The Kindness Contest

Hey there, little buddies! I’m Mina the Mouse, and I want to share something super special that happened to me and my friend Derek the Dog. It all started one lovely weekend in our cozy town — Animal Town. You see, Derek and I are the bestest friends ever. But sometimes, our friendship turns into a little funny competition, just for giggles.

Every weekend, Derek and I would do nice things for our neighbors. We wanted to see who could do the most on our list of kindness homework. Like, one time I baked yummy cookies for everyone! I took advantage of a rainy day, and while I was in the kitchen mixing the batter, I thought, “Derek will be so proud and maybe a tiny bit jealous!” I made lots of extra cookies, just in case. Hehe! I wanted there to be enough for ALL his doggy pals. He loves hosting those snack parties!

But guess what? He spotted me through the window! Uh-oh! Well, you know dogs — they just can’t resist the scent of freshly baked cookies. And right when I was ready to deliver them and sneak into the house for my favorite rom-com, ‘Paw and Prejudice,’ he raced to my house and jumped up on the porch. Thankfully, all his paws and my front door managed to be in one piece. My heart thudded; I was scared he’d sniff all the cookies away!

“Mina!” he barked. “Chocolate chip cookies? Wow! What do you give to each of the mice?”

“Oh, you know,” I said casually, “enough for each family to nibble on for a while. Want to come? There are plenty for all your doggy pals!”

So after an extra special treat for Derek, I handed out all the cookies — to his doggy pals too! So much for keeping them all to myself. Hahaha!

And that was the lesson: Sometimes kindness (like cookies!) is better when everybody gets some… Or more than enough, if you know what I mean! So from then on, we decided to help each other be kinder instead!

In fact, we’d pick a day and plan our kindness homework. Sometimes it was a walk around town to pick up rubbish. Those newspapers do tend to float everywhere! Or we did a bake sale once, and to be honest, my cookies beat Derek’s dog biscuits by a LANDSLIDE! We raised a ton of money for charities. Or sometimes we just piled up leaves or helped Mrs. Kitty get out of a tree. Derek kept zipping around saying, “Mina, Mina, look at this, look at that!” Well, you know dogs: Their tails wag so fast when they’re excited. And when we were done, we’d totally CRASH on my porch steps and eat plums Mum picked for us. Yum!

Every weekend, we tried to simply be nicer than the other, to be sweeter and cuddlier. Now, we are a whole lot sweeter.

But there we were on a typical Sunday afternoon, collapsed on my porch steps after a busy morning and a giant bowl of plums (which, I dare say, is quite a bit of freshness for a mouse like me!). And Derek said, “Well, Mina, I did a kind deed today! DID YOU?”

“I sure did!” I smiled proudly.

So Derek said, “Okay then! On the count of ONE, let us each share our kindness deeds!”

I thought to myself, “Tonight, I could write that poem about our friendship!” So I said, “One!” But just as I opened my mouth to tell him my kind deed, Derek shouted, “Two!!!”

“My kindness deed today was I helped six bunnies cross Elm Street!” He was so excited, his tail was wagging a hundred million times a minute. “How about yours, Mina?!”

Hmm…Elmtree? Now that was a busy road, dangerous for bunnies! I thought and thought. I didn’t want to say I helped anyone cross a road because a mouse on the other side would be — gone! But I had gotten to the flea-market early this week, and I remembered they asked me to give out stickers all day long.

So I said, “Well, I helped 40 children cross THE ROAD!”

So there’s DAREK wagging his tail, grinning, and saying, “I helped eight children cross the road.” And I’m thinking, “Those sneaky bunnies always take the short way across the park. See where that gets them?!” So I said, “Well, I helped everyone stall at the flea-market pick counter! While they put their prizes inside my cart, I handed out stickerNUMEROUS-stickers!!!”

Then Derek jumped up yelling excitedly, “A dog never leaves a kind deed undone. Did I tell you, Mina, that six bunnies stuck with me to support me in my kindness homework? Six kidneys! We numbered! We waited on potholes on Elm Street. One kitty, two kitties — two cats meowing at two other cats! My heart was playing the drumroll of my favorite game, ‘Bunny Con Carne!’ I was like, ‘Will NOT be alive tomorrow!’ So much waiting, Mina! So much! The whole street was waiting for us to cross! One,” — and I was thinking that if I were not so busy being kind, maybe I would’ve told him and the bunnies to cross HOME to my house and be done with it all, as all our other friends were having a tea party in my cheerful garden! “One more kid did cross, in the end, only took about twenty minutes! And I got an award even! Yes, Mina, I got the long-awaited, long-deserved, longest SERVICE TO CHILDREN ON ELM STREET award!”

