Once upon a time...once upon a time...

There is something magic to me about the phrase "once upon a time..." I have a recollection of reading that all known languages have some equivalent phrase which is a cue for a story. (Though it doesn't cover all known languages wikipedia has a fun to read entry with a list of common story beginnings and endings in a bunch of them. I'm particularly intrigued by the many versions that start with "There was, and there wasn't....)

One of the sweetest sounds to me these days is LP prompting me to participate by saying "Once upon a time..."

Recently, she has begun telling me some very short stories. Tonight I discovered that if I repeated the phrase(s) she had just said, she would add the next detail. It went something like this:

LP: Once upon a time...
Me: Once upon a time..
LP: There was...
Me: Once upon a time there was...
LP: A frog!
Me: Once upon a time there was a frog...
LP: A frog...in a blue shirt looked for flowers.
Me: Once upon a time there was a frog in a blue shirt who looked for flowers.
LP: Pink flowers!
Me: Once upon a time, there was a frog in a blue shirt who looked for pink flowers...
LP: To smell and smell.
Me: Once upon a time there was a frog in a blue shirt who looked for pink flowers to smell and smell.
(Then LP was done with both the story and her dinner.)

Really something to watch her creative mind in action, pulling together different ideas. I was surprised by how quickly she jumped on adding elements and seemed engaged by my repeating the whole of it.