Volcano

Volcano
A Simple Tale for Simple People

The people lived and worked on the side of a mountain. One day, the top of the mountain popped off, and hot liquid rock, called "lava," started flowing down the sides of the mountain. When the top of a mountain pops off, and lava starts flowing down the sides of a mountain, the mountain is called a "volcano."

Now, hot, molten rock flowing through your living room is not generally considered a desirable mode of living, and some of the people began to wonder if it wasn't time to move. However, the first "eruption," as the popping off of a mountain top, followed by lava flows, is called was not too serious, and it soon stopped. Besides, moving was too hard, so the people just stayed.

A little later, another eruption followed the first. Then another. Each was larger than the previous one, until eruption became pretty much the natural state of the volcano, and people just picked there way through the lava flows, as best they could.

Finally, one of the people, who was richer than most of her brethren and sistren, said, "Look, it's time to get the heck out of here before we all die."

"Don't listen to her!" cried some of the other people. "She's rich! She can't sympathize with us poor folk!"

And so the people were angry at the presumption of the rich woman and boiled to death in the next eruption. How empathetic she was is unknown.