azwraith,
Billy wasn’t the brightest, but he also wasn’t the dimmest. He was like everybody else, actually – except for one thing: he was very forgetful. He forgets to toast his sandwiches during breakfast. He forgets to turn on the shower before taking a bath. Heck, he even forgot to put his clothes on once before going to school!
Now, it was one sunny day, and Billy was late for school. It shouldn’t matter much, except that every single subject of the day had major tests and quizzes waiting for him and his classmates, so he had to go to school quick! But in his mad rush to get to school, he didn’t realize that he left his bag at home, only noticing it when his classmates pointed it out. As he doesn’t have anything else with him, he asked his classmates for any writing material, yet they all can’t lend anything to him.
Of course, considering that the entire day was filled with consecutive tests, and he had nothing to write with, he failed. Badly. And, of course, his parents heard of it. His father, however, was the one who took it worse.
His father was working out of town as a construction worker, and the news that his son messed up put him in a bad mood for the entire day. He wasn’t able to focus on the ongoing construction, and as he was passing around the materials, he lost his grip on them, sending them down to his coworkers below. They managed to catch them, stumbling into the weaker parts of the scaffolding, sending a huge chunk of it and collapsing on the ground.
One worker got his legs caught while everything was collapsing around him. He was immediately rushed to the hospital, but considering that his legs were outright crushed, and that he cannot afford any prosthetics for them, he was rendered immobile from the waist down for the rest of his life. So of course, he had to go and get a wheelchair to be remotely able to move around town.
Many months later, he was getting used to his new life as a cripple, and while he was out doing errands on a cold winter morning, his wheelchair started slipping around the ice, and down the slope of a hill. At the bottom,children were playing, and as they noticed the poor guy screaming as his wheelchair sped down the hill, they decided to run away in different directions, to avoid getting hit.
One of them just so happened to run across the path of a garbage truck, which was full to the brim with the neighborhood’s trash. And so, the garbage truck swerved over to one side to get out of the kid’s way, but instead it crashed on a telephone pole, knocking it over.
The telephone pole crashed down on a neighbor’s house, into the kitchen. The gas stove got hit and started a fire before the fuel tanks promptly exploded. The entire house managed to catch fire, and considering how close the other houses were to each other, so did they. Not much time had passed before a third of the neighborhood was blazing away. With the fire brigade rushing towards it, an entire morning was spent combatting the flames, until the ruins laysmoldering on the snow.
With an entire third of the local populace displaced, they had to go and seek shelter elsewhere. Thankfully, their neighbors were kind enough to offer them their homes as temporary refuge while those affected either started rebuilding their houses or looked for another place to stay. And despite all that had happened, they still found reason to smile. After all, what’s the point of dwelling on the problems now, when you can try with all your might and succeed over them instead?
Little do they know that it was all because Billy forgot his bag.
Literary: Cascading Events
Billy wasn’t the brightest, but he also wasn’t the dimmest. He was like everybody else, actually – except for one thing: he was very forgetful. He forgets to toast his sandwiches during breakfast. He forgets to turn on the shower before taking a bath. Heck, he even forgot to put his clothes on once before going to school!
Now, it was one sunny day, and Billy was late for school. It shouldn’t matter much, except that every single subject of the day had major tests and quizzes waiting for him and his classmates, so he had to go to school quick! But in his mad rush to get to school, he didn’t realize that he left his bag at home, only noticing it when his classmates pointed it out. As he doesn’t have anything else with him, he asked his classmates for any writing material, yet they all can’t lend anything to him.
Of course, considering that the entire day was filled with consecutive tests, and he had nothing to write with, he failed. Badly. And, of course, his parents heard of it. His father, however, was the one who took it worse.
His father was working out of town as a construction worker, and the news that his son messed up put him in a bad mood for the entire day. He wasn’t able to focus on the ongoing construction, and as he was passing around the materials, he lost his grip on them, sending them down to his coworkers below. They managed to catch them, stumbling into the weaker parts of the scaffolding, sending a huge chunk of it and collapsing on the ground.
One worker got his legs caught while everything was collapsing around him. He was immediately rushed to the hospital, but considering that his legs were outright crushed, and that he cannot afford any prosthetics for them, he was rendered immobile from the waist down for the rest of his life. So of course, he had to go and get a wheelchair to be remotely able to move around town.
Many months later, he was getting used to his new life as a cripple, and while he was out doing errands on a cold winter morning, his wheelchair started slipping around the ice, and down the slope of a hill. At the bottom,children were playing, and as they noticed the poor guy screaming as his wheelchair sped down the hill, they decided to run away in different directions, to avoid getting hit.
One of them just so happened to run across the path of a garbage truck, which was full to the brim with the neighborhood’s trash. And so, the garbage truck swerved over to one side to get out of the kid’s way, but instead it crashed on a telephone pole, knocking it over.
The telephone pole crashed down on a neighbor’s house, into the kitchen. The gas stove got hit and started a fire before the fuel tanks promptly exploded. The entire house managed to catch fire, and considering how close the other houses were to each other, so did they. Not much time had passed before a third of the neighborhood was blazing away. With the fire brigade rushing towards it, an entire morning was spent combatting the flames, until the ruins laysmoldering on the snow.
With an entire third of the local populace displaced, they had to go and seek shelter elsewhere. Thankfully, their neighbors were kind enough to offer them their homes as temporary refuge while those affected either started rebuilding their houses or looked for another place to stay. And despite all that had happened, they still found reason to smile. After all, what’s the point of dwelling on the problems now, when you can try with all your might and succeed over them instead?
Little do they know that it was all because Billy forgot his bag.
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