A story about resilience
Boingy and the Hundred and First Try
Boingy has fallen off the bike a hundred times and this time does not want to get up. A story about the moment resilience runs out.
2 minutes to read aloud · 😢 Sad
Boingy had fallen off the bike one hundred times.
Boingy knew the number, because Winky had been counting, cheerfully, which had been funny for the first forty.
Boingy is the bouncy one. Boingy's whole thing is getting back up. Down, and BOING, back up, every time, so fast that people have started to assume the falling does not hurt.
The falling hurts.
On the hundredth fall, Boingy lay on the grass and did not bounce.
"Come on, Boingy!" called Winky. "Down and BOING!"
"No," said Boingy, to the sky.
There was a rather shocked silence in the garden.
Hopsy came and lay down on the grass next to Boingy, which was an unusual thing to do, and looked at the same sky.
"That's a lot of falling off," said Hopsy.
"A hundred."
"Do you want to stop for today?"
Boingy had not known that was allowed. Boingy had genuinely believed the options were bounce or fail, with nothing in between.
"Can I?"
"You can lie here as long as you like," said Hopsy. "The bike will still be a bike tomorrow."
So Boingy lay on the grass for twenty minutes, being flat, being sore, not bouncing at all. Winky brought a biscuit and sat down too and stopped counting.
The next morning, Boingy got up, wheeled the bike out and did fall number one hundred and one.
And then got back on.
And rode it. All the way to the gate, wobbling like anything, with Winky running alongside screaming.
Here is what Boingy tells fluffs now, and it is not what people expect from the bounciest fluff in Candyfloss Land.
"I've fallen over a hundred times and got up a hundred and one. But the important one was the hundredth, when I didn't get up at all. I needed that one. You can't bounce off a floor you never landed on."
