PUDDLEWUMPS

One day, it had rained very hard. Lots of puddles had been formed as a result. Suddenly, there was something happening in one of the puddles. A puddlewump had been born. He yawned and stretched and raised up his head to look around. He was very happy to see other puddlewumps looking out from their puddles. They were all so excited, they started jumping up and down, in and out of their own little puddles.

After spending several minutes jumping as high as they could, then diving back into their puddles, they all needed a little rest. During this period, it occurred to each puddlewump simultaneously that they didn’t have their own personal names. So each puddlewump pondered a while, then decided what his name would be. Piff, Girp, Bint and Flot. Murp, Ekel, Lunt and Mrop. Every puddlewump had his own, very individual name.

Deciding on a name got them all energetic again. One by one, they started popping their heads up out of the water. “Hey, I’m Murp!” shouted one of the puddlewumps. “I’m Piff!” shouted another. “I’m Lunt!” “I’m Gilp!” “I’m Snek!” and so on. Then one of the puddlewumps, the one named Bint, got an idea. “If I can jump up out of my puddle (and I CAN jump higher than all the other puddlewumps!), maybe I could jump from my puddle over to Murp’s! After all, Murp’s puddle is right next to mine.” He popped his head out of his puddle and waited for Murp to pop up. The minute Murp appeared, Bint called out, “Hey, Murp. Watch this!” He crouched down into his puddle as far as he could. With all his might, he jumped out of his puddle at just the right angle, then dived down into Murp’s puddle! Murp couldn’t believe it. Neither could any of the other puddlewumps, but once they saw Bint do it, they began to think about trying it themselves. It was silent for a few minutes while they all had slunk back down into their puddles to ponder. (Puddlewumps often quietly ponder about all sorts of things.)

But their quiet time was soon interrupted. Bint wasn’t satisfied with jumping over to Murp’s puddle. During his very short “ponder time”, he considered the idea, “Were I to try a little harder and crouch down far enough, I might be able to jump from one puddle to the next until I’ve been to all of the other puddles.” It didn’t take Bint long to make up his mind. Before Murp knew what was happening, Bint was flying up out of his puddle and diving into Piff’s. Then Flot’s. Then Lunt’s. On he went until he had jumped into every puddle all the way back to his own puddle.

The puddlewumps had gotten so distracted by Bink’s maneuvers that none of them, including Bint, had noticed the sun coming out. By the time they had all settled down again back into their pondering mode, each one of the puddles had gotten much smaller. Now, the sun was beating down and the water was evaporating rapidly. The puddlewumps quickly pondered their short existences and thought to themselves, “If I had only had more time, I might have been able to jump like Bint.” Bint was pondering something else, however. Something quite different from the other puddlewumps. Bint thought to himself as his puddle faded away, “I can’t wait until my next puddlewump life. If I jump high enough, I ought to be able to jump all the way over one puddle and dive into the one next to it. What great fun that will be!”

THE END (is just a new Beginning)