Perspective

Like all good stories this one starts with a once upon a time. Well, once upon a time there was a mouse. Since nobody likes mice in general, no one liked this mouse either. It wasn’t his fault that he was born a mouse. It wasn’t his fault that he liked to nibble on other people’s stuff. He was just made that way. The sad thing was that people didn’t see the good things in him. For instance, he was always game when humans wanted to play chase. He always wagged his tail in complete bliss when they dropped crumbs for him on the floor. Nobody saw all of that.On one fine day, the mouse decided to change things. He decided he would be really nice to them and he would make them like him. He wanted to make friends with them. So he made this list – of the things that he thought they didn’t like about him.(He was a very organized mouse). The list goes something like this
–My colour
My whiskers (because they twitch)
The fact that I am scared of them

Obviously, like all of us do, he was looking at things only from his perspective. Anyway, the solutions were easy to find. He painted himself a pretty shade of red, trimmed his whiskers and went and parked himself on the bed of the ten year old child in the house.When the child awoke from his slumber he saw these sharp teeth grinning at him thru a mass of what looked like skin and blood.I think I heard the shriek all the way in India. The poor mouse scampered away. The pretty colour hadn’t worked. The charming smile hadn’t worked. What did these humans want? Maybe a present for the lady of the house seemed like a good idea.
So he went out and found the biggest, juiciest cockroach that he could find. Ecstatic with his find, he quickly scampered back inside where she was cooking in the kitchen. He stood up on his hind legs, with the cockroach in his front paws and nibbled softly on her exposed leg.She turned down and looked at him. Surprise, horror and then plain fear crossed her face within a space of seconds. Without thinking, she started to pour the hot oil on the mouse.
Now mice are nothing if not quick. He got a little burnt but he got away.He was sad. Really sad. His skin was marked. He had been burnt and his confidence had been destroyed. The delicious cockroach was gone too.Shit, it never makes sense to be nice to people in this wretched selfish world.