The Sleepy Town of Hootsville by EJ Patterson (best books under 200 pages txt) 📖

The town of Hootsville is a very sleepy town. Nothing ever happens, nothing ever moves. Sometimes, every so often, someone would peek out their foggy windows and peer into the deserted streets, as if waiting for a visitor that was never to come.
Once, the tired town was flooded with visitors and tourists from all around. The town square was always bustling with people, dogs, cats, and birds. From all around the globe people would drive there to see the panoramic mountains and fields. Everyone in the town would talk of topics from political events to the weather. Children would buy rainbow lollipops for only a penny, and lick them while watching the mimes and circus performer’s dance in the streets.
Mothers, aunts, and grandmothers would meet in the shops and sewing clubs to gossip and swap recipes with other mothers, aunts, and grandmothers. The fathers, uncles, and grandfathers would talk lightly of weather or political matters, as men in those days did. Mr. President shouldn’t be president because of some political reason involving illegal importations, or maybe the Mayor’s wife was caught it a scandalous situation, and to the men, this was called political talk, but to every other resident of the happy town, this was called man-gossip.
The boys and girls, children no more yet not adults, would gather at the school house for long conversations about absolutely nothing imparticular. Afterwards, the girls would giggle and talk in hushed tones of secret admirers while the boys practiced baseball and also, in hushed tones, talked of their own secret loves.
And at night, all the families and friends who lived in the village would gather in the town square for hotdogs, potato salad, and strawberry ice cream. After supper, they would all look up at the sky in awe at the colorful fireworks that would light up the sky…and everyone was very, very, happy.
But one day, something happened. Something tall and lumbering tumbled from the vast minds of the day’s greatest thinkers…something started growing in the soil of the people, and the people didn’t realize it until it was too late. They were skeptical at first, wary of the ideas sprouting from the ground and from the thinker’s minds. Wary of change.
Don’t fret, the thinker’s would say, waving a big hand over all the towns people. This is good. Good for you and for the entire world.
So the people nodded and stepped back, allowing the ideas to burst up out of the ground one by one, slowly, through time, damaging their glorious fields and mountains. The little girl who once kissed her grandmother on the cheek was now kissing the giant, black shiny shoes of the government. The fireworks were no longer blazing up high in the sky, but flashing across every child’s wide eyes from a large metal box.
No more sewing clubs. No, much more important matters than sewing clubs.
No more secret admirers, no; every one was out for every single person to see. If so and so was fond of so and so, well, then let’s pick them up by their collars and drop them in front of a mechanical priest-bam!-and they’ll live happily ever after.
Well, they’ll live.
But how could one live in such an emotion-less town? The once green, flowery, and happy town was now the gray, hard, and deserted town it is today. No one has dared slip from the town’s cold, tight grasp again. The people, it seems, are much, much safer in a town where nothing ever happens then in a town where everything happens.
So continue peering out those dirty, dank windows. Just keep on pressing the “off” button when something unfortunate happens in the large box. Because there’s no “off” button in this program. This show has been running for as long as time-longer then their big black box or their shiny shoes. One day, the big box will collapse and die, and then what? One day, they’ll have to open up their rusty doors and take a tentative step out. They may not have their normal shows on anymore, but this show will never end.
This show is called life, and there is no off button.

Text: http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&rlz=1C2GGGE_enUS440US455&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=S9F5FngzoCHr1M:&imgrefurl=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/g
Publication Date: 11-05-2011

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Dedication:
To all the people who watch the skies instead of what is playing on the large box!