentle giants are sleeping within, they need not be overcome.


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