My Parable of the Two Friends

There once were two friends who were in the same class in school.

At the end of their first school year the two friends were given a reading test. The first friend did very well on the test, while the second friend didn’t do very well.

During summer break the first friend played outside from sunrise to sunset, while the second friend went inside early each day to read.

The first friend bragged that he could play all day and didn’t have to read because he was smarter. The second friend would sometimes resent having to stay in the house and read, but his mother always made sure that he had fun books to read. Once a week she would take him to the library where he would checkout the books he wanted to read that week and once a month she would take him to the bookstore to buy a book to keep for his very own.

Soon the second friend became a better reader. Once he became a better reader, he began to like reading.

There were days he chose to read for longer than an hour. The more he read the better reader he became.

By the end of the summer he had read over one hundred books.

The first friend had forgotten a lot of what he had learned the year before, while the second friend had improved over the summer.

The first friend looked on the second friend’s paper for the answers. Each friend scored 100% on the test.

The second friend didn’t know that his friend had cheated.

Even though the first friend had cheated, he bragged to the second friend that he got 100% on the reading test without having to read during the summer. The second friend didn’t let his friends bragging bother him. He was just happy that reading during the summer had helped him do better on the reading test.

One day the friends’ school class had a spelling bee. The first friend misspelled the first word he was given, while the second friend spelled every word right and won the spelling bee.

When the second friend went home that night he gave his mother a kiss and a hug. He thanked her for helping him become a better reader, because being a better reader made him a better speller.

by Margie Nauta Lee