well now I'm going to tell you this story it's written for four-year-old kids but I want you to take a look at it for a moment from a different perspective and see if you can imagine exactly what it is that it's saying there's no such thing as a dragon well we all know that right a dragon is a fictitious creature reptilian terrible lives forever breathes fire hordes gold strange combination of attributes why would something terrible an ancient hold a treasure Billy Bixby was rather surprised when he woke up one morning and found a dragon in
his room it was a small Dragon about the size of a kitten the dragon wagged its tail happily when Billy patted its head it's interesting you know in Chinese mythology the dragon is a positive figure in European mythology the dragon is something to face in combat and destroy or something to face in combat and build something out of the pieces left over from the dragon Billy went downstairs to tell his mother there's no such thing as a dragon Dragon said Billy's mother and she said it like she meant it remember once my daughter had a
nightmare she was about four this was at the time when she first started to notice graffiti and litter and both graffiti and litter bothered her she couldn't understand the motivations behind the graffiti artist and she didn't like the fact that there was litter cluttering up the world's order and the reason she got sensitive to that as a child was because children are really really dependent on order right I mean and the reason for that is that their realm of competence is rather restricted so they don't like to see things me messed up so little kids
for example they're not happy with you if you play a game with them and then mess around with the rules of the game they don't like that at all they think that that's immoral activity to shake up the structure of the game well anyways while she was pondering all this she uh came into our bedroom one night and said dad I had a nightmare now we all know right nightmares aren't real just like dragons dreams aren't real of course which raises the question of why in the world you'd bother having them 6 or seven hours
a night every single day of your life and why they're a recognized feature of animal behavior all the way down to the amphibian level she said I dreamt that there was a clear flowing stream but in the Stream there was all sorts of garbage and it scared me and bothered me so much I woke up so I told her look close your eyes and imagine the stream it's full of garbage what should you do about it she said well I should take the garbage out of the stream I said all right so picture the stream
picture yourself cleaning the garbage out of it she calmed down and went back to sleep why well because dreams concentrate on threat we know that they present threats to you threats you haven't been able to deal with well there's a part of your brain that tracks threats and it's not really all that smart in some ways all it does is say look here's a problem and it's waiting for the rest of your brain to conjure up some solution that problem and if it doesn't conjure up a solution then it just presents the problem over and
over and over over and over and over so people who have post-traumatic stress disorder for example who've been really upset by their contact with something unexpected dream about the same tragedy forever until they solve it and they solve it by facing it and living it over and over voluntarily so you might think right off the bat from listening to that little story that suggesting to your 4-year-old daughter who's just had a nightmare that her fears aren't real and that the dream representation of them isn't real because it's not tangible like a table might not really
be the best approach to the problem so you see Billy he's pretty much got it right right off the bat right the dragon wagged its tail happily when Billy patted its head Billy went downstairs to tell his mother there's no such thing as a dragon said Billy's mother and she said it like she meant it so there's a dragon in this house now the next thing you might wonder is how often have you actually gone into a house where there's a dragon my guess is if you don't take this particularly specifically and allow yourself to
use your imagination and to think metaphorically for a moment you've all encountered dozens of houses that were filled right to the rafters with various dragons all of which were being studiously ignored by the people who inhabited the house Billy went back to his room and began to dress the dragon came close to Billy in a friendly Manner and wagged its tail but Billy didn't Pat it if there's no such thing as something it's to Pat it on the head Billy washed his face and hands and went down to breakfast the dragon went along it was
bigger now almost the size of a dog Billy sat down at the table the dragon sat down on the table this sort of thing was not usually permitted but there wasn't much Billy's mother could do about it she'd already said there was no such thing as a dragon and if there's no such thing you can't tell tell it to get down off the table sometimes I sit with friends of mine who have very young children to eat say and the children two or three years old don't sit at the table they sit on the table
or they run around the table or they run around the table and pull things off the table or they run around the house and pull things off all the shelves in the house and keep their parents so busy chasing them around that they have no time whatsoever to interact as a adults well you have to wonder under those circumstances whether you're dealing with a child or a dragon so to speak and you also might wonder whether or not the dragon is large and unruly precisely because the parents are completely unwilling to admit that it actually
