CLASSIC VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, PBS, CNN, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The media circus is relentless.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing "It's Not Easy Being Green."
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's state.
Spokesman for a congressional committee exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."
Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
ACLU (American Communist Lawyers Union) gets to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of liberal federal judges. The ant takes the stand and pleads his case that all he did was work to lay aside for the cold weather while the grasshopper did nothing. No one hears.
The ant loses the case. No one is surprised. The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
-------------------- Jackson Smart Jackson's Signs Port Angeles, WA ...."The Straits of Juan De Fuca in my front yard and Olympic National Park in my backyard...
"Living on Earth is expensive...but it does include a free trip around the Sun" Posts: 1000 | From: Port Angeles, Washington | Registered: Jan 1999
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posted
I heard that story when I was young. It became real to me when I was 12 when my father brought me and my 10 year old brother to a mission that fed and housed poor, homeless drunks. We served food and passed out bathroom supplies after my dad gave short devotions from the Bible.
I never forgot it. I became an "ant" It gave me the incentive to not only work hard, but to give back to the less fortunate. I also learned the difference in giving of my own accord to the poor and the government demanding I give through programs.
Americans are a generous people, and we have a system that is outdated and left to abuse. We send billions the world over and many times our generousity never makes it to those for whom it is intended.
Meanwhile, we have americans who truly are destitute. This past week, our church teen group solicited donations of school supplies, food and toys and filled my enclosed trailer.
We took them 150 miles away to coal mining towns in West Virgina sweept away by flood waters 3 years ago. They got to see first hand people living in houses made of scrap doors, no running water, sewers piped into creeks that also are used to wash clothes.
They returned changed by the experience that these conditions exsist in our own country. Many of these kids didn't even take a summer job because mommy and daddy have picked up the tab for thier summer of fun. Meanwhile other kids from foreign countries are here on work visas to fill the vacancy left by "grasshoppers".
I hope the story becomes real to them, we need more "ants", but all I see is parents raising a bunch of Grasshoppers.
posted
How true!..It saddens me to see the mess we are leaving for our children and thier children.
However....not to judge it right or wrong...simply to understand that it is how it is...that each person can make a difference in someones life by holding out your hand in friendship to those less fortunate...you never know...you may someday be less fortunate.
I try to live with the understanding that life is a game...now, how will I play my part.
Nomaste........
-------------------- Jackson Smart Jackson's Signs Port Angeles, WA ...."The Straits of Juan De Fuca in my front yard and Olympic National Park in my backyard...
"Living on Earth is expensive...but it does include a free trip around the Sun" Posts: 1000 | From: Port Angeles, Washington | Registered: Jan 1999
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