The wooden block’s tale

Wooden Block

The wooden block woke with a shock. He’d been daydreaming because no one had played with the bricks for a long time.

But now, Ben was tipping them all out on the floor. “Let’s play a block game,” he said to Jake. “A sort of competition.”

A competition? Wooden Block was excited. That sounded fun. He hoped he would be part of the winning building.

Jake and Ben started sorting Wooden Block and his friends into six piles. Wooden Block was small and square, so he was put with the others like himself. Long ones went in one place, thin ones in another – and when they were all sorted, there was a pile of funny shaped ones left: triangles, curves and arches.

“We’ll put them all together in one group,” said Ben.

Then they gave each group a number and rolled two dice. Wooden Block found out that when they rolled a three, they took a brick like himself. He liked being number three and was soon picked up and put into Jake’s building.

It was a very odd building because Ben said you had to build with the bricks you won. Wooden Block was laughing to himself because their buildings became wobbly and crooked!

“DONE!” shouted Jake soon afterwards.

But before you could say “bricks are brilliant”, Jake and Ben had chucked puppets at them and knocked them flat.

Wooden Block was a bit bruised, and lay there on the floor, fighting to get his breath back.

But he couldn’t lie there long. Ben said they’d to build ALL the blocks into one huge, tall building as fast as they could. “Bigger and better! Get going!” he shouted.

Wooden Block found himself placed level with Jake’s knees – and the building grew higher and higher as Ben added an arch, a tall straight block and two small fat bricks on top of him.

He looked up and saw that the building was now as tall as Jake’s shoulders. He felt it start to wobble.

“Oh dear,” he said to the wooden arch above him. “It’s a long way to fall down and I feel battered and bruised already.”

The arch said, “It’s better than staying in that boring box all day while the other toys have fun.”

Wooden Block wanted to nod to show he agreed, but he knew that if he did, they would all fall down right then.

When Ben stretched up to put the last brick on the building, Wooden Block held his breath – he knew Ben and Jake were about to topple them over with a crash!

But then Jake said, “Let’s see if we can take them apart, one at a time, without knocking them down.”

“Great idea!” said Ben. “We’ll put them to bed in tidy rows.”

And that’s what they did.

Wooden Block had to wait a long time for his turn, and he was very sleepy by the time they laid him next to a row of long thin blocks. But the knocking noises of the other bricks coming into the box kept him awake a bit longer.

Just long enough to hear Ben say, “Good night, wooden blocks. We had a brilliant time with you today.”

Wooden Block dreamt all night of wonderful buildings, large and small – and in all of them, someone had placed him over the main doorway where everybody could admire him!

The moral of this tale is that people don’t always do what you expect.