Week 3 - Storytelling: Brad, the Absentminded Wannabe Prognosticator

Brad was a man who was obsessed with seeing signs of the future in everything.  When he went out for walks, he would look for signs in the wind moving through the trees, the dogs barking behind fences, and the honking of the car horns.  He would go for long walks that would take him anywhere and everywhere.  Many times he would finally come out of his obsessive thought process only to look around and have absolutely no idea where he was. 

One day, Brad went for one of his sign-seeking walks.  He was staring at the sky, the homes, the trees, and the traffic, everything except where he was.  Unbeknownst to Brad, he had wandered straight into a construction zone.  As he walked, the pavement under his feet turned to gravel.  Suddenly, Brad found himself plummeting down into a large pit and at the bottom was a grinder breaking the stones into smaller gravel.  If he fell too much further he too would be ground up.  He grabbed and desperately tried to find anything to get ahold of to slow and stop his fall.  Finally, he managed to find purchase with his hands and dug in the toes of his shoes.  He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold on for much longer and he became frantic, fearing that his end was near.  Sweat began to bead up all over his body and his hands were becoming slick.  Brad yelled and screamed for help for what seemed like an eternity.  Just as he was beginning to think that death was eminent, faces appeared at the top of the gravel heap.  Construction workers were lying down and offering their hands for help.  Brad was terrified of letting loose his hold on the gravel, afraid to fall, but he knew if he didn’t reach out he would certainly die.  He quickly pulled his hands from the gravel and desperately reached up for the hands of the construction workers above him.  Then, he threw up his other arm and was pulled from the pit.  As he lay there on the gravel, catching his breath and calming his heart rate, not understanding how he got into that situation in the first place, a construction worker asked him,

“Did you not see that pit, man? You could’ve been killed.” 

To which a second construction worker replied, “Yeah man! You’ve got to pay more attention.  Where was your head?” 

Brad was confounded.  How could he have been so distracted as to not see that death pit?  While he was looking around, trying to find signs for the future, he was completely oblivious to the things going on around him now. 

The Astrologer from Aesop (Winter)

Author’s Note: This was from Aesop (Winter).  The story was “The Astrologer” where a man was constantly looking up into the stars trying to decipher the future.  While he was walking one day he fell deep into a mud pit and became stuck.  His cries for help called the villagers to his aid and they pulled him from the pit.  They asked him what he was doing, paying so much attention to the future in the stars that he was paying no attention to the what was here on Earth.  The moral of the story was, “take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.”  I liked this story  because it is so true how people are frequently thinking about what they want to do or are going to do in the future or how many material possessions they want in the future that they forget to look around and appreciate the things they have now and appreciate where they are now.  

Bibliography:

Book: The Aesop for Children

Author: Milo Winter

Year Published: 1947

Web Source: Aesop (Winter)

Image:
The Astrologer.  (image).  Web Source: Aesop (Winter)