posted August 22, 2006 03:54 AM         

The Story of the Ant and the Grasshopper

IN a field one summers day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

'Why not come and chat with me', said the Grasshopper, 'instead of toiling and moiling in that way?'
'I am helping to lay up food for the winter', said the Ant, 'and recommend you to do the same.'
'Why bother about winter?' said the Grasshopper; 'we have got plenty of food at present. But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil.

When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food, and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew.

Moral: IT IS BEST TO PREPARE FOR THE DAYS OF NECESSITY.

Thoughts of a Grasshopper.
By Louise Plummer

I first became acquainted with the story of the grasshopper and the ants as a young girl--not by reading Aesop's fables, but by seeing a Walt Disney cartoon. In the cartoon, the grasshopper fiddles and sings while the ants gather food for the winter. The queen ant warns him that he'd better prepare too, but the grasshopper continues fiddling.

When winter comes, the grasshopper, blue from the cold, knocks on the tree where the ants live and begs them to let him in. The queen ant gives her 'I-told-you-so' speech and ends with 'So take your fiddle and...' there is a long pause-- So the grasshopper earns warmth and food by playing.

Aesop is not as kind. When the grasshopper comes begging for food, the queen ant tells him, 'You sang through the summer, now you can dance through the winter.'

Even as a child, Aesop's version made me uncomfortable. It still makes me uncomfortable. You see, I am a grasshopper.

I dance in elevators. The second the door closes, I begin tap dancing and flinging my arms wildly about. I make faces and stick my tongue out at the hidden cameras I believe exist in every elevator. When the doors open, I stop short and stare with what I hope is a bored elevator look into the open hallway ahead.

I am a grasshopper. It takes me a full day to dismantle my Christmas tree because I dress up in the decorations. I wrap the gold tinsel around my head in a turban. I make a shawl for my neck from glass beads and paper chains. Red glass balls hang from my ears. Then, standing in front of the hall mirror, I sing 'New York, New York.' I feel like a star.

I am a grasshopper. I have never prepared for winter or the Apocalypse. I do have two thousand pounds of wheat, which I hope never to eat, and a box of chocolate chips that won't last through next week. Last summer I tried to bottle some peaches--the cold-pack method--just to see if I could do it. I bottled three jars. They sit in my freezer like museum pieces.

I am a grasshopper. I live in a metaphorical world. I read and write fiction. I draw pictures. I dance in elevators. I dress in Christmas tree decorations.

But I was reared by ants. My mother and father immigrated to America from the Netherlands in 1948 with four children. Five more children were born in Salt Lake City. My father was an electrician. My mother kept the house and us immaculate. She knitted us sweaters and baked our bread. Dinner was ready each night at 5:30 on the nose. She taught me to work, to wash woodwork, wax floors, and clean behind the toilet.

But my priorities were not the same as hers.

Even as a child, I was a grasshopper. I wrote, drew, and daydreamed. I never outgrew it...

...'What about works?' someone may ask. 'Don't ants work harder than grasshoppers?'

No. Grasshoppers work differently from ants.

I would like to rewrite the ending of Aesop's grasshopper-and-ants story like this: It is winter, and the grasshopper is walking in the snow, talking to herself and answering herself. She wears a yellow slicker over her sweater because she can't find her parka (which is buried in the debris under her bed). Because she was out of groceries this morning, she is eating a brownie with a carton of milk bought at the local convenience store which, thank heaven, is open twenty-four hours a day. The door in the tree where the ants live swings open. The queen ant appears and says to the grasshopper, 'We are bored to death. Won't you tell us a story or at least a good joke? Our teenagers are driving us crazy; maybe you could write them a play to perform, or just a roadshow? Do you have any ideas for a daddy-daughter party?'

The grasshopper replies that she has ideas for all of them. So the ant invites her in and seats her at a spotless kitchen table with pencil and paper, and the grasshopper writes the roadshow.

The ant feeds her guest a slice of homemade bread, fresh from the oven, and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. 'How do you get all of these ideas?' she asks the grasshopper.

'They come to me,' says the grasshopper, 'while I am taking long hot baths.'

I am a grasshopper. I work hard at writing, at teaching, at singing and dancing. I work hard at mothering. I have taught my four boys some grasshopper ways. They can all make chocolate-chip cookies and brownies without a recipe.

My mother used to say, 'I don't know where you came from.' This bothered me. If she didn't know, I certainly didn't. But I found out where I came from years later when I went back to Holland for the first time since I was five years old. I stayed with my paternal grandmother--Oma--who lived in Utrecht. In her, I found another grasshopper. When she set her alarm for nine o'clock in the morning, I knew where I came from. I came from Oma.

I came from you too, Mother. Otherwise I would never clean under my bed. And like ants and grasshoppers, I also came from God.

ANTS
by Nonavee Jones

Ants ain't so bad. In fact, I love being around them. Ants facilitate grasshoppers.

Example.

Grasshopper to Ant: I want to do this never-before-done thing.
Ant to Grasshopper: NO NO NO! Why would you want to do that, people don't do that, besides, it could possibly be dangerous!
Grasshopper to Ant: But I really want to do it. Can you picture it? It would be great.
Ant to Grasshopper: Well if you must, take these precautions (yadda yadda) so you won't blow up the place. In fact I have some great ant-ideas...
Grasshopper: Cool.
Ant: Cool.

the grasshopper goes round
the ant goes thru
together we will know what to dew

http://www.blitter.com/~nonavee/main.html

posted August 22, 2006 11:51 AM         

I am a grasshopper, but every once and a while, I feel guilt over it so I will morph into an ant for a while, then I realize I am a Grasshopper, because my true ant friend drives me crazy with her ant ways and reminds me I am truly, from the coore of my fiddling and strumming, a grasshopper.