Free Association Activities: “Blue Skies” 187
Fairy Tale Time Handout
Suppose you’re a divisional manager in a medium-size manufacturing firm. You and Jim
Oversee—one of your line supervisors—are discussing ways to cut costs. Jim notes that
he recently has received increasing numbers of employee theft reports. You decide this is
an area in which you could cut costs significantly. You define the problem as, “How
might we reduce employee theft?” To help resolve this problem, you decide to write your
own version of “Cinderella”—one of the best-known fairy tales. After some thought, you
compose the following story:
Cinderella (aka “Cinder”), a beautiful young maiden, is treated badly by her two
stepsisters. She must do all the cooking and cleaning while they busy themselves
with fancy clothes and social events. One day it is announced that the prince is
holding a ball to find a wife. The wicked stepsisters are certain the prince will
want to select one of them. [So far, so good. Nothing really different here. But
then... .] Although Cinder says she would like to go, the stepsisters laugh in her
face and tell her to bake a pumpkin pie instead.
The evening of the ball arrives and the stepsisters leave Cinder to bake her pie.
Instead, Cinder decides to change clothes first. And then she eats some salad with
dressing, while dressing. As Cinder leafs through her meal while bemoaning her
fate, her Fairy Godmother (FG) appears and grants her a wish. Cinder’s stepsis-
ters never allowed her to eat her favorite vegetable, so she asks her FG to turn her
into a rutabaga. FG smirks and tells Cinder that her magic wand only works with
mice and pumpkins. “O.K., fine,” says Cinder as she tosses her salad over her
shoulder. “I suppose I shall have to be a pumpkin, then. Mice are not nice.”
With a wave of her wand, FG transforms Cinder into a pumpkin. FG waves
her wand again and visually challenged mice materialize to take Cinder to the
ball. Off they go into the night. Their goal: the castle ball. Their plan: sneak into
the castle kitchen and offer the pumpkin for dessert.
Being visually challenged, the mice can’t see too well, however. Instead of
going to the castle, they go to a poor farmer’s cottage. The farmer’s wife chases
away the mice with her carving knife. (Did you ever see such a sight in your life?)
Unfortunately, Mrs. Farmer slips on the mice tails and falls on her knife. The
farmer rushes in to say goodbye to his dying wife and decides to make a pumpkin
pie with the pumpkin the nice mice brought.
The Fairy Godmother has been watching all of this. She sees the farmer raise
his dead wife’s knife to carve the pumpkin. Suddenly there is a... POOF! The
pumpkin turns into a beautiful maiden, thanks to FG. The farmer is awed by Cin-
der’s beauty and asks her to marry him. Cinder agrees and they decide to toast
each other with pumpkin punch in the punch bowl.
While he leaves the house to bury his ex-wife, Cinder picks up the dipper and101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving.Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley &
Sons, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. http://www.pfeiffer.com07 VG 167-216 10/6/04 12:17 PM Page 187