Sandy the elephant and Zoot the dog were, without doubt, the best of pals in the whole wide world. They loved to sit by the river and watch time floating past their little seat.
"We’re never going to agree, are we Sandy?” said Zoot.
“I guess not,” said the elephant. “You know, that sometimes I stand in the middle of people and no one ever listens or even mentions me.”
“That’s a shame,” quipped Zoot.
“You get used to it,” said his pal.
“My mother told me stories, a long, long time ago and she said that the world was flat and that was that. If I ran too near the edge there was a chance I would fall off,” said Zoot with a tear in his eye.
“I don’t want to say anything bad about your mother, but both she and you are wrong. The world is round.” Sandy was adamant about that. “Perhaps she told you that so you wouldn’t leave home?”
“She wouldn’t lie to me, she never did. Her father and mother had also told her the same thing.”
“Yes, but you are a dog, and you can’t see very far, so to you everything is flat,” said Sandy.
Zoot was getting a bit irritated by his friend. “If you and I were the only two creatures who were left alive and then you got hit on the head and died. I would be the only one left, and I would think the world was flat, and so it would be.”
“Just because you said it, wouldn’t make it true.”
“But there wouldn’t be anyone left to argue with me.”
“Still doesn’t make it true. What do think might hit me on the head?” Asked Sandy.
“Maybe something fell out the sky.” Said Zoot.
“Something that was going around the Earth and then fell out of orbit.”
“No. Something that dropped off a cliff on this flat Earth.” Said Zoot. “Okay, so how do you know the world is round?”
“Because when I look out to sea, I can see the horizon. When a ship comes this way you see the top of the mast first before you see the rest of the ship, it makes sense.”
“Not to me,” said Zoot.
“So how are we going to move on from this?” Asked Sandy the elephant.
“Why can’t we both be right? You say what you see. I see it as flat, and you see it as round, and that’s that.” Said Zoot.
“So if I built a ship,” said Sandy, “then you wouldn’t come with me to sail around the world?”
“We would fall off, eventually.”
“But you’ll never know if you never try,” said the elephant.
“Maybe, I’m happy this way,” said Zoot.
“Fair enough, you’re my pal, and that’s good enough for me,” said Sandy.
“What shall we have for lunch?” Asked Zoot.
“Chips?”
“Sounds perfect.”
And the two of them spent the rest of the day eating chips and looking out at a flattish, roundish world, and enjoying what they saw.
bobby stevenson 2019
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