The Football & The Vase

The vase sat upon the mantelpiece and glimmered in the summer sunlight. The muddy old football sat within a corner of the living room floor where a boy had dropped it.

The vase thought itself something very special because it glittered and was beautifully carved from the finest crystal and was made to hold beautiful flowers and placed high up so that all could admire it.

The football, on the other hand, thought the vase was terribly conceited.

“What good are you?”, asked the football to the vase, “You are just for show. You are not really useful but I am used to play games with”.

The vase laughed and her laughter was like tinkling crystal, “You!”, she said, haughtily, “You get kicked about in the muck and mud, you dirty old thing. You are just a child’s toy whereas I am a thing of really refined beauty. In fact, I might even say that I am more beautiful than the flowers I hold because they always wilt and die while my beauty glimmers on”.

“I know those flowers well”, said the football, “They grow among all that muck and mud and are happy there until some cruel gardener snips them from their home and sticks them in a cold, cruel crystal prison”.

“Nonsense”, said the vase, tinkling again with laughter, “It is an honour for any flower to be seen within such an exquisite vase. You have no aesthetic appreciation”.

However, as the vase was laughing, a strong gust of wind blew in from an open window and knocked the vase from the high mantelpiece and, as it fell, because it was very fragile, it shattered upon a marble fireplace, breaking into twenty pieces and, as it lay broken upon the floor it wept and sobbed.

“Oh, you may laugh now ball”, said the shattered vase, sadly, “You who are so tough and take knocks and kicks and bounce whenever you fall. I am broken now and ugly and useless”.

But the ball did not laugh. Infact, the ball was very sad to see the crystal vase shattered in pieces because, secretly, he had always thought that she was very pretty even though a bit conceited and so, in an act of self-sacrifice, the ball rolled over onto the sharp shards of the vase’s shattered body and punctured itself so that it made a small tear in its own round body that would let out all the air within it then, with a sigh, the football deflated and lay flat beside its broken friend.

Now, both could have been lost and swept into the rubbish bin as broken things but, luckily, their owners still loved them and glued the vase back together while the ball was patched up and refilled with air.

The vase, however, though she’d been put back together was not happy, “Look at me!”, she said, crying when she caught sight of herself in a living room mirror, “I’m all full of cracks. I’m all ugly
now”.

“Not to me, you’re not”, said the football, which cheered the vase up somewhat.

Then, later, the vases owner bought a new oriental, porcelain vase and gave it pride of place on the mantelpiece while putting the old, cracked crystal vase on the windowsill but the crystal vase didn’t mind, because now it could look out of the window and see the beautiful flowers growing in the earth, which it now thought to be far more beautiful than any man made thing, and best of all,
it could see its friend the football being kicked about in the back garden, having lots of fun with the children.