Condemn Dragons or Get to Know Them?

I participate in a Blog Carnival bi-weekly. Today’s word is condemnation. What! Why? I was thinking I’ll skip this week, because I didn’t feel like writing about condemnation.

But then a dragon came to my rescue.

Yes, a dragon.

Dragons usually aren’t a part of my life. I grew up in a strict Pennsylvania Dutch world and there are no dragons in that world. They are much too sensible for make-believe — it’s all about hard work. Along with being PA Dutch, my family was super-traditional Mennonite, so there was no TV, radio or fairy tales. Therefore no dragon had ever rescued me before … but that all changed last night.

The story begins with my high-school senior having the flu and a new movie.

He has always liked dragons (I left the boxes of my childhood, so make-believe has been a part of his world) and after seeing a scene of “How To Train Your Dragon” play at Wal-mart, he promptly bought it. (this time I’m glad he forgot about all my advice not to spend money impulsively)

Yesterday he was home from school with the flu and asked if I wanted to watch the movie with him. A cartoon movie about dragons on a Monday afternoon? No, not really. That’s what I thought, but did not said … even when my childhood tried to rear its head and remind me that I should be working.

I settled in to learn how to train a dragon … (expecting to be bored, so I kept my laptop close by)

The vikings had been at war with the dragons for years. The viking’s goal was to eliminate all the dragons and live in peace. Over the years hundreds of viking and thousands of dragons had been killed. The vikings weren’t any closer to winning than before … but each generation was sure they would be the one to solve their pesky dragon problem.

All viking children heard endless stories about the dangers of dragons and knew dragons were condemned to die, so they eagerly went to dragon-fighting school hoping to become a hero by slaying the most dragons.

This was a problem for adorable young Hiccup. He would rather draw or go for walks than hurt anything. Actually he couldn’t hurt anything even if he tried. He got weak all over and his knees buckled under him. He tried to be mean and tough like the other kids … but he never succeeded.

But he had no choice since his dad was a leader in the community and expected his son to become a great viking. So dragon-fighting school it was. The boys and girls (yes, this was an equal-opportunity dragon-fighting school) mocked him. The teacher (who had both a hook arm and a peg leg) had to save him from the mouth of dragons more than once.

After an embarrassing day – with the teacher annoyed, his dad angry and his friends laughing at him – he escaped to the woods berating himself for being a wimp.

As cartoon movie fate would dictate, he met an injured dragon in the woods that day. Through a series of fumbling, bumbling events, Toothless and him became friends. (by now my laptop was closed)

Hiccup realized that dragons weren’t vicious — they were only aggressive because their lives were constantly threaten by the Vikings. Once he took the time to get to know a dragon (which no one had ever done before) he knew they shouldn’t be condemned to die.

First he shared his secret with a friend (the girl that he admired) and then he risked his own life to show everyone else that dragons are cool.

He became a hero and now all the children have dragons as pets and everyone lives happily ever after … because once you really know a dragon (instead of just knowing handed-down information and oft-repeated stories) it’s much harder to condemn them.

Are there any dragons in your world that you should get to know instead of condemning?

For more blog posts about condemnation … go to the One Word At A Time Carnial here.

PS. Thanks to Shawn Smucker for the twitter convo that lead to this post.