Monday, April 21, 2008

The Ant and the Grasshopper


My sister and I are really rather different. We don't like the same activities, and we don't really have the same interests - she loves music and dancing and fashion. I love art and reading and watching movies. She is very hardworking and industrious, she is obsessively tidy and bakes bread. I write stories and take long hot baths.

The thing that bugs my sister most in the world is that people often tell us that we are so much alike. In fact many people ask us if we are twins, she HATES this more that anything else. I actually do not mind at all and think it is quite amusing, therefore I used to be quite hurt by this blatant display of hostility on her part - I mean how bad could it be to be like me? I am pretty amazing!! Well, I never considered how hard it must have been for her all of these years, always being compared to me, always being told how 'exactly alike' we are. She felt like she had no personality of her own - rather that she was a shadow of me.

Anyway, then one day we found this poem that perfectly and completely explains our personalities. Now I am sure that most of you are familiar with the traditional 'Ant and Grasshopper' fable told by Aesop but this was a re-written version that I had never heard before. It was brilliant. Where most people would read this and see parts of themselves in either the ant or the grasshopper - or maybe a collaboration of the two, when Katie and I read it, it was a shock. There were not parts of us in the description but rather it described our personalities fully and completely. I AM THE GRASSHOPPER and Katie IS THE ANT. We finally realized that we were not alike, in fact we are exact opposites, but we were so different that we complement each other so completely and therefore people assume that we are very alike.

Here is the story that started our journey of self discovery. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

The Ant and the Grasshopper

It is winter and the grasshopper is walking in the snow talking to herself, and answering herself. She wears a yellow slicker because she could not find her parker, which is buried in the debris under her bed. She is eating a brownie and drinking a carton of milk bought from the 7-Eleven which, thank heaven, is open 365 days a year. The door in the tree where the ants live swings open. The queen ant appears and says to the grasshopper, "We are bored to death. Won't you tell us a story or at least a good joke? Our teenagers are driving us crazy; maybe you could write them a play to perform, or just a road show? Do you have any ideas for a daddy-daughter party?"
The grasshopper replies that she has ideas for all of them. So the ant invites her in and seats her at a spotless kitchen table with pencil and paper, and the grasshopper writes the road show.
The ant feeds her guest a slice of homemade bread, fresh from the oven, and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. "How do you get all of these ideas?" she asks the grasshopper.
"They come to me," says the grasshopper, "while I am taking long hot baths."

(Story by Tom Plummer)

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