Once Upon A time

I feel as thought this particular story seems to be satirizing children's story. I feel like he thinks this up to smite whoever said he "ought" to also write a children's story. So in retaliation he tells a horrifying story in which a young boy is malled from a fence in which he was trying to play on. But in the same way I think the narrator is telling this story to depict the psychology of people so immersed in their own world they are afraid to live. In this case the family lets outside sources control their fears. It is ironic that they tried so very hard to protect themselves from harm that in the end their fear hurt themselves. I also caught the quotations on the same "day" that the gardener and housemaid worked. I think the narrator was alluding to not so virgin clean happenings that was occurring between the gardener and housemaid.