A/N: A retelling of the James Bond movie "Goldfinger" for a kinder, gentler audience.

Man With the Golden Touché

"Bedtime, Survey!" Loftus Sparrow called from his daughter's bedroom. It was Friday night, and the attorney was ready with a story to close out the evening. He waited patiently, until at last his daughter appeared in the doorway ready for bed with a mournful look on her face.

"I lost it, daddy" she said as her lips quivered.

"Lost what, my dear?"

"I lost the gold necklace you gave me. I had it on earlier today and now it's missing. I must have lost it somewhere because it isn't in my room and it isn't in the bathroom and it isn't in the kitchen and..."

"Now Survey, come over here and lay down" her father told her. She did as she was told and climbed into bed and her father tucked her in. "Don't be upset, you know it wasn't really made of gold."

"I know, but it was special because you gave it to me after our story about Kelly last time. I liked to pretend it was real gold."

"You look pretty even without it, but maybe it will turn up later. I was going to tell you a story about a man who learned to live after he died lots of times, but I think you need to hear the story of the man who loved gold too much."

...

This story starts with a spy. Not just any spy, but one of England's most famous spies. His name was James Bond, and he went around telling a lot of people who he was, saying his last name twice so people wouldn't forget.

"If he was a spy, why did he tell everybody his name? I thought that was supposed to be secret."

"Probably because he was such a good spy he gave everybody a chance by knowing who he was first."

"Like when I race against Bobby Lee and I give him a head start before I run" Survey said with a grin.

"Exactly."

Bond was always making friends with pretty ladies while his job took him all around the world. And he must have been smart, because he could make friends with ladies even when he didn't speak their language. While he was making friends with a lady named Dink in Miami, his friend Felix Leiter came to talk to him. You could tell Felix wasn't as good a spy because he didn't get to dress in swim clothes at the pool like Bond.

Bond's boss, who was such a good spy he only had a letter for a name, told him to spy on a man named Auric Goldfinger for a while and see what he was doing and maybe find out if he wasn't buying and selling gold by the rules. He liked gold so much he let it run his life.

"What does 'Auric' mean?"

"It comes from Latin and means gold" Loftus explained.

"So his name was Gold Goldfinger? Isn't that kind of like Boaty McBoatface?"

"Not really. The man who wrote this story liked to play with names and...well...yes, I guess it is a little like McBoaty FaceFloat."

"Boaty McBoatface, Daddy" Survey said exasperatedly.

"Sorry."

So Bond went to spy on Goldfinger and found out he wasn't playing fair at cards. Then he made friends with Jill Masterson, Auric's assistant but afterward she got a makeover with a golden brown tan, hold the brown. Bond wasn't happy because they were supposed to have dinner and now she couldn't go, so instead he had to have dinner with his boss while a boring banker man talked about how different countries use gold for things like tooth fillings and founding national economies.

"This was before countries abandoned the gold standard they had used to valuate their currencies" Survey noted.

"How do you know about that?" her father asked. "We won't cover international monetary policy in our home schooling until sixth grade."

"I saw it in a cartoon show somewhere."

Before he left, Bond stopped by the spy toy shop and picked up a few things from a scientist named Q who always seemed to know just what Bond was going to need on his adventures even though he was pretty sure Bond was going to break them anyway. So Bond went to meet Goldfinger and they played a friendly game of golf, where each tried to trick the other. Goldfinger was impressed and wanted to tip his hat in recognition but he wasn't wearing one, so he had his associate Oddjob do it for him.

Bond then followed Goldfinger to Geneva, where he found out that there are bad drivers everywhere. He then snuck into Goldfinger's factory and found out if the man had an accident in his Rolls Royce the bodywork would cost more than some small nations. As he was leaving he found the bad driver from earlier and found out she was Jill's sister Tilly. They drove to get away from some other bad drivers and Bond's car started smoking to hide him.

"Do we have a spy car too Daddy? It smokes like that."

"No, Daddy just needs to have a mechanic work on his engine. Bond's car did it on purpose."

After some more bad drivers wrecked Bond stopped and told Tilly to go into the woods where the cars couldn't crash. Oddjob took his hat off in the presence of a lady like he was taught, and Bond tried to get away until HE crashed, just proving why auto insurance rates are so high in Geneva. After Goldfinger showed Bond what you can do when you put a whole bunch of AA batteries together, they flew to Kentucky and while on the plane Bond met Goldfinger's pilot Pussy Galore, who didn't want to make friends with the spy although she never really says why.

Bond went to Goldfinger's horse ranch as a guest, but he checked himself out of the room because he only got a single bed. Goldfinger tried to impress some guests by moving furniture around with buttons, then got bored and showed them some slides from a recent vacation. He gave them a business proposition and then let them sleep on it while they considered. One of the men decided he didn't want any part of the deal; Goldfinger was disappointed, but Mr. Solo was crushed by the prospect.

"He must have been very disappointed" Survey said.

"I don't think he ever got over it" her father agreed.

Goldfinger told Pussy to be friends with Bond, but she didn't want to be really friendly; in the end after tossing around a few ideas Bond convinced her that being good friends was a nice idea indeed. Later Pussy and her flying circus pilots, who curiously were all women, passed some gas while over Fort Knox and all the military guards pretended to take a nap by taking their break at the same time while they waited to surprise Goldfinger.

Then a bunch of soldiers with indeterminate nationalities showed up and helped open the building for Goldfinger, who brought a fancy clock to store in the bank. He found out they didn't have a safe deposit box big enough for the clock so he left Bond to watch it so it would be safe. Then the military guards stopped pretending to be asleep and argued with Goldfinger's men, insisting that he couldn't keep his clock there. In the meantime Bond was trying to stop the alarm on the clock from going off because it was going to be very loud...

"The clock didn't have a snooze button on it?" queried Survey.

"It might have, but no one brought the owner's manual so Bond couldn't find the right button even if it had one" her father replied.

"Always read your owner's manual fully before operating any device" Survey quoted.

"I don't think anyone does that" Loftus stated solemnly as he winked.

Then Oddjob tried to stop Bond from turning off the alarm, but Bond finally distracted him by getting him caught up in current events and together with the military men shut off the alarm before it went off. Bond took an airplane ride to meet the president in Washington, but Goldfinger wanted the plane to go to Cuba instead. The exchange got really intense, but Goldfinger reduced the high-pressure situation and took up skydiving. Bond and Pussy liked the idea so much they left the plane too and parachuted to a nice spot to lay down and relax while they waited for rescue.

"So in the end Pussy and Bond were good friends" Survey concluded.

"Very good friends."

"It's nice to have good friends."

"It is. It's also nice when your father finds your broken necklace and fixes it for you" Loftus said as he took a fake gold trinket from his pocket and showed Survey before placing it on the nightstand beside the bed.

Daughter and father hugged and she laid back down. "Thanks, Daddy. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, sweetheart."

The End

A/N: James Bond films are full of adventure and...er...adventure. But some of the context will be lost on young children, so we'll just conveniently gloss over those parts for this series, eh? And as for Goldfinger, they call leaving a job with a big payout a "golden parachute" but I think he didn't manage one of those on this one.