Week 7 Storytelling: The Two Lessons

Lesson number one: Don't trust entrust any girl you date with all of your secrets until you are married. 

Lesson number two: Never choose a friend with light eyes. The inner corner of the eye has to be red, the sclera has to that the inner corner of the eye is red and that the white of the eye is pure white and not brownish or yellow, and the colored part has to be black.

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Alex woke up abruptly from his dream.  It had been a long time since he last dreamt of his father, but it was always the same dream. Perhaps his father was trying to tell him something all the way from the afterlife? 

He rolled over in bed and saw that the other side was empty. His girlfriend, Jane, wasn't there, which was a first. She was always the one that would sleep in as late as possible. He hoisted himself off the bed and got ready for work. 

As he made his way down the stairs, he heard some rustling. He stopped at the foot of the stairs to see his girlfriend going through his safe. What was she doing going through his safe? He hadn't told her the passcode. No one knew his passcode. He thought back to his dream and felt his palms become a little sweaty. He couldn't just ignore what he found her doing today, but he couldn't just let it go. He slowly and quietly walked back up the stairs and tried to make his way back down as loudly as possible.

He came down to find her casually lounging on the couch and asked her what she was doing up so early, and she responded "I just wanted to get in some morning exercise!" But he knew that wasn't what she was doing.

He dropped by his friend's apartment to tell them about what his girlfriend was doing this morning, but just as he was about to tell them, he realized something. Jason had green eyes. Mark had yellow eyes. Adam had brown eyes. And Josh... he had black eyes. His revelation stopped him mid-sentence and he suddenly got up to leave, to the bewilderment of his friends.

On his way to work, he heard that a bank was robbed just last night and he concocted a plan to test the integrity of his friends and girlfriend. After he got off work, he went to the store to buy a ski mask and some suspicious looking black clothing.

Once he came home, he tried to act nervous and shaken up. Jane ask him what was wrong and he told her that he had robbed a bank across town that morning and that the people who helped him do it were after him because he took all of the money. He saw her expression change quickly--almost indiscernibly--from concern to something that looked oddly like... contempt... and then back to concern. She smiled sweetly at him and told him not to worry and that she would help him. They decided to sleep at a hotel that night. The next morning, he found himself waking to the sound of "POLICE. OPEN THE DOOR."

The police arrested him and said they had witnesses testifying that he was the robber of the bank the other day. He found out that the witnesses were Jane, Jason, Mark, and Adam. Josh was the only one who barged into the police station adamantly claiming he would do no such thing. At that point, Alex knew it was time to reveal the truth. He told the police officers that he had proof he wasn't the robber. In fact, it was his girlfriend and his three traitorous friends who were the robbers. Jane had made the mistake of using his car as the escape vehicle and it turned out that he had a surveillance system installed. He had a recording of their faces and their plan on a flash drive in his pocket. The police saw the evidence and immediately put the four traitors in jail. 

From then on, Alex always thought twice about who would be his friends and who he would trust with his secret.

Rainbow iris.

Source: HudsonAlpha.

Author's Note: For this week, I retold the story of The Man with Five Friends from the Tibetan Folk Tales Unit. I felt like I could write a good story from it and make it slightly dramatic, so I did! I like that there were two lessons that I could go off of. 

In the original story, there was a man whose father told him before he died that there were two things he should always remember. "The two things were these: first, when you are married never trust your wife with your secrets until you have ten children; second: choose your friends by their eyes. "Never choose for a friend a man with a light colored eye," he said; "see that the inner corner of the eye is red and that the white of the eye is pure white and not brownish or yellow, and that the colored part is black." He grew up and ended up having friends with eyes that were the colors that his father told him avoid. He wanted to test his wife and his friends by buying a hog and killing it and pretending as if he killed a man. It turns out his wife reported him to the authorities and he was put in prison. The only friend who came and tried to help him was the friend with black irises. After that revelation, he told the truth and got out of jail. 

My story differs in that the first lesson was to not trust your girlfriend because I felt like having ten children in this day and age is kind of ridiculous. I also changed the eye colors of his friends and gave them a name. I changed his "crime" to robbery instead of murder as well. Overall, I wanted to give this story a modern touch. 

Bibliography: 
"The Man with Five Friends" by by A.L. Shelton from Tibetan Folk Tales (1925). Web Source: UN-Textbook.