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Give It a Second Thought

An American Indian tells about a brave who found an eagle's egg and put it into the nest of a prairie chicken. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All its life, the changeling eagle, thinking it was a prairie chicken, did what the prairie chickens did. It scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat. It clucked and cackled. And it flew in a brief thrashing of wings and flurry of feathers no more than a few feet off the ground. After all, that's how prairie chickens were supposed to fly.

Years passed. And the changeling eagle grew very old. One day, it saw a magnificent bird far above in the cloudless sky. Hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, it soared with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

"What a beautiful bird!" said the changeling eagle to its neighbor. "What is it?"

"That's an eagle - the chief of the birds," the neighbor clucked. "But don't give it a second thought. You could never be like him."

So the changeling eagle never gave it a second thought and it died thinking it was a prairie chicken.

The Christophers
Bits & Pieces
Economics Press

Okay, it's not exactly like Aladdin but there was the whole "diamond in the rough vibe" even though the poor bird didn't have a happy ending. So maybe this means he was more like Iago.

And this one isn't Aladdinish although maybe I can imagine Genie doing something similar. It's not as good as the first though.

Then Do It

Novelist Sinclair Lewis was supposed to deliver an hour-long lecture to a group of college students who planned to be writers. Lewis opened his talk with a question:

"How many of you really intend to be writers?"

All hands went up.

"In that case," said Lewis, "my advice to you is to go home and write."

With that, he left.

Bits & Pieces - March 1997
Economics Press