Kelly's PC Paper

I'm putting together the portfolios of my kids' work, due TODAY. I'm almost finished. I have a love/hate relationship with portfolios. I love to look back on all the work we accomplished, but I hate going through the piles of paper! One year, I did the portfolio work every Friday. I LOVED being current on them, and my kids HATED that I knew right away when they were ditching their work (only two of the three actually had anything to fear!). Tyler dubbed Friday, "The Day of Reckoning."

I came across this paper Kelly wrote and she gave me permission to post it here. The assignment was to turn a fairy tale into a politically correct fairy tale. She chose the Grasshopper and the Ant. I laugh every time I read it!

The Farmer and the Fiddler

by Kelly W.

Our story opens on a wide field of wheat bending beneath the wind, waiting to be harvested. An other-than handsome person named Mart was at one end of the field, laboring fiercely, harvesting. Down the road near where Mart was working went Jappedo, the fiddler. Jappedo loved to fiddle, and unfortunately that tended to block out the not quite large amount of genius in him. "Here we go again," mumbled Mart when he heard the merry tune approaching up the street. "Mart, my friend!" bellowed Jappedo. "Why must you work so when such a fine day has dawned?"

"Oh, Jappedo," Mart responded, "although I would find it narrow-minded and restricting to a person's free mind not to accept your view on working for food, I must suggest to you to do a bit of preparation for the cold days ahead as I myself do at this moment, instead of perhaps not using your time to the greatest advantage."

"HA HA!" laughed Jappedo. "Surely you must see me as dull! I shall survive by being joyful and fiddling the days away instead of cutting down innocent plant life as if they were soulless beings!" With that last remark, Jappedo continued to frolic down the road, fiddling all the while.

Three months later, as Mart ate a warm loaf of bread (with a smidgen of guilt from what Jappedo had said in the past about cutting down blameless plant life), he heard a gloomy song floating down the way. Following the mournful tune out the door, down his walkway, and along the path a ways, Mart met up with Jappedo and his fiddle by the road. Jappedo lowered his fiddle and admitted, "Perhaps I should prepare a bit ahead of winter, so I shan't perish from lack of food." Mart, who now felt terrible for destroying the lovely wheat plants, tossed down his bread and added, "Yes, and I must find a suitable diet that does not so impose on the beauty and pride of the magnificent nature of this earth." From that day forth, Mart and Jappedo opened up their minds to other views, and never again were they narrow-minded and intolerant.

:-D