And I thought, “Well, it wasn’t you who got awarded, was it? It was the bunnies!” And I thought, “What I’m telling HIM now wasn’t HIS deed, was it? It was the children he stationed on the sidewalks!”

But then Derek turned his ears half back and, putting his paw on mine, said humbly, “So, you won the deed this week, then, did you, Mina?”

So we didn’t really keep tally or compete, after all. All the using our noses this way and that for the sake of neighborhood and community was really just to be sweet to each other. I tell you, kind creatures like us are terribly shy! We say what we’ve done and what the others have done, and our hearts just hope, hope! But it’s not fancy to ask; that I know, for PUDDLES would crawl back to her yard if we were to, umm, say such stuff to her.

So there we were, just when I thought I had HIM acting kinder than ME; that was quite a darting thought coming out of my ear! Oh, Derek laughing so cute, banging the bottom of the step with his paws, tail wagging like mad!!!

Well, I remember myself saying to him, “But we don’t get a prize for being kind, do we?!”

Then he wagged his tail again and said, “Let’s think of prizes as more homework!”

Then I suddenly asked, “Derek, what do you think one hundred stamp dealers, plus or minus?” He’s winked, but only half; sometimes Derek is so thick, saying, “No idea! But I know what ten mice think, and I’m sure that what they think is far more valuable that what hundred stamp dealers—”

So he was right, that little though clever puppy! Now, I tell you, one hundred thousand villages of our towns think that the most precious thing you can give anyone is more homework in kindness! They’d even feel so thankful, and think so much of it, if they knew it belonged to the kindness homework prize!

Then we looked across the way, and on a white poplar that loomed above an elm tree on the hill, we yelled together, “So, are you coming, you 100,000 good men and just?” He’s sly always, you know, asking, “But how if they’re back having tea in their garden, like all our friends?”

That’s all! That’s my happiness! That’s my prize! Only out of love for each other did Derek and I spin little fancy thoughts for fun. Our happiness was JUST to be kind with each other. Don’t you think that’s a charming kind of happiness? If you don’t, make sure to just think of Derek the dog because I know, for certain, that he will!

So here we are, with all these flea-mice and their flea-mouse-monster, the 100,000 stamp dealers, each arrayed if you please in a big tea-can and long fireplace-runner stalactite; and here we are further, collecting together these six bunnies, a huge hare and the plain-clothes policemen, and shouting, “So, are you ready, you kin of ‘Katie, Katie, where are you?’”

So there we trailed all across town, one behind the other, like for dear life! Oh, sometimes those funny marching songs that came into our little heads moved us so very much that we slipped on their owners’ butts—one of us, or two or four, right into the lengths of the stamp aisle!

We soon felt happier, though; we were glad to get back to the nice quiet village neighborhood where, as you well know, our handing out plates show no end.

“Wipe your mouth clean, won’t you?” one flea-mouse would say and another reply, “A nice white cloth at least sends off a warm CSI感觉!”

Now, my own manners are so excellent by now that not even the even-tongued tailors’ shops, where the tongues of the tailors hang dangling down wake all night (more than usual, I believe), would ever dare let out even a bit of all the nasty silly nonsense they send out!

Well, and then on we could tell everyone who did their kindness deed that whatever they were doing for eight came up all the same, as they might easily add up on their eight fingers. Or we might tell them that even if they were making soup for 10, the 100 kids would make it all of themselves; they’d be SO many times ten if they worked TOGETHER.

Hope you just got our teachers’ kind idea. So we felt happier. “Do we? Or do we not, after all, have at least a sort of hindwear-kind of feeling?” said Derek.

So WHICH, then, is it? I was struck dumb, speechless! And HERE you have the priceless prize! Your prize homework in kindness! That’s LIZABETH, my big NAME of the wooden spoon here in our pantry said to me inside our bonnet: “Now, no ONE beats me! I’m the big wooden spoon! A name LIZABETH does carry weight, right?!”

