Week 12 Storytelling: The Two Sons

Deep in the jungle there lives a family of apes. On the outside they seem to be the typical family. The father goes to work every day picking bananas out of trees on the assembly line. The mother stays home with her two precious twin boys. They seem to be an all around normal family. What nobody else sees though is that one of the twins receives more favor than the other. Jake and his twin Blake never really did get along. They fought and wrestled and threw bananas at each other’s heads every chance they got. Somehow, Blake always got away without any punishment, while Jake got banished to the highest spot in the tree.

Baby Apes
FromPixabay

Jake and Blake followed similar paths until they reached the age of college. They needed to learn what kind of jobs they wanted to do so that they didn’t have to work the assembly line like their father. Jake had always excelled at school, while Blake had a little more trouble. This never affected Blake’s grades though, seeing as his mother would just do the work for him. Jake had to learn for himself, and in the meantime he became very independent. This is why when the twins got to college Jake was right at home. He made a ton of friends, and was doing better than ever in all of his classes. Blake on the other hand was failing miserably.

After a few months Blake couldn’t handle the work. He had never had to do so much in his life! He didn’t know how to manage his time or even how to do most of the work at all. He decided he would go home to mommy, and she would fix everything like she always did.

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Two years later Jake was graduating early from college with honors. He had so many job offers he didn’t know which to take. He also had the perfect girlfriend, who was soon to be his wife. His life couldn’t be going better, much to his mother’s annoyance. Blake on the other hand was the complete opposite. He was still living at home, and his mother still babied him to no end. He didn’t have a job, and did not seem to be wanting to get one anytime soon. His mother was getting fed up with him, and couldn’t handle him always being home. She decided it was time for him to leave the nest whether he was ready or not. Blake was kicked out of his home, and was not allowed to return.

In the end Blake ended up scrounging for food, and for places to stay. He never really could function in society because everything had been done for him. He had no work ethic. His brother, Jake, ended up becoming the leader of the tribe, and going down in history for being one of the best. He had taken all of his frustrations of never being good enough, and turned them into success.

Author’s Note: I wrote this story based on The Ape and Her Two Brats. In the original story she favors the one twin, and when terror strikes she puts her favorite under her arm to carry him, and the other on her back. As she heads down the tree her favorite’s head is smashed against a rock, and ends up dying. She is left with the other child. I wanted to take this not so literally, and show that it ended up hurting her to favor the one child. It was worse in the end for the one she loved the most, and she saw that the other went on to succeed despite her own role in holding him back.

Bibliography: An Ape and her Two Brats from Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists by Roger L'Estrange (1692).