Fssh & !Gr8 Wall

The first story of the night:
Once upon a time there was a fish that jumped so high it touched the moon. But it was so cold on the moon that the fish's tongue got frozen on to the moon. So then the fish had to call for help: hewp, hewp! Then a nice moon dog came and poured some warm water on the fish's tongue until it got unstuck. It fell all the way back to earth: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Then it fell into a pond, where it made a splash ten feet tall! It swam around for a couple of minutes to get settled and then fell asleep for five days. But because it was a fish, it kept its eyes open, it didn't even blink. So if you jump to the moon, be careful not to stick out your tongue when you get there.
The second story of the night:
Once upon a time there was a brick wall a thousand feet tall and a million feet wide*. Some people that lived near the wall ignored it and planted their corn and wheat and raised their pigs and there were little puppies running around. Other people didn't like the wall and built houses that didn't have any windows in that direction. But there was one family full of kids who all wanted to get to the other side of the wall. So each of them chose something they could do. As they grew up, they practiced and learned. The oldest child was a boy, and he wanted to be a scientist so he could use some sort of science waves to figure out what was on the other side of the wall. He built a machine that figured out that the wall was a thousand feet thick, but he couldn't figure out what was on the other side. The next child was a girl, and she became the world's greatest rock climber. She climbed way up the wall, but at five hundred feet up, the wall changed from brick to really slippery stuff that no one could climb up. So she had to climb back down. The next child was a girl who loved to build machines. So she built a machine to drill a hole through the 1000 feet of brick to the other side. But half way through the wall, she got to a part of the wall that was so hard that it broke her machine and it couldn't go any further. The last child was a girl who learned how to paraglide so she could sail up and over the wall. On hot days, the thermals from the wall were great for gaining altitude. But when she got near the top, she found that there were some sort of crazy fans at the top of the wall that pushed her and her paraglider back down to the bottom.

The four of them got together and had a family council. What were they going to do to get past the wall? Well, they talked and talked and came up with a plan. The rock climber girl went back up the wall, but this time she scraped some of the slippery stuff off into a bag. It immediately got replaced on the wall, but she didn't mind because she was already climbing back down. The machine-building girl made a giant lever attached to the machine to push it forward and the paraglider girl made a huge sail that was attached to the end to pull the end of the lever. Then the scientist made a laser to shoot at the hard part of the middle of the wall to weaken it. The first girl smeared the goop all the way around the drilling machine so it would be super slippery when it started going again. They fired up the laser: VRRRRRRRRUUUUUMMMMMMMMMM!! It was zapping and melting. The sail went up and immediately the fans at the top started pushing it away. That pushed the end of the lever, which smooshed the machine forward. When it got to the partially melted hard part, the slippery goo helped it burst right through and all the way to the other side!


Well, they all followed the machine over to the other side. There they found a beautiful land that had only three families living in it. The families were very sad because they couldn't get past the wall and had to live all by themselves. Well, the family of nice children brought them over to their side of the wall and gave them clothes and food and built houses for them. They even gave them puppies to play with to cheer them up. The three families told them about how they had a terrible king who had become so afraid that anyone would take away his kingdom that he built that giant wall. Slowly his people became so sad that they mostly died off, leaving only those three families there. Fortunately, they had been rescued by those awesome kids and they never had to be lonely again.**

* Ok, to make it a really impassible wall, add one or two orders of magnitude to the width. 
** Probably something good happens to the kingdom formerly behind the wall, but I haven't figured it out yet. Any ideas?
*** It hadn't occurred to me as I was telling the story, but as I was writing it down I thought of all sorts of political messages you could get out of the wall. Rest assured; that wasn't the point of the story. It was just some kids who were awesome and got past a really big wall. And then they were  awesomely nice to the people on the other side. Yay awesome kids!  
**** I wonder whether my kids will end up weirder than me. It's a tall order, but getting raised on nightly randomness like this, they've got a good shot.