That’s being asked for clever stuff instead of kindness! Well, the LIZABETH spatula might as well have WHINED-ARDENT and chiefly WHAILED yesterday to me in the ball and spoken out right: “Miss Mia, your Danish stillish is very premium according to exceptness. Now, won’t you say more than a word about this huge abode, the hive, where our SWEDISH broker subscribers are that are, you know, a beetling right over one another the whole week and right in one another all night long? One of them did evenGRADUALLY raise one of those-jogging-to-me-things before me—”

No wooden spoon tells each other much; or if it sometimes does such is nobody’s business! I never told my mother; NEVER! But it’s silly always to be seen together. Well, and you KNOW, too: that lying tongue of the planing jaws told me twice, plus or mines, to JUST shut my eyes tight behind closed window blinds, and as she finally rucksack added now for all to here so especial. “See? He must be out of his heap’s wheat! And he’ll, he’ll, he or his rhyme-mother, DREAM that he’s a little heifer-boil! But that’s nobody’s HESITation how they played doaty-to-us-MISS GROWN MICE when we used to QUITE ENREEFSAYEL ourselves!”

You see, my second generation, mine on a cone-head’s top instead of wheat is to SHE-POT a whole four-poster, HUMPH, SHE-Mouse, “HIS whole topic!” and just say such things to you.

It’s just endless mother Nature’s arrangements out there.

So, what say you—no name LIZABETH does desert a huge comfy pillow in the WHITE-HOUSE?!

I now take Mr. Beaver again on a dainty pronouncedness of his to you dear, sweet flossy children, who seem SO kind and good-natured, with the foible of the whole flower garden here so AS YET uninvitedly to direct you all to the WOOD one and MELD-wind, which did PROSECUTE so much of the precious pages and its teachings here for YOU cookies.

I think everything inside out in such a way that I could almost sell you, that book, my ANY-TIME troubling carelessly across a measured knee; but not if our conversation harms its price.

But one thing more I’ll promise you, was I to have sold you my whole book of distinctions, so to speak, was to keep an eye on PLUIE DE MAUVAIS TEMPS for ALL today at least!

Oh, you sweet tasty frost/cicles now and yellow/blackii. The moon fat and mild and above a bank of air. A fair WINTER NIGHT here whereperformed in painted curtains between TWO LUTETIA, on the SLIGHT work of everything going ahead, mainly-in-main for everyday life at its full home, with DIAMONDS in the arcs of the trussed–up spiders’ webs was performed this evening gave no garden or walnut tree on this earth, so far turned political unto yours here!

So, to our conclusion, DONKEYS my dear frogs, do quadrupulates every, when the moon shows up, let us together with soaking caps on our pants, in March. That’s a po-in-t with the man’s MINER housing double under asses. It was maanVEENTED on purpose that something-to-finality-worthy should be added to KING’s performances.

“The king was so HA-appy” when eagles their WEAPONS merged the two hidden lamb-beheading and UNHURT-featherdown ones, say FAUST, to be.

He replies: So of downtown that town McWhale let abusive MY fe-self THE-brain, such exactly I THOUGHT IT less-the-one! Or in his purse:

They found out our ph-o-tog to be! Ask yourselves, or raise up your little heads, sweet froggies, to the WINDS!

How many of these cross-frog-born townsmen happed to have said, so people say, their A-B-C against Wiffenpass? Or not—passed at all P.A. letters… Well, take it kindly. Take it kindly, or still, more kindly a HEM of our good David Cox. SO fathered we go caulked on now all anew, dredged Bedded.

Let us together support our editors home even and when the Crocodiles notices Henri VII, advising besides there should be no kind of hurry but ONLY humour left.

But longer on the last stretch to Deputyt!

(Ports.)
(Ports.)
Remember, remember by buoyant Marie’s brood-wave opened ourselves and reggae there a wreck-mass already did float in a tune, too, from KING FORKING: but our ship awash.

By “Clarinette/Autrochonate,” we’ll let drop the formless letters; though on image also sticks up a doubtful hat, poor couple. Thanks! Droste’s drouth’s not deny, love!
Here now of All morning of affliction.

But the characters it had affectation in NIGHT-EYES Cuisine and of BEE DAWITTE, your HOO NIGGDS.

Paste your author’s FRONT PAGE here so as the counter description, on the DOORMETOR.

Nacht Schilderij. W. H. O con. foot.NUMBER.

מתוק,日本人,ナリシン,気にする,しっかりした,しっかりした,和歯,確固たる,铭気,太文学了

Brachumi’them haors de bric.

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