Once upon a time…

There was a kid named Aladdin who lived with his mom. His father had died long ago, so his mom worked super hard as a seamstress, and barely made enough money to support them.

When Aladdin was fourteen, she was like “why don’t you try getting a job with a carpet-maker? That sounds fun!”

So he did! And it was hard! He gave up after like a month and went back to being a pick-pocket and general hooligan.

When he was fifteen, his mom was like “why don’t you get a job with a jeweler? That sounds interesting!”

So he did! And it was boring! He was fired after a month for stealing. He went back to being a hooligan.

When he was sixteen, his mom was like “ok, let’s try getting you a job with a brass-worker.”

So he did. And it was annoying. I mean, working with metal is hard, you have to keep your eye on it all the time, and have to wait for the exact moment to do things or else everything goes wrong. Sheesh. Aladdin went back to being a hooligan.

When he was seventeen, a magician came to town. The magician wandered around the city, watching the people carefully. He spotted Aladdin, followed him around a bit, and one night made his move.

He went to Aladdin’s house and announced “Aladdin my boy! I’m your dad’s brother, your long-lost uncle!”

Aladdin was like “an uncle I never knew I had? What luck!”

The mom was suspicious, but the magician said he was a merchant, and needed Aladdin to help work in his shop. Hearing Aladdin would get a job, she immediately went along with the whole “uncle” scheme.

So Aladdin became a merchant. It was still annoying to have a real job, but he got a nice set of clothes to wear as a uniform, and he could barter and haggle to his heart’s content. So it was pretty fun. Plus his “uncle” was a pretty cool dude. Being family (and rich), he basically moved in with Aladdin and his mom, and the mom was finally able to go from a full-time seamstress to a part-time seamstress. So that was nice.

Anyway, after a couple months the magician announced he was going on a business trip. He wanted Aladdin to go with him. Aladdin had never been out of the city, so he was thrilled to go.

They packed up supplies for a couple days, said good-bye to the mom, and rode out into the mountains.

The magician had a special map that he referenced. He’d spent months in the city getting maps of the mountains, talking to travelers, and visiting libraries.

After two days of travel, Aladdin and the magician reached a canyon. They set up camp, waiting. At midnight, the magician made a magic potion and poured it on the rocks, chanting a spell in an ancient language. The rock parted, revealing a staircase heading down into the earth.

The magician was like “ok. Here’s the deal: you’re gonna go down there and find three rooms. The first room is a garden, full of trees with gems on them. Take as many gems as you want, but don’t stop there. The second room is full of gold, but that stuff is all hella cursed. Touch NOTHING. The third room only has one thing in it; a lamp. Grab that lamp, bring it to me. The door will stay open for half an hour, so hurry.”

Aladdin was like “ok.” And turned to the stairs.

The magician… had grown to like Aladdin, so he was like “wait. Take this ring. If anything goes wrong, rub it and it’ll get you out of trouble.”

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Aladdin took the ring, thanked his uncle, and made his way down the stairs.

Sure enough, when the stairs let out Aladdin found himself in a beautiful garden, where the trees were made of gold with silver leaves and gemstone fruit. They were the biggest, most perfect gems Aladdin had ever seen. He’d worked for a jeweler, so he made a bee-line for the diamonds and stuffed his pockets with them. Remembering there was a time limit, he found the exit to the garden and went to the next room. As his uncle had said, this room was full of gold. Gold coins, gold plates, gold statues, all kinds of gold stuff. He was obedient, and ignored it all.

The third room was just a giant cavern. In the middle of the cavern was a pedestal, with a single lamp sitting on it.

Aladdin picked up the lamp and looked it over. It was just a normal, ordinary, run-of-the-mill brass oil lamp. It didn’t even have anything in it. Weird, but who was he to judge. So he took the lamp and wandered back through the room with the gold.

Now, Aladdin didn’t have a watch, because they hadn’t been invented yet, and he had a pretty bad sense of time. He thought he still had a couple minutes, when really he just had, like, one. So he decided to grab a couple rubies and sapphires on his way out.

This was a bad idea. The time ran out, and before he could get back to the stairs they vanished! He found himself trapped in the garden.

The magician saw the stairs close and was like “well, so much for that idea.” And wandered off to his next evil scheme.

Aladdin was pretty bummed about the whole “being trapped underground” thing. I mean, if the trees had held real fruit that would have been one thing, but it’s pretty hard to survive on a diet of gold and emeralds. He spent like an hour panicking over the stairs vanishing, and then an hour wondering how horrible starvation was going to be, and then he remembered the ring.

He took the ring off and rubbed it. Instantly, a djinn appeared.

“I am the djinn of travel,” it announced. “Tell me where you’d like to be, and I will take you there.”

Aladdin was like “I wanna go hooooome!!!!”

And suddenly POOF he was standing in his bedroom.

Aladdin and his mom waited a couple days for the magician to come back, but he never did. They felt kinda bad about it, but they didn’t know how to get a message to him that Aladdin was ok and had the lamp.

Now, at first glance this seems like an oversight. I mean, they had a teleportation djinn ready and willing to take them to any vague location they desired. BUT! They didn’t know the magician’s real name. So if Aladdin was like “take me to my uncle”, the djinn would just answer “you don’t have an uncle” and leave it at that. So I’m saying they tried to get to the magician with the djinn, and failed. After that they gave up.

Anyways, now that Aladdin didn’t have a shop to work at, they quickly ran out of money. The mom was prepared to go back to work full-time, but Aladdin didn’t want that.

He was like “hey, you’ve worked super hard all your life. I have a bunch of gems from the magic garden; I’ll sell them and neither of us will have to work!”

So they did that, and lived for another couple months. When they ran out of gems, Aladdin asked the djinn to take him back to the cave.

The djinn was like “yeah, can’t do that. It’s a magical place, so I can’t just poof in. The last owner of the ring argued with me for hours about that, so trust me, I know.”

That was pretty sucky. By that time Aladdin had gained some pride, and liked being able to provide for himself and his mom. He didn’t want to work, but he didn’t want his mom to work either. So he looked around his room for something to sell, and his eyes fell on the brass lamp.

Since it seemed the magician was gone for good, Aladdin decided to sell the lamp. It was kinda dusty though, so first he grabbed a rag and started rubbing it down.

Suddenly a djinn popped out of the lamp.

“I am the most powerful djinn in the history of djinn,” it announced. “What do you want?”

Aladdin was like “…Uhh… I… want… erm… A feast! Yes! I desire a magnificent feast, fit for a sultan, to be set up in my dining room!”

The djinn nodded, snapped its fingers, and vanished.

Aladdin ran to his dining room (which was also his living room and also kitchen) and stared in amazement. Not only was there a ton of amazing-looking food on the table, but that food was on gold plates! And the plates were on a tablecloth of the finest silk!

Aladdin, having worked with cloth and metal for a while, instantly knew how much all that stuff was worth. He knew that he and his mom could live off the silverware alone for like a month.

It was epic.

…This story is getting kinda long, and there’s still a ways to go, so I’m going to pull a Scheherazade and stop here.

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Moral: Mysterious uncles who appear out of nowhere probably want to use you for nefarious purposes.