The Beetle and the Leaf

Second Race - me writing this story and my son finishing his Kumon sheet. This time I won. To be fair, he was on a new tougher level and I did not have any pre-specified constraints, so took the easy route of a "moral" story.

The leaf was floating gently in the stream. It was a big green leaf, difficult to tell from the banks which leaf. The waves sometimes brought it near to the banks and then again pulled it back to the midstream, almost as if not wanting to let anyone standing on the banks to touch it.

A beetle, which had just been picked up by a bird and was flying high in sky held in its beaks, somehow managed to escape and started falling to the ground. It knew its exoskeleton will save it, but then it realised it is going to fall in the stream. Out of the pan and into the fire! Afraid of drowning, the beetle closed its eyes and prepared to get wet.

Suddenly it stopped falling. Opening its eyes, it realised that it had fallen on a leaf. “Two miraculous escapes! Must be my lucky day!” thought the beetle. The leaf, on the other hand, did not like it. It liked playing with the waves on its own, so it did not like the intrusion from the beetle.

“Get away from me!” said the leaf.

The beetle was surprised. It was about to say a big thank-you to the leaf, as it had saved beetle’s life. How do you say thank-you to someone who is being rude to you?

“I am sorry; I just fell from the sky.”

“Do you think I am a landing pad? If you have to do acrobatics, go do it elsewhere.”

The beetle was silent. It had never met anyone this rude. It did not say anything, just jumped on to the river bank the next time the waves took the leaf near the bank. The leaf was left alone to its floating.

“Good riddance”, thought the leaf. What it did not realise is that being rude is not nice. Being nice, kind and friendly will help you make friends. Friends who can play with you and make you happy; friends who can help you when you need them; friends who can warn you when you are doing something wrong and about to face trouble!

As soon as the beetle jumped on to the bank, it looked ahead and saw that the river was turning into a waterfall. The leaf could not see that from the middle of the stream, did not know that it was about to fall down the waterfall and was about to get very badly hurt on the rocks below.

The beetle was not mean. Even though the leaf had been so rude, the beetle still shouted, “Dear Leaf, look out!”

The leaf was very irritated. Why doesn’t this beetle just go away?

The beetle realised that the leaf is not listening. “What can I do?” it thought. He saw a tree nearby. One of its branches was hanging over the river.

“Mr. Tree, can you please bend your branch and pick the left floating in the stream?” the beetle asked.

The tree was also very nice and agreed. As it bent its branch into the stream, the floating leaf got caught in the branch and was lifted out of the stream.

“Just what do you think you are doing?” The leaf screamed in frustration. It did not want to go away from the stream, it liked playing in water. “This is all that beetle’s fault”, the leaf thought.

“Let me go, you….” it stopped mid-sentence as it was lifted up by the branch and it saw the big waterfall ahead falling on to rocks below.

“Oh my!” it gasped. “I have just been saved from being torn on those rocks and squashed by the waterfall. It realised that the tree and the beetle, who it was thinking as enemies and spoiler of his fun, were actually its friends and had just saved it.

“Thank you Mr. Tree for saving me”, said the leaf. Turning to the beetle, it said, “Mr. Beetle, I have been very rude to you and yet, you saved me. I cannot thank you enough! Will you forgive me and be my friend?”

“Of course! Let us all be friends!”

The leaf learned that day that it is not good to be rude. It also learnt not to dislike others just because they were interrupting, they may be being helpful and friendly.

Feedback from Hiranya - "It is nice, but it is like a normal story, like Goldilocks or something." A polite way of saying - Don't preach to me, please!

Blackbelt the Karate Mouse

There was a race - me writing this story and my son finishing his Kumon sheet. He won by clocking 29 min, I took 40. The requirements for him were around 200 carry-over multiplications; the requirements for me were a karate mouse, a superhero, a monster and minions. The reward was a pat-on-the-back for him and a hug for me.

Chapter 1

Gobbledeegook, the only minion who had ever seen the hairy scary karate mouse, was shouting at the top of his voice “Everyone, listen to me!”

Minion house was never a temple of silence at the best of times and this moment that Gobbledeegook chose to shout was especially chaotic. Everyone was expecting the imminent arrival of AntMan, the superhero who could become as small as an ant and who had the power to control all the insects in the universe. There was a nervous chatter among the minions and that chatter was so loud that it was making it difficult to hear anything anyone said. So Gobbledeegook had to shout really loud and that too thirteen times to make himself heard.

“Everyone, listen to me! I just met BlackBelt!”

The whole house fell silent. Minions were not scared of anything, they were known to have fought both the superheroes and supervillians and won everytime. But Blackbelt, the hairy scary karate mouse, was not just anything. He was the only living creature to have tenth dan black belt. Normal people only knew that there were 9 dans for karate black belt. That is because very few creatures has met BlackBelt and lived to tell the tale. It was said he was so good he could make his opponent do quadruple backflips just by shaking his tail.

