It's legends week, from my book "Fishducky's Fables".
Once,
many years ago, there was a handsome, kind, generous, caring (and a lot of
other good things) young man. His name
was Androcles and he was taken as a slave when he was very young. His master was cruel and Androcles wanted to
control his own life, so one day he escaped.
He ran into the forest. He knew
it would be hard to find him there.
While
walking down a path he came upon three bears.
One was quite large, another a little smaller and the third was a mere
cub. They were all holding their
stomachs and moaning and groaning. They
frightened Androcles and he started to slowly back away, as he had been warned
to do upon encountering bears. None of
the three seemed interested in attacking him, and they seemed to be in so much
distress that, good person that he was, he went up to them to see if he could
be of any help.
He
asked them if their discomfort was caused by thorns in their paws, which can be
very painful. The largest bear said, between a small moan
and an extremely large groan, “No, we have no thorns. It’s just that we are all so very
hungry! You see,” he went on to explain,
“We are vegetarians. All we have been
eating is a delicious porridge that my wife, here, cooks for us every
morning. While it’s cooling, we all go
out for a walk. It’s important that
bears get adequate exercise, you know. Anyhow,
several days ago, when we got back home, we found a beautiful blond human girl
sound asleep in our son’s bed. She had
eaten up all our porridge and then she went to sleep! No matter how loudly and ferociously we roar
and growl, she refuses to leave. I think
she guessed that we were vegetarians and that we wouldn’t eat her and she says
the daily porridge is yummy. Can you
help us? We’re so hungry!”
Androcles
said, “I’ll see what I can do about the blond.”
Meanwhile, he gave them some granola bars and a few bottles of Ensure
that he had in his backpack. He went
into their house and woke up the girl, whose name was Goldilocks, and told her
that what she was doing was very wrong.
He gave her a few dollars and told her about the homeless shelter that
was down the road and said that they would care for her until she could find a
job. She thanked Androcles, apologized
to the bears and left.
Androcles
had taken care of their problem, so he continued on his way. A week or two later he was captured. As a runaway slave, he was sentenced to be
placed in the arena to be devoured by wild animals. The animals who were scheduled to eat him
happened to be the three bears, who were caught as they were on their
pre-breakfast walk. The authorities
hadn’t fed them for three days so that they would be very hungry. They told the bears that there would be someone
something to eat inside and they released them into the arena. They ran out and they saw Androcles. There was no
way they could eat him, being both meat and a friend, so instead they gave him
a big group bear hug.
The crowd went
wild and demanded that the authorities give Androcles and the bears their
freedom! Not only did they do that, they
gave Androcles a prepaid American Express card as a way of apology. He took the card and asked the bears, “You
guys want to go out for a pizza? It’s on
me!”
Ever stop to think & forget to start again?----fishducky
