Smiley the Centipede!

Smiley the Centipede is very sad, because she is the shortest centipede amongst all her friends; she has only 3,479 pairs of feet. Her friends Whine-y and Complain-A-Lot have a lot of pairs of legs than she has. Although she knows she should be happy for her friends, that they have so many pairs of legs, she is still a bit jealous.

“Why is it that Whine-y and Temper-Temper have more legs than me. It’s not fair. Whine-y is always complaining about things; she complains about school, she complains she doesn’t have enough toys, she complains she doesn’t want to eat vegetables, and yet she's got a whopping 12,984 feet. Temper-Temper is always shouting at people, especially when he doesn’t get what he wants. When he is in a temper, he yells and kicks everybody around him. My ears hurt because of him, and he kicked me too. And he's got as many legs as Whine-y. But what about me? I try to be good and patient, but it doesn't pay.

Smiley was very sad, and for once, become un-smiley.

Still, Smiley the Centipede continued to try to be good, to smile and be patient. Not one word of complaint nor any show of bad temper came out from Smiley's mouth. One morning, when he was putting on his shoes to go to school, he realised that 367 shoes were missing! “Mum! I can’t find my shoes. Did you see them? Can you help me please?”

Mum and Smiley looked everywhere but they couldn’t find the missing shoes. “Why Smiley!”, Mum said, “I believe you’ve grown longer!”. We’ll have to go shoe shopping after school today.

But no matter how many times they went shopping, Smiley still kept having missing shoes every morning. On most days, he went to school with shoeless feet, which felt weird, and his friends laughed at him.

One day, Teacher told the class, “I need somebody to help me put these decorations on the ceiling, who’s the tallest centipede here?” And guess who’s name everybody shouted? “SMILEY!” everybody shouted, “Smiley is the longest centipede in the class.” Lo and behold, it was true, Smiley was the longest centipede, even longer than Whine-y and Temper-Temper. In fact, Temper-Temper had become shorter, because he stamped his feet so much his feet were broken. And Whine-y spent so much time complaining, he didn’t exercise, so his feet became weak and he couldn’t walk.

“Oh wow!”, Smiley thought. "Good things do happen to good people after all. Life is fair."

THE END