ANT and the GRASSHOPPER

The fable concerns a grasshopper that has spent the warm months singing while the ant worked to store up food for winter. When that season arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger and upon asking the ant for food is only rebuked for its idleness.

The story is used to teach the virtues of hard work and saving, and the perils of improvidence. Some versions of the fable state a moral at the end, along the lines of "Idleness brings want", "To work today is to eat tomorrow", "Beware of winter before it comes". The point of view is supportive of the ant and is also that expressed in the Book of Proverbs, a book of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), which admonishes, "Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest"

Every day I read articles in the newspaper about people who can't afford gas, or food, or whatever. Sure, there are some very unfortunate people out there who through no fault of their own have been dealt a really bad hand. Who among us does not want to help and provide what we can? I am not talking about these folks.

Drive by a high school in your community and look at the kids standing outside or coming home from school. Some are carrying books and computers and others are not doing a damn thing for themselves. They spend their lives in idleness driving around, partying, and just plain goofing off. One day they grow up, and have a really crappy life and somehow it is everyone's fault but theirs. They can't afford gas. The newspaper, as ours did today, fails to look at what they did in the summer of their lives that makes this a reality now in their winter. MAYBE the proverb of the Ant and the Grasshopper should be mandatory in school every year until graduation. It could replace the BANNED Ten Commandments and sandwiched in between "Heather Has Two Mommies" and whatever other drivel the educational system feels is important.