I’ll Still Be An Ant

In the minds of some, the word fabulist has negative connotations, referring to people who fabricate elaborate, dishonest stories. Even so, I aspire to be a fabulist, not because I want folks to think I’m a liar (although many do), but because fabulists write concise, brief stories emphasizing incontrovertible truths.

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I gave up on being a novelist because I don’t have enough self-discipline, and my feeble poetry efforts never developed beyond doggerel. But, because I’m afflicted with the psychological aberration known as obsessive compulsiveness and because Mama taught me to turn that problem and any others into opportunities, I may qualify as a fabulist, since my stories are concise and brief, never exceeding five hundred words. Among the great writers of the fabulist genre, Aesop is best known. Children enjoy this ancient Greek slave’s stories without perceiving their moral; adults — especially cynics like me — enjoy them because, with stick-poked-in-the-eye effectiveness, they point out human follies. Recently I read a modern version of “The Ant And The Grasshopper,” Aesop’s best-known fable. In the original version, the lazy, libertine locust never learned that one cannot stop preparing for lean years that come at unpredictable intervals between fat years — a lesson hard-working ants never forget. The good-timing grasshopper died; the industrious ant survived. In the modern version, winter arrived, and the grasshopper groaned, not only because he was cold and hungry, but also because the ant, in a warm home with a full cupboard, ignored his life-threatening plight. The sensationalism-seeking media supported the grasshopper and scandalized the ant. Newspaper headlines blared such words as “calloused” and “hard-hearted.” Videos showed a once green, healthy grasshopper — now sickly and skeletal — and an amber ant, aglow in fine fettle, around a food-filled table, feasting with his fellows. The hoi polloi, never doubting the media, were furious. They demanded to know why this unequal state existed in a land of plenty, and believed the ant amassed his wealth from the grasshopper’s toil. Justice must be served — the ant must pay! Immediate tax hikes were imposed, and he was fined for not hiring proportionate numbers of equal-opportunity grasshoppers, who, unlike ants, punched the time clock, drew paychecks, and did nothing. Public outcry became so great that the government redistributed what the ant stored away for inevitable days of necessity. Even that wasn’t enough! Retroactive taxes were imposed, which the ant couldn’t pay, so grasshopper goons confiscated his home and property. Imprisoned, the ant was never seen again. The grasshopper moved into the ant’s home, but because he was too lazy to perform necessary repairs, it soon crumbled around him. The government, no longer able to extort funds from the ant, couldn’t pay for repairs, even if it could find workers — now non-existent. The electricity was shut off, and the grasshopper suffered the inevitable fate facing him from the start: He froze to death. I hope there is no parallel between this story and some of American government’s current shenanigans, but if there is, I’ll still be an ant.