Once upon a time there lived an old man and an old woman.
Maybe I should ask the Missus to bake me a gingerbread man.
The old man thought to himself, immediately got up from the porch, and shuffling in his worn-out boots, hobbled toward the cottage.
He slammed the door loudly, the rickety walls shook, but the old woman didn't react—she was busy passing another level in the game "Magnetize Koschei." Koschei wouldn't magnetize, and the old woman was starting to get annoyed. The old man quickly assessed the situation, realized he was about to be blamed for all her failures, but decided not to back down.
Listen, dear, how about we bake a gingerbread man?
He began timidly, secretly hoping she wouldn't hear him and everything would blow over.
But the old woman heard him and, looking up from the screen, reacted surprisingly calmly:
Are you serious, old man? What gingerbread man? That's technically impossible. Where am I going to get the right kind of flour? As far as I remember the recipe, you have to scrape it from the barn and sweep it from the bins. Do you have a barn, or have some bins magically appeared? You probably don't even know what those are, your knowledge is limited because you don't know how to use Google! So come on, settle for a cake and don't expect anything too fancy, we don't have groceries in our cellar like at the supermarket!
Once again the old man marveled at his wife's technical savvy and gladly agreed to the cake. The old woman perked up and bustled off to the kitchen. There she rushed from cupboard to table, from table to stove, and soon it smelled delicious, the mixer whirred, white vanilla foam rose up.
The cake turned out splendidly. Small, true, but quite appetizing.
Let it soak.
Said the old woman, surveying the fruit of her labour with satisfaction.
She put the cake on the windowsill and plunged back into the sweet world of electronic games, still stubbornly trying to magnetize Koschei. The old man could only stare at his wife's back in her flowered housecoat and listen to the battle cries she occasionally uttered. Soon he grew thoroughly bored and began to doze in his chair to the sound of her exclamations.
The cake on the windowsill soaked through, came to life, tipped onto its unfrosted side, fell onto the grass below the window, lay there a bit, and rolled down the path.
It hadn't rolled far when it saw something hopping toward it. Upon closer inspection, the hopping object turned out to be a live rabbit.
The rabbit froze in surprise at the sight of a cake rolling down the path.
Hey you, pastry wonder, where are you rolling to? Stop, I'm going to eat you!
As if! Dream on! You've clearly read too many fairy tales! I lay in the sun, soaked through, rested, rolled off the windowsill, ran down the path. I put the old man to sleep quick, drowned the old woman in the internet. And you, Rabbit, are no obstacle to me at all.
While the rabbit twitched his ears, trying to make sense of what he'd heard—he didn't quite understand something about the old woman—the cake darted away and disappeared behind a stump.
The cake rolls on. It sees someone else looming ahead. A figure bigger than the rabbit. Well! It's the Wolf!
Unbelievable, there used to be gingerbread men everywhere, and now cakes are rolling around underfoot. Should I have a snack?
You planning to snack on me, Grey?
What do you think? There doesn't seem to be anything else edible around here.
Don't even think about it! I've got so much cholesterol that even the old woman and old man decided not to eat me! They didn't want to die before their time. They just threw me out the window, so I rolled away—what else was I supposed to do?
The wolf thought about it.
Maybe just a piece? One piece won't hurt, will it?—he said timidly.
Listen, Grey, life hasn't taught you anything. Has your tail grown back yet? After that winter fishing trip with the Fox?
Without waiting for the wolf to finish feeling his tail, the cake prudently rolled into a grass-covered ditch.
When the cake rolled out of the ditch, the sun was already setting, and in the clearing, exposing his belly to the last non-scorching rays, lay the Bear. The cake miscalculated slightly and crashed right into his side. However, it managed to bounce away in time, and the bear didn't manage to swipe it with his paw.
What's this? A cake? Did the Fox send you as a gift for me?
Yeah, right! I'm here training for speed! And you're in my way. Sprawled out like you're at the zoo. There are no individual cages here!
Hey now, don't be angry, if you're training then train! I'm getting up now, I'm moving away. Go ahead and roll, if you see the Fox, say hello for me.
The bear mumbled good-naturedly.
The cake chuckled at the bear's simplicity and rolled on. The sun set, and dusk enveloped the forest. The cake didn't notice someone creeping up behind it.
Excellent! Wonderful! Marvelous! A cake on the path!
It was the Fox's voice.
The Bear says hello to you, Red.
What are you mumbling about? I can't hear anything. Come roll closer. Don't be afraid, I've got diabetes now, I ate too many gingerbread men. So you're not interesting to me as food, you don't attract me, understand? Come on, move those frosted layers! I don't have time to receive greetings from you, the Wolf is waiting for me at the henhouse!
But he's not waiting!
The cake squealed joyfully, rolling toward the Fox.
He's not waiting, he's walking along the path, so you'll have to deal with the chickens yours…
The cake didn't finish. The Fox bent down lower, opened her mouth wider, and the cake didn't even have time to realize that it was no longer rolling along the path, but moving down the Fox's esophagus.
And therefore didn't have time to reflect on what comes from an excessive desire to show off one's knowledge.
