A FAIRY TALE

Once upon a time, and not so very long ago, there lived a man whose name was LIANGWIDJ T. CHING. He had a beautiful daughter called GRAMMARELLA.

LIANGWIDJ T. CHING was very proud of his daughter and he talked about her wherever he went. They were not rich; GRAMMARELLA and her faithful servant, TRANSLATIO, worked very hard. But they were happy. Then everything changed...

People began to recognize LIANGWIDJ T. CHING’s talents. He became a rich man and an eligible marriage prospect. Soon LIANGWIDJ T. CHING married a famous lady whose name was LYN GUISTICS. She had two proud and spoilt daughters called PSYCHO and SOCIO.

After the wedding, things changed dramatically. GRAMMARELLA still did all the work in the household, but she was never allowed to appear in public and LIANGWIDJ T. CHING was forbidden to speak about her. (As for TRANSLATIO, he was locked in the coal shed and all but forgotten). But LIANGWIDJ T. CHING was besotted by the glamor of the lady he had married that he willingly went along with everything.

He gladly paid out for PSYCHO and SOCIO to chase after every new fad and fashion that came on the market. Every fortune-hunter in the land sought his house.

One day the King announced that there would be a grand Communicative Ball. Everyone was invited. The theme of the ball was to be “Creativity”. PSYCHO and SOCIO wanted to be the finest dressed people at the ball, but they were not creative enough to make their own clothes. So poor GRAMMARELLA had to cut and sew their new dresses.

She had no fine clothes of her own, however. She was left alone in her old and shabby clothes, while everyone else went off to the Communicative Ball...

THE END

By TOM HUTCHINSON

NOTE: I don't remember how and where I exactly got this text from, but it made a really nice wrap up at the end of an "Approaches, Methods, and Techniques in ELT" presentation when I was a grad student at METU, Ankara.