RIDDLE

(I wrote this to inspire my class - hopefully.)

There was once a school, in a town, not far from here. In that school was a class, much like this one. The children were fairly normal, so was the teacher. The only odd thing was that, unlike some schools, the children had special powers.

They were able to concentrate harder, and for longer than other children. They were able to draw amazing pictures. They were fast runners, excellent writers, great mathematicians, and were enthusiastic about everything, from singing to reading and swimming.

This was not your ordinary class. The teacher was a bit musical, like many teachers. He played the children music that they knew and liked. The children found almost everything he said funny. He enjoyed his new-found ability to make people laugh all the time. It made his day.

These children were good at some things: some were good at sports, some were better at writing; some were musical; others were artistic. The thing that was special about these children, along with their abilities, was that if they put their minds to anything, they could do it. Those who could not run could learn to if they tried. Those who were timid could learn to be brave. Those who could not write could practise and become excellent at it.

These children could do anything they wanted with their lives. Some would become doctors, others lawyers. Some would be builders, others nurses. Some would be teachers, others might even be astronauts. Some might become artists or musicians; others might become mechanics or brain-surgeons.

It did not matter what these children chose to do when they grew up. They lived in this world of infinite possibility, where anything and everything was possible.

They could beat any of their fears, if they chose to face them head-on and be brave about it. They could become a hundred times better than they already were at the things they were already excellent at.

They would grow up one day. When they did, they would make their parents, teachers, aunties, uncles, granddads, grandmas, friends, country, town… – basically everyone they’d ever met – very proud. They would succeed at everything they put their minds to. They would only really fail when they decided to give up and stop trying with things. They would do so well in life because they knew this little secret:

There are two sides to every coin. What? I hear you ask. Just like a coin may have a ship on one side, and the Queen on the other, similarly, failure is one side of the coin; success is the other side of it. You cannot succeed without failing many times first (in most cases), and each failure is really learning how to succeed. Every time these children encountered failure or difficulty in their life, they recognised this fact, and remembered to look at the other side of the coin, and see their success waiting there, waiting for them to discover it. They started out sounding terrible; then became excellent musicians. They’d started unable to read, write or count, and were now getting better and better at it. They started out shy and scared, and discovered that they were actually brave, courageous people after all. These children were unstoppable.

To the astute reader: who were these children and where was the school?

THE STRANGE EVENT

(I wrote this story to demonstrate to my class ways they could some of our vocabulary words...)

There once lived a pallid, wrinkly, unhappy elderly man. He was sick, tired and lonely. He was tall and lanky, wore a grey suit, and walked with a brown cane. He lived in a decrepit apartment building, three blocks from where he had gone to school.

In his youth he had been a skookum stripling; in his middle years he had been agog to study the world and to improve his skills in all sorts of things. He claimed to have invented the first space-ship, but that was not literally the case. His ship had not worked.

He wrote allegations in letters to papers about the reputed inventor of space ships, only to be fined for libel, since his claims were untrue. The judge said his lurid allegations were not well-founded and that he’d have grown up better had his mother been a martinet and not a liberal softie.

Jones had his theories about space. He predicted that aliens would land on Earth in 2009. He was sure that all the planets in the galaxy had already been taken over, that it was an easy conquest, since they had no significant or intelligent inhabitants. The meteorologists at Canterbury University were dubious about Jones’s predictions and speculations, saying that, in their former vocations of astronomers, they had never seen a single space-ship of extra-terrestrial origin.

Jones had been poor in sport in school; and very timorous too. All he really had was his writing. In PE his teacher would yell, “Oma Jones. Kati, kati - not like that. Oma potopoto, huri then finally hora and rarangi behind your team-mates. When you learn to peke, maka and rau properly, then and only then will you be chosen by your class to be on their team. Until then, I will have to make one side have you on it each time we play.” This did wonders for Jones’s self-esteem: it convinced him he was a great writer.

(He could have actually learned to get better at sport, if only he had spent less time in the Land of Nod while on the field. However, this was trivial, because he developed his writing to compensate for his lack of sporting prowess, and it was a good thing, because his books were famous and would be around for years after his demise. No-one would remember that he could not catch a ball.)

Jones had a secret of sorts: unbeknownst to the meteorologists-who-used-to-be-astronomers, he had in fact been visited in his dreams by the aliens; they were coming alright. The meteorologists-who-used-to-be-astronomers had not seen their ships because they were cloaked in invisible ink.

On this particular fine midsummer’s day, this elderly gentleman was going about his business, trying to teach the youths in his apartment block about Universal Law.

“It’s simple,” he was saying.

“If you may do it, then everyone else may too; if no-one else is allowed to do it, then nor are you. Now think about it: what would happen if the two-thousand people living in this neighbourhood went about tagging the walls?”

“Idunno,” mumbled the taller of the striplings, who was standing wearing baggy-as-a-blanket blue jeans, and a run-of-the-mill cap.

“Er, the walls would become a bit messy?” the shorter delinquent, who also wore blue jeans baggy enough to fit a car in, a homogenous cap, and dark-as-night sunglasses, suggested.

“Bah! You kids,” Jones exclaimed. “You will not have to worry soon. Universal Law will be imposed by the aliens, you will not have to think – you will not be allowed to think for yourselves once they get here. Now scram, haere waho, hanatu, vamoose. Before I…”

A seemingly supernatural beam of light came from out of nowhere (well, that’s not strictly true, it must have had a source, or it would not have existed, but no-one saw whence it came from) and Jones mysteriously floated into the air above the silvery dreamy sheet of clouds – never to be seen again.

“Wow, maybe he was right,” attempted the now flabbergasted shorter boy.

“Yeah; wanna go get some fish ’n’ chips?” replied the other.

“You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

Life went on like this for quite some time, until one day…

THE END
9 September 2006