Follow the Crowd

Adjustment comes in many forms. Our oldest son Murray had not found it easy to move from being a big-sophomore-fish-in-a-little-pond at Cole High School at Fort Sam Houston to overlooked-minnow-in-the-ocean status in Kaiserslautern American High School in Germany. But you can’t keep a prankster down long. 

Lacking an auditorium, the high school’s band and chorus were having their Christmas program at the post theater. He and his friend Buddy were the first to the building. They stationed themselves at the two doors in an important stance. A couple of seniors drifted up. Buddy and Murray told them, “I’m sorry, we can’t let you in yet.” A few more drifted up, and they repeated their apology.

Soon nobody had to be told as the first few passed the word to the next arrivals. Soon others just saw people waiting and joined the group, assuming they were waiting for a reason. When about three quarters of the crowd had assembled, one of them said to the other, “Do you think they’ve waited long enough?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Then to the crowd, “Okay, you can go in now.”

His peers’ chagrin and grudging admiration at having been hoodwinked didn’t turn the minnow into a whale, but it did show him there was fun to be had in the sea.

If I were Aesop, I would add a moral or two here, but I think you can figure out one of your own.