Moral Short Story – The Wallflower
Photo credit: yli from morguefile.com
The happiest student in St. Xavier’s College after the first two weeks, was Rohan. He was no more ignored, like in his school. He was no more a guy who everyone hesitated from speaking to. In one word : He was no more a ‘wallflower’.
Suddenly, Rohan’s thought wandered back to his unhappy schooldays.
“You can’t jump over that? Even Rohan can jump over it. He-he!” one of his classmates teased another. The origin of this phrase traced back to Rohan’s high jump attempt last year, when he went beneath the jump bar afraid to make an attempt. But absolutely no one, bothered to notice that his knee was injured and he didn’t bother to say anything in his defense. Afraid of making any more blunders, Rohan avoided participating in any athletics events from then on. It also became a customary practice among his classmates to end a taunt with an ‘Even Rohan can do that’ phrase.
Rohan’s shyness and his classmates’s ignorant attitude meant that his hidden talents went unrecognized. Rohan was not interested in cracking jokes, playing the hero or any other method of that sort, used by his classmates for attention-seeking. So his classmates took this to be his inability to socialize. His low level of popularity led to his classmates not recommending his name to teachers for any co-curricular activity.
His least favorite period was P.T.. This was not another cooked-up story by his classmates. Rohan was talented in some sports, but those were not football and basketball. But, football and basketball were all that his classmates played during the P.T. period. An opinion from an ignored nerd was not going to change anything. Rohan possessed a timid voice and so his classmates had to bring their ears very close to his mouth. What they hated the most was that after thrusting their ears very close to his mouth he would speak about some stupid newspaper report or some other geeky stuff. This resulted in his classmates boycotting Rohan, when he approached them. When the boys spoke about movies, they asked Rohan to leave, as they thought that a nerd like him, was unfit to hear their exciting conversations. There was nothing left for Rohan to look forward to, at school, except studies and that just strengthened his claim to fame as a nerd.
A pat on his back form a college-mate snapped Rohan back to reality. Now he had four interesting years of college, to look forward to. Rohan had entered the cricket team and was the main keyboardist in a band that his friends had formed. Here he was not a misfit or a boring nerd and above all : here he was not a WALLFLOWER!
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