Ah! Good morning once again! Thank you for coming to visit! It is time once again for Sunday Griot. There’s coffee and bagels in the back, and a warm fire up front. Come, sit, and learn how what seems to be a curse . . . can be a blessing.
One day the farmer’s son came home leading a colt. Don’t ask me how he got the colt. You can’t always know everything about a story. The farmer asked around to make sure the colt didn’t already belong to somebody else, then eventually told his son he could keep the colt. His son was about 15, old enough to not need the lecture about how he had to take care of the colt and exercise and brush him and the whole bit, but he got it anyway.
His neighbors marveled at the son’s good fortune. “Your son was mighty lucky to find such a horse!” the people said.
“Maybe,” the farmer replied. “But what seems to be a blessing, can also be a curse.”
The man’s neighbors rolled their eyes. He was always saying stuff like that! He was like a fortune cookie with a plow.
Well, as the colt grew it needed to eat more and more, as horses do, and the buying of food and gear for the horse took up what little spare money the man and his son had.
“That horse is gonna eat you out of house and home,” the neighbors said.
“Maybe,” the farmer said. “But what seems to be a curse, can also be a blessing.”
The neighbors rolled their eyes again.
The colt grew into a fine horse, and eventually the son took him to the fair in Decatur where the horse won a prize. He made some money racing, and started collecting some stud fees.
“You’ve got a lucky son there,” the neighbors said. “He’s raised himself a fine horse.”
“Maybe,” the farmer said. “But what seems to be a blessing, can also be a curse.”
He’d long since gotten used to the rolling eyes.
One day the son was riding back from one of the neighbor’s farms when — again, don’t ask me how, because you can’t know everything about a story — the horse fell on top of the son’s leg, breaking it in several places. The doctor set it as best he could, but told the farmer the leg would take a long time to heal, and it was likely the son would have a limp the rest of his life.
“That’s terrible news,” people told the farmer. “Too bad about your son.”
Of course they knew he was going to say, “Maybe, but what seems to be a curse, can also be a blessing.”
By then war had broken out between the Union and the Confederacy, and it didn’t pass by the farmer’s little town. One day in February of 1862 a recruiter for the Confederate army came through looking for men to fight for the South. Every single young man from the town signed up, except for the farmer’s son, who still couldn’t walk.
Every single young man who signed up from that town died at the battle of Shiloh. The only one left was the farmer’s son. People knew then what the farmer meant. Sometimes, what seems to be a blessing can be a curse, and what seems to be a curse, can be a blessing.
I was going to do a different story this week. (That’s been happening a lot lately.) But then during the week while I was looking around the web for something else I found storypage.com, the website of a California storyteller named Joel ben Izzy. He’s one of those lucky so-and-sos who can travel around the world swapping stories with people and come back with richer and better stories to tell. (He also has stories about himself to tell. There’s an excerpt from his book The Beggar King And The Secret Of Happiness on his website. Just enough to get you hooked.) He has a version of this story set in China. I’d heard a similar story a while back, and it struck a chord with me. Someone — I wish I could remember who now — posted not long ago about how maybe Kerry losing wasn’t such a bad thing after all, because now the would-be theocrats are overreaching and maybe the man in the street will start seeing them for the power-hungry, money-grubbing fascists they’re proving themselves to be. (But tell me, OMIR, how do you really feel?)
What seems to be a curse, can also be a blessing. I had my story for this week. I changed the locale to the American south because I’d already done a story set in China not that long ago, and off I went.
This week’s Sunday Griot contains a bit of an experiment. Not in the story itself, but in its presentation. I recorded the story as an audio file to see how it comes across. Have an MP3 player ready and go to this link: What seems to be a curse can be a blessing. Either left-click on it to open it in your browser if your browser can handle MP3 files, or right-click it and save it to your machine to play on your iPod, Winamp or other audio player of your choice. (Warning: It’s about 3 MB, so it could take a few minutes if you’re on a dial-up connection.) Mac users, you probably know what to do, and if you don’t, ask. Someone will know.
Thanks for coming by! And as always, thanks for your support, and have a great week.
Wonderful, wonderful story. I’m sending it to some family members who will want to read it now.
Spread these stories around! That’s what they’re here for. The more people who get to read and hear them, the better.
Great story, and I really liked the MP3 file of it too.