Mango Tree

My friend told me a story about a mango that I can’t forget. One day, when he was a small boy of the age of nine he got called to his fathers side. His father said to him pointing at an immature mango hanging from the mango tree, “You see that Mango son? That mango will be ripe by the end of the day, and if you don’t pick it before the sun goes down at sunset all the bats will come and start biting that mango, and by morning there won’t be any mango left for us to eat.” When he heard this he responded with confidence to what his father had said, “No panpan, I already climbed that tree this morning, and that mango won’t be ripe today, it’s much to firm to the touch, but that one there,” he said pointing to another mango lower in the tree, “will surely be ready by the end of the day.”

By the end of the day his father was dead; fell from a 70 foot drop while on the job working as a telephone pole repair man. That evening he went back to the mango tree to find the bats picking at the very same mango his father had pointed to, while his mango hung from the tree untouched and still to firm to eat.

He climbed the tree, plucked the unripe mango from the tree and left his fathers mango for the bats to devour in the night. The mango was gone in the morning.