“Blackbelt said this area belongs to him, so he is not going to let AntMan enter this building.”

“But AntMan is about to reach here anytime!” the crowd murmured.

“Blackbelt said he is going to destroy this building if AntMan comes here.”

Scaredycat, the bravest of all the minions, ventured, “We cannot let Blackbelt bully us. AntMan is our friend and if he is coming to meet us, we cannot say no to him just because of Blackbelt.”

Tiggerrystripes, the meekest of all the minions said in a scared voice “Does that mean we have to fight Blackbelt?”

Clueless, the most intelligent of all the minions said, “I know what! Let us call Monsters University and ask our monster friends to come and help us.”

Chapter 2

“Hello! Monsters University, Dean Hardscrabble speaking!”

“Hello, we are minions calling.”

“What do you want?” Dean Hardscrabble asked in a gruff voice

“Are Mike and Sully there?”

“No, they have gone to Andromeda to scare some alien walking trees.”

“Is the monster band there?”

“No, they are on a musical tour of the solar system.”

“Look, we need someone who can scare Blackbelt!”

Dean Hardscrabble was silent for a moment. She was of course aware of Blackbelt’s reputation, even though she had not met him. She did not want to cause a panic in Monsters University by even mentioning that name. She could not refuse a call for help from the minions either. Then she remembered the little green gooey-monsters from Venus that had hitched a ride on Monsters band spaceship when they had gone there on their solar system tour stop. These little gooey-monsters had not heard about Blackbelt at all as they were not from Earth, so they were just the right guys for the job.

Chapter 3

Blackbelt was very happy. He was going to destroy a superhero today. He was standing in the middle of the road leading to Minion House, waiting for AntMan to come. He knew that AntMan could become as small as an ant, so he had detectors all around him with big lenses that could locate even a dust-mite. AntMan stood no chance.

Suddenly he saw green blobs on the road. Looks like some green gooey thing had just fallen from sky. He looked up and saw a bird flying away. Eeew! Looked like this was that bird’s droppings! Thankfully it had not fallen on him! Little did he know that the strange looking bird was the secret Monsters University aeroplane designed to look like a bird to fool people and the bird droppings were actually Martian little green gooey-monsters who had come to help the minions and AntMan.

AntMan was coming on his Antsy-Batsy-Bike when he saw a big black hairy scary mouse standing in the middle of the road. He did not know about Blackbelt, so he just ignored the mouse and kept on riding towards the Minion House.

Blackbelt smiled and flicked his tail. Nothing happened! He was surprised. Elephants had fallen at the flick of Blackbelt’s tail, so he could not understand how AntMan just kept going on. He turned and looked at his tail. His tail had not moved at all. It was stuck in some green goo. Eeew! The bird seemed to have dropped its poo on his tail. But what was thing? There was no material on earth which could tie Blackbelt’s tail like this.

What Blackbelt did not realise, of course, was that these were not mere bird’s droppings, these were the Martian gooey-monsters. They were sticky even on Venus, but with the effect of Earth’s stronger gravity, they had become really sticky. When a lot of then had just lied on top of Blackbelt’s tail, the tail was now stuck to the ground and could not move at all. No force on Earth could lift them now, not even Blackbelt’s super karate skills.

ScaredyCat, Gobbledeegook and Clueless reached the place.

“Blackbelt, this is our new secret weapon made by our boss Gru. Give up and go home.”

Blackbelt was not to be outdone by this. “You think I can be stopped just by holding my tail?” he screamed in anger. “Have you not heard of my wunder-thunder-clap?”

This was dangerous. Clueless thought that he should have thought about that. Even ScaredyCat, the bravest of all the minions was scared. The last time Blackbelt had done the wunder-thunder-clap, volcanoes had come up in the middle of the town and drowned the whole town in lava.

Blackbelt took a super karate stance and was about to do the wunder-thunder-clap when suddenly, more Martian gooey-monsters dropped from the sky right on Blackbelt’s hands. Blackbelt fell to the ground and now his hands and leg and tail were all stuck to the ground. He could not move. They gooey-monsters had achieved what no one on earth had done before, they had defeated the strongest creature on earth without even fighting.

“Blackbelt, do you give up and agree to be good from now on?” Clueless asked.

“Yes, yes, please free me from this goo. I cannot even get up.”

“Say sorry first.”

“Sorry. I will never harm any creature from now on”

“Now say sorry to the goo.”

“What, sorry to the goo?” Blackbelt said surprised.

“Yes!” said Clueless, smiling.

“Sorry goo.”

The Martian gooey-monsters had been told that when they hear sorry, they can all go back. So they all got down and went back to their secret bird-shaped Monsters University aeroplane. Blackbelt was good from that day onwards and became the karate teacher at Monsters University and at Minion House.

THE END