Once upon a time; I was in my Grade 3 classroom. It was a normal schoolday, and the time? Story time.
We were having a guest reader come in that day, and excitements were brewing. And then the door opened to reveal...
The grandmother of one of our classmates.
She held no book, but instead she held a spiral shell and a glass jar with some dry rice inside, with clingwrap over the opening of the jar.
She sat down in the teacher's special storytelling chair, and she talked to us briefly about deaf people and the condition they suffer from (known as 'deafness'). It was news to most of us, and this new discovery of 'deafness' was beginning to sound a little bit scary and like the end of the world...
She must have sensed our fears, because she smiled and said that there was a story that came with being deaf (not that she suffered from it herself, as we'd come to find out). A breath was taken, and she began to tell us a somewhat disturbing fable that went something like this:
Many years ago, there was a large group of frogs that lived in and around a pond. Amongst them was a deaf frog, and although it took him a while to understand everything; he lived in bliss with the other amphibious residents of the pond.
One day, he was hopping around the surrounding forest with one of his frog mates, and they both fell into a very deep hole. It was so deep and so dark and so scary to surface dwellers, the other frogs called it Middle Eastern Politics.
Just kidding. But it was still a deep hole, from which escape seemed almost impossible. The two frogs called out for help, and soon as they heard the cries, the other frogs hopped to it.
They gathered around the edge of the hole and looked into the depths. After squinting into the darkness, they could sort of see the trapped frogs.
The panic caused the trapped-and-not-deaf frog to start jumping. And because he thought it was a game, the deaf frog jumped with him too.
"Don't jump!" cried the frogs from the surface. "Escape is impossible! You'll die trying!" (It's well known amongst biologists that frogs are not the most optimistic of amphibians)
So upon hearing the advice from his friends, the trapped-and-not-deaf frog stopped jumping. He sat in the darkness, caught AIDS and died.
But what of the deaf frog?
His inability to listen to the advice from his friends was what saved him from death (and AIDS, but they might as well be the same thing). He didn't listen to the advice that told him to "give up" and "stop trying". He carried on jumping until some bright spark from the surface put a big branch into the hole, and he caught on to it, and was then pulled out of the darkness.
The other frogs and the deaf frog (but not the dead one; because he's the idiot of this story), went back to the pond and had a party. They all (except the dead one 'cause he got AIDS) lived happily ever after, until a Frenchman established a restaurant 10 metres away from the pond.
Nice story, eh? It all sounded a bit pointless to the 8 year old me, because I thought that was her way of glorifying being deaf. But now I've aged considerably since hearing it, and I'm now beginning to see some of the sucky things in life that just weren't there for me when I was 8. And upon seeing these sucky things, I think that the fable can be interpreted as this:
The problems we face now are bigger than the ones we had when we were kids. Kids are lucky because they don't have to deal with unemployment, boys that make no sense, 1000 word assignments, careers, the families they make for themselves, or the destruction of rainforests.
So while we can't go back to being a kid (well we can, but at our age it's called immaturity), we have the option of doing this occasionally helpful thing called getting advice from friends/family/the cat.
And sometimes it can be very, very useful in solving a problem.
But sometimes, their answers may not be what's right for you. Sometimes you have to jump out of the hole yourself, and not listen to the suggestions of others.
That's called stubborn persistence, and that's a virtue that anyone (whether frog or human) can have.
And sometimes, if you never stop trying to persistently fix a problem, one day a breakthrough will be made.
So perhaps we may need to be like a deaf frog (unless the problem is financial) in some situations, and keep on trying no matter what.
Because some unknown genius once said "Victory always comes to the person who refuses to stop fighting".
And life's not much without a little bit of victory.
PS: In case you were wondering, the spiral shell and the jar of rice were supposed to represent parts of the human ear (yep, I don't get it either).
We were having a guest reader come in that day, and excitements were brewing. And then the door opened to reveal...
The grandmother of one of our classmates.
She held no book, but instead she held a spiral shell and a glass jar with some dry rice inside, with clingwrap over the opening of the jar.
She sat down in the teacher's special storytelling chair, and she talked to us briefly about deaf people and the condition they suffer from (known as 'deafness'). It was news to most of us, and this new discovery of 'deafness' was beginning to sound a little bit scary and like the end of the world...
She must have sensed our fears, because she smiled and said that there was a story that came with being deaf (not that she suffered from it herself, as we'd come to find out). A breath was taken, and she began to tell us a somewhat disturbing fable that went something like this:
Many years ago, there was a large group of frogs that lived in and around a pond. Amongst them was a deaf frog, and although it took him a while to understand everything; he lived in bliss with the other amphibious residents of the pond.
One day, he was hopping around the surrounding forest with one of his frog mates, and they both fell into a very deep hole. It was so deep and so dark and so scary to surface dwellers, the other frogs called it Middle Eastern Politics.
Just kidding. But it was still a deep hole, from which escape seemed almost impossible. The two frogs called out for help, and soon as they heard the cries, the other frogs hopped to it.
They gathered around the edge of the hole and looked into the depths. After squinting into the darkness, they could sort of see the trapped frogs.
The panic caused the trapped-and-not-deaf frog to start jumping. And because he thought it was a game, the deaf frog jumped with him too.
"Don't jump!" cried the frogs from the surface. "Escape is impossible! You'll die trying!" (It's well known amongst biologists that frogs are not the most optimistic of amphibians)
So upon hearing the advice from his friends, the trapped-and-not-deaf frog stopped jumping. He sat in the darkness, caught AIDS and died.
But what of the deaf frog?
His inability to listen to the advice from his friends was what saved him from death (and AIDS, but they might as well be the same thing). He didn't listen to the advice that told him to "give up" and "stop trying". He carried on jumping until some bright spark from the surface put a big branch into the hole, and he caught on to it, and was then pulled out of the darkness.
The other frogs and the deaf frog (but not the dead one; because he's the idiot of this story), went back to the pond and had a party. They all (except the dead one 'cause he got AIDS) lived happily ever after, until a Frenchman established a restaurant 10 metres away from the pond.
THE END
Nice story, eh? It all sounded a bit pointless to the 8 year old me, because I thought that was her way of glorifying being deaf. But now I've aged considerably since hearing it, and I'm now beginning to see some of the sucky things in life that just weren't there for me when I was 8. And upon seeing these sucky things, I think that the fable can be interpreted as this:
The problems we face now are bigger than the ones we had when we were kids. Kids are lucky because they don't have to deal with unemployment, boys that make no sense, 1000 word assignments, careers, the families they make for themselves, or the destruction of rainforests.
So while we can't go back to being a kid (well we can, but at our age it's called immaturity), we have the option of doing this occasionally helpful thing called getting advice from friends/family/the cat.
And sometimes it can be very, very useful in solving a problem.
But sometimes, their answers may not be what's right for you. Sometimes you have to jump out of the hole yourself, and not listen to the suggestions of others.
That's called stubborn persistence, and that's a virtue that anyone (whether frog or human) can have.
And sometimes, if you never stop trying to persistently fix a problem, one day a breakthrough will be made.
So perhaps we may need to be like a deaf frog (unless the problem is financial) in some situations, and keep on trying no matter what.
Because some unknown genius once said "Victory always comes to the person who refuses to stop fighting".
And life's not much without a little bit of victory.
PS: In case you were wondering, the spiral shell and the jar of rice were supposed to represent parts of the human ear (yep, I don't get it either).
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