Week 7 Storytelling: The Unruly Boy

(Screaming boy: Flikr)

There once was a little boy who was very unruly. He liked to break things and cause a lot of destruction. His poor mother was at her wits end with him. Everyday, she dropped him off at school in the morning. Everyday she always got a call for her to come get him. One day, the school called and told her to come get the boy and to never bring him back.

"Oh what will I do!?" fretted the mother. "I cannot miss work and keep him!"

She turned to the mischievous child and scolded him.

"Son," she said sternly, "you cannot keep breaking things and acting up at school. I cannot take off work and keep you and schools will not take you if you continue to act up."

This made the son angry. He began to thrash about and destroy things in the house. The mother called out very loudly for him to stop, but he didn't. He broke all sorts of things. He broke the lamps, he broke the table, he broke the arm chairs, and he wouldn't stop. His mother got louder and louder yelling at him, but his fury just had to run its course.

Once he stopped, the mother knew she had to do something. She called a strict military school and asked them to take in her son. They agreed so she packed his things and sent him off. She hoped he would come home a changed boy when she saw him next.

A few weeks passed with no word from the school or her son. Then one night, while she was eating dinner alone and thinking of him, the phone rang. The commotion she heard on the other line was insane. She could hardly hear the Sergeant because of all of the noise and chaos.

"Your boy...." was all she heard the man say. She knew what was going on. Her son was having one of his fits and causing all sorts of destruction at this school. She told the man to put her on the phone with him.

"SON!" she boomed, "You calm down this instant!!!"

But it was no use. She could not control him when she was right next to him. She was even less powerful to stop him from a distance. The pattern continued on. The boy would throw a fit and his mother would desperately yell and try to calm him down, but with no avail.They were like lightning and thunder. Hardly ever one without the other.

Author's note: The story I chose to write about was the an old Nigerian folktale called The Story of Lightning and Thunder. I chose to tell the story with the characters as humans. In the original one, they are a ram and her son. The son is destructive and does damage to the village while the mother yells at him. The king tries to banish the son further and further away until he is forced to banish them to the sky. And that is where we get lightning and thunder from.