exists mother made some pancakes for Billy but the dragon ate them all mother made some more but the dragon ate those too mother kept making pancakes until she ran out of batter Billy only got one of them but he said that's all he really wanted anyway one time uh an acquaintance of ours in Boston brought their son over to be babysat at our house and his Nanny had just been in a car accident so he was being shunted from house to house while his parents went off to work and uh he didn't have very good
reputation this kid he was about four and uh he came over to our house and with his mother in the morning and she dropped him off and she said well he probably won't eat all day but that's all right and I thought no he's four if he doesn't eat all day uh that's not all right right cuz kids if they don't eat they're basically horrible right if they don't sleep and they don't eat they're horrible so it isn't all right that he doesn't eat so then you think well maybe there's some sort of dragon associated
with this child that happens to be interfering perhaps with his ability to eat so I came back at noon my wife had taken care of the children that day and I walked in the house and the other four or five kids that we had in the house were off playing and this little kid was standing in the corner like really isolated and looking you know upset fundamentally so I went over and I poked him a bunch because generally if you poke a kid a little bit you know well they'll go like this you know they'll
sort of back off but sooner or later you can crack them and they'll smile and then they'll play not this kid boy there's no bloody way he was going to play with me and that was that like he'd already learned that adults should either be ignored or that they were trouble and he wasn't going to let any adult into his little world so there was absolutely a dragon associated with that little boy and it was eating all his pancakes Billy went upstairs to brush his teeth mother started clearing the table the dragon who was quite
as big as Mother by this time made himself comfortable on the hall rug and went to sleep I really like this one by the time Billy came back downstairs the dragon had grown so much he filled the hall Billy had to go around by way of the living room to get to where his mother was I didn't know dragons grew so fast said Billy there's no such thing as a dragon said mother firmly cleaning the downstairs took mother all morning what with the dragon in the way and having to climb in and out of Windows
to get from room to room so you know you think back in your own experience when you've gone to a house where there's a dragon hiding underneath the living room rug and nobody's saying anything about it and then you think how long does it take to get something absolutely simple done in a house that's absolutely jammed to the rafters with unfinished business forever right organizing people in a household like that to even do something as simple as go out for breakfast in the morning or even perhaps to make a meal is virtually impossible why well
because there's something going on in the household that has been studiously ignored for a very long time and has grown so large as a consequence that it occupies the whole domain by noon the dragon filled the house its head hung out the front door its tail hung out the back door and there wasn't a room in the house that didn't have some part of the Dragon in it when the dragon awoke from his nap he was hungry Bakery truck went by the smell of fresh bread was more than the dragon could resist he ran down
the street after the bakery truck the house went along of course like the shell on a snail the mailman was just coming up the path with some mail for the bixes when their house rushed rushed past him and headed down the street he chased the bixby's house for a few blocks but he but he couldn't catch it when Mr Bixby came home for lunch the first thing he noticed was that his house was gone luckily one of the neighbors was able to tell them which way it went you know that sort of thing happens to
people not infrequently too right they they're not really looking around much at what's going on and they come home from work one day and their house is gone and what does that mean well maybe their children have become completely alienated from them or maybe their wife has decided suddenly but of course not so suddenly to leave why well according to this story it's because something ignored was growing in the house Mr Bixby got in his car and went looking for the house he studied all the houses as he drove along finally he saw one that
looked familiar Billy and Mrs Bixby were waiting from an upstairs window you know in in the 1890s in India when a house was being built the local priest equivalent to the priest would come by to set the foundation stone and when he set the foundation stone he'd take a big spike and drove it into the ground and the reason he drove it into the ground at the place where the foundation was going to be laid was to keep the Great Dragon that is underneath the Earth firmly pinned down by its head so it couldn't move
and shake the house to bits what does that mean well it means the same thing that's meant in the New Testament when you're told not to build your house on a foundation of sand right doesn't matter how good the house is or how well constructed it is or how rich it is if the foundation is made out of sand or if it rests on top of a dragon there's nothing in that household that's ever going to be accomplished that's positive and the wealth the display that the house might consist of is nothing but a sham
Mr Bixby climbed over the dragon's head onto the porch roof and through the upstairs window how did this happen Mr Bixby asked it was the dragon said Billy there's no such thing mother started to say there is a dragon Billy insisted a very big dragon and Billy patted the dragon on the head the dragon wagged its tail happily then even faster than it had grown the dragon started gettinger soon it was kitten size again I don't mind dragons this size said mother why did it have to grow so big I'm not sure said Billy but
I think it just wanted to be noticed
