I’m seven years old in this memory. It’s early autumn, and we are practicing the play The And and the Grasshopper by Aesop in the school’s auditorium. The annual students’ performance day is coming up in October, and today is one of our first on-stage practice sessions.
As one of the several Grasshoppers, I stand on the stage with others to go over the final scene – the scene when the winter comes, and the Grasshoppers all collapse on the ground one by one, begging the Ants for help. I’m the first to fall.
“Help!” I call out, falling to my knees and stretching out my right hand. “Please help us!”
The teacher supervising us tells me I have to speak louder.
”Don’t look down, look over there,” she says, pointing at the second-floor railing on the other side of the auditorium. “You’re about to die. The Ants need to hear you. Shout louder!”
So, I shout my plea for help louder. And louder. Next to me, other Grasshoppers also collapse on their knees and speak their final words at their top voices. By the end of the session, our calls for help become quite convincing.
“Good, good!” our teacher claps her hands just as the bell rings, notifying the end of class. “Next time, the Ants will join our practice. For now, you’ve done a great job!”
The class is dismissed, and I start walking toward the backstage, thinking I cannot wait for the next practice, when a faint pain on my knee snags my attention. As I look down, I find something black and sharp caught on my skin… Or under my skin.
“I’ve got a thorn on my knee!” I shriek, now a real call for help.
Everybody around me comes over as well as the two teachers in the room. The thorn is actually a chip of wood coming off of the stage. it must have stuck on my knee when I collapsed on the stage earlier in my performance. It’s thick and firmly embedded in my skin. For a moment, I worry that it may never come out.
Then, one of the teachers brings in a needle and tweezers. She pokes at my skin near the edge of the wood piece with the needle. After a second of pain, the head of the piece comes out, which my teacher quickly pulls at with the tweezers. In a moment, the entire thing comes out of my skin.
“That was a very large wood piece!” exclaims my teacher. “You were unlucky to be caught by it. But now, it’s gone!”
Relieved that my knee is free of any thorn, I walk back to my classroom with others. This day is forever to be remembered, because of the exciting stage practice and the shocking thorn incident.