Today I will share a story my grandmother once told me. I guess the moral of the story will serve all just like me very well. I had come home from school jumping and kicking about happily. My grandmother and siblings, who were seated in the living room, were surprised and, therefore, asked me the reason for my happiness.
With joy and pride radiating all over me, I told them of how the boys in my class had for sometime now been praising me for my good looks. ‘To crown it all, today, the boy almost every girl in the class has had a crush on also told me I’m beautiful and that is why I am happy,’ I innocently revealed.
My siblings’ reaction to this was a chuckle and my grandmother who was amused by their reaction laughed it off and decided to share this story with us. And this is what she told us:
A fox was roaming in the bush one day. He was very hungry because of the famine in the land. It had searched everywhere in the forest for food but luck was not on its side. Just as it was about to give up, the fox saw a crow perching on a nim tree with a huge piece of meat in its beak.
The fox was instantly attracted to the meat hanging down the beak of the crow. However, knowing the crow very well, the fox believed that when he asked him for the meat, he would not want to share it with him so he started to shower praises on the crow. “O thou handsome of all birds, how elegant you look this morning with your shiny eyes and sleek scaly limbs,” the fox shouted.
The crow out of ignorance immediately got carried away by the praises and was virtually lost in thought as he listened to the fox’s words.
The fox spoke more deceitful words thus. “O great majestical and handsome bird, sing so that your servant would hear your melodious voice which soothes all ears.’
Just when the crow opened its mouth to sing to please the fox to bring forth more praises, the meat fell off its beak and quickly the fox grabbed it and ran as fast as he could with it.
That was when the crow realised how foolish he had been to have listened to the fox’s flattery.
I looked at grandma with an inquiring eye and this was what she said: “You are a young girl. You will grow up to understand this better later in life.
The boys flatter you because they want something from you, which, when they get, will cost you your dignity. So beware what you believe. Never pay heed to their words now because they will leave you when they get what they want from you.”
I was greatly moved and since then I have learnt to be wiser than before.
I will never forget the moral lesson of the story, “Beware of flattery.”
Esther Nettey,
Queen Rita Academy,
American Farm JHS,
Accra.
