Week 7 Story: The Greedy Crow

Once upon a time lived an average family in a lavish neighborhood in the suburbs of city. The Stevens family were humble, hardworking, religious and had a great relationship with each other. The father had been working as a construction worker for a real estate development company for more than 20 years. The mother was a stereotypical stay at home mother that had her children and her home as a main priority in life. The two kids Samantha and Avery were 13 and 17 years old respectively.

Samantha was a talented girl. She was one of the top students in her grade and was a natural at playing the saxophone. She was so good that her music teacher would give her private lessons just out of enjoyment of how quick she learned music. Samantha, however, had no friends, and was alienated from the rest of the kids. Being from a lavish neighborhood, all the kids dressed really nicely and were able to show off the newest phones and iPads. Internally Samantha was always sad because of how she was treated by the other kids and used music and the professor as an outlet for all her emotions. She never spoke to her parents about her feelings because she knew how hardworking her father was.

Avery was not as talented as his sister but he was still a smart kid. He was a computer nerd and spent 99% of his time in front of a screen operating on some type of monitor. He did enjoy video games and was really into playing League of Legends and he had a relatively good world ranking. Similarly to Samantha, Avery was alienated from the students in his grade because they were at an age where they all had cars and would go out just like your typical high school senior students. His father could not afford to buy him a car so his mother would drop him off which Avery felt was embarrassing. Avery was never invited to the parties or the senior events. It was truly sad to see a kid miss out on these once in a lifetime experiences. At nights where his classmates would meet to party or hang out, Avery was in his room playing League of Legends and just focused at that.

One day the senior students gathered to plan a prank. The prank they came up with was to steal Avery’s laptop during the 15 minute lunch break to get the password to his League of Legends account. The students successfully did that and took the password of his account. At this point, Avery’s only source of happiness was his League of Legends account. It was his pride, the only thing that he knew he excelled in. Later that night, Avery tried to sign in his account but realized that his password has been changed. He started freaking out and shouting in his house. His parents stormed into his room and were shocked at how furious and emotional Avery was.

Father: Son, what’s wrong?

Avery: AHHH, I hate my life!!! This can’t be happening!!

Father: SON! What’s wrong?! Are you OK?!

Avery continued to yell while crying and tossing things around having a mental breakdown.

The father approached his son and grappled him trying to calm him.

Father: Relax, son, whatever it is we will fix it.

After multiple attempts to calm him down, Avery finally calmed down. He explained to his father what happened and seemed to be very negative about it saying “I hate my life” and “Life is over”. Avery also told his father one really important thing which spilled a lot of his inner emotion.
Avery: "This is all I had.  Nobody talks to me or likes me. They all have nice cars and go out together and I am never invited because I’m a loser and this game was everything I had besides being a loser.”

His father felt with him and hugged him and explained to him that this is not what life is about.
Father: Money can never buy happiness son. Your mother, Samantha and I we all love you and we think highly of you. These kids that are judging you are still kids and don’t know any better! We have a roof over our head, we have food on our table and most importantly we have genuine love and care in this house! These things should not be taken for granted, Avery, you are lucky to have all these! Many people in life have no parents, starve from hunger or are homeless.

Avery then understood what his father was saying and from that day forward realized that he had to change his perspective in order to grow. He had to not take others' judgmental opinion and had to always look at things with the perspective of the cup being half full not half empty.

Glass Perspective

Author’s note: I read The Greedy Crow and was inspired to write this story. The story was about a crow that worked really hard to find meat. As soon as the crow found enough meat to feast on he saw a rat passing by who caught his attention. Out of greediness the crow left his meat to pursue the rat. A smaller and quicker bird was closer to the rat and was able to lure him before the crow could reach. The crow was disappointed and returned to his space where he found the piece of meat to be missing and was left with nothing. The moral of that story is that because the crow was not appreciative of what he had instead he was greedy chasing more food until he ended up with no food at all. I chose to modify the story by having a more modern and relevant setting. I felt like there was a great application of the message that the author was trying to portray but some modifications were necessary.  I chose to use a picture of a glass that is half full half empty which portrays a optimistic vs pessimist view as that was one of the morals I tried to portray in the story.

Filipino Popular Tales by Dean Fasler, The Greedy Crow