The Football Who Hated Being Kicked
James just wanted a football story one bath time.
One upon a time, there was a football called Steven. He hated being kicked around.
During football practice one day, he thought about it. “I know I shouldn't really mind being kicked, after all I am a football, it's just that I seem to get kicked much more often and much harder than the other balls.”
So Steven decided that he would hide. The next week at football practice, he made sure that he was lying right at the bottom of the big bag of footballs in which he lived. Sure enough, when the players took some balls out to practice with, he was left behind at the bottom with a few other spare balls.
“That's better!” he thought to himself, as he watched all the other balls being kicked around (sometime very hard, he noticed) through the netting on the side of bag.
The next week at practice, the same thing happened, and again he watched happily as the other balls got kicked around, while he just sat and watched.
The following week, though, he felt just a tiny bit sad. The players had taken out almost all the balls, leaving just Steven and a couple of old wrinkled balls, the sort with cracked leather and faded colours. They didn't talk much, so Steven felt lonely and left out. He gave a sigh, by letting some of the air inside him escape.
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It was same the week after. Again, it was just Steven and the unwanted balls left behind in the bag. He let out an even bigger sigh. And so it went on until the end of the football season. Then, the coach had to sort through all the equipment before it was packed away until the next season.
As he was sorting through the balls, he saw Steven and noticed how small and wrinkled he was.
“This one must have a puncture,” he said, because he did not know that footballs could sigh and lose their air.
He tossed it to the side where the dustbins were. Steven suddenly realised that when the dustbins were emptied, he would be taken to the landfill site and buried in the ground – never to be kicked again. He felt terribly sad.
Just then, some of the players came running up.
“Coach,” they shouted, “we've lost our ball! Have you got a spare one we can borrow for the summer?”
“Well, not really, I can't give you one of the club balls, but there's that tatty old one by the rubbish you can have if you like. I was only going to throw it away."
So the players took the ball home, where they tried pumping it up. They were very pleased when it didn't go down again and they decided to keep it.
Steven was delighted. He now lived in a house, so the players always cleaned him up if they played with him in the mud, and he had lots of other interesting toys to talk to. The players did kick him around, but not too much and not too hard, and after all he was a football.
“Maybe,” he thought to himself, “I don't hate being kicked quite so much as I did!” and took a big deep breath of contentment.