Once Upon a Time...

Back to 1990s, when I was 4 or 5 years old, my favourite bedtime story was "Sweet Porridge". I love to eat porridge so one day, while eating my porridge, my mum told me the story about porridge. It is a story about a poor little girl who lived with her mother. They are so poor until had nothing to eat. One day, the poor little girl went into the forest and met an aged woman. She was aware of her sorrow and gifted her a little pot, which when she said, 'cook, little pot, cook', it would cook good, sweet porridge, and when she said, 'stop little pot', it ceased to cook. The girl took the pot home, to her mother and soon, they were freed form their poverty and hunger and ate sweet porridge almost everyday.

One day, that girl went out. Her mother ordered the pot to cook. 'Cook, little pot, cook'. It did cook and cook while she ate and ate until she was satisfied. Then, she wanted the pot to stop cooking, but did not know the word. So the pot went on cooking the porridge rose over the edge, and stil

l cooked on until the kitchen and whole house were full and then, the next house and then the whole street, just as if i wanted to satisfy the hunger of the whole world. There is no one know how to stop it. At last, the girl came home and just said stop, little pot, it stopped.

The funny part was after that, the pot gave up cooking after that because it has done a lot of cooking and whosoever wish to return to the town had to eat his way back!

Above all stories I heard during my childhood years, this story is I think the best. Bec

ause I love to eat porridge so much, I sometime wished that I would met the woman that can give me a pot which can cook. As I grow older, my hope slowly fades away because I started to realize there are no such thing in real life.

As a teacher to be, some day I want to share this story to my students. I wish they will learn moral values in the story. In life, we have to struggle even for a bowl of porridge. They also can learn when things easily come to us, we forgot to show our appreciation. This text is very suitable as children story because besides the moral values, it also has a lot of humorous part.