I thought it would be kinda funny to do this and post in on her new blog but then I found out the hard way that you can’t do it in wordpress.

There was once a young boy who was seven years old.  He had just started attending primary school.  His parents knew that he needed a place to study, a place to do his homework.  So off they went to a furniture shop.  They bought the boy a study table, cleared a corner in his room and placed the table there.  They told him "This is your table. Study hard and you will become a blogger one day".

The boy didn’t like the table.  It was ugly.  It was made of plain looking wood.  It was not his choice.  He liked the other tables in the shop, the tables with pictures of cars, of planes, of tanks and soldiers.  But his father told him that they could only afford the ugly table, so the ugly table followed them home.

One afternoon, without any homework, the boy had some free time.  The boy loves to draw.  He took out his drawing book, sat at his ugly table and started drawing tanks and planes and soldiers.  This made the boy happy.  This reminded the boy of the other tables in the shop.  The boy then had a brilliant idea.

He started drawing on the ugly table.  He drew planes, he drew tanks, he drew soldiers with their guns, he drew parachutes falling from the sky.  He drew them on the top and he drew them on the sides.  He drew until he ran out of space.  His face lighted up.  His heart pumped with delight.  He couldn’t wait for his parents to return from work so that he could show them what he had done.  They would be very proud of him.  They would be so happy that the table is not ugly anymore.

Later that evening, the boy eagerly waited for his parents to return home.  When his father returned, the boy jumped up and down with joy.  The boy took his father’s hand and led him to his room.  His father opened the door and saw what the boy had done to the table.  His father’s face turned ugly and he shouted at the boy with anger.  His father left the room and returned with a rotan.  His father caned the boy hard.  The boy’s joy quickly turned to tears and pain.  His father kept shouting why he was such a naughty boy but the boy couldn’t answer because he was afraid of the rotan.  He only wished the caning would stop.  He called out to his mother but she called him a naughty boy as well.

The boy didn’t understand why his parents would be angry.  All he wanted was to make them proud of his drawings.  All he did was to make his table as beautiful as the other tables.

That boy was me. 

That experience has made me a slightly better father.  It gave me the mindfulness to always try to understand why my kids would do the things they do.  And when I can’t think of a valid reason or get a valid answer, I’m darn skillful with a rotan. :)