The Rude Boy

Stories for Another Day

Once there was a boy who was very, very rude. When he was a baby he was the sweetest little thing, and everyone who saw him smiled and said, “What a darling!” and wanted to kiss him all over. When he was a toddler, just learning to walk, he was so cute that his mother couldn’t help picking him up all the time and cuddling him and covering him with kisses. His father used to take him for rides on his shoulders just so the neighbours could see what a fine young son he had.

But when he was four or so, something got into him and he started behaving very badly. One day when his mother asked him to pick up his toys, he said, “No! I won’t!” She was shocked, but he rather enjoyed it, so he kept on being rude. In fact, he got ruder and ruder.

When his mother said, “It’s time for bed, Jeremy dear,” he said rudely, “You can’t tell me what to do!” and when his father told him not to speak to his mother like that, he said, “I can do whatever I want!”

He was even rude to his grandmother. When she said, “Eat up your yummy vegetables, Jeremy, they’re very good for you,” he said, “What would you know?”

At school he was even worse. He had no friends because he was always calling them names like “Dumb-head,” and “Horse-face” so no-one wanted to play with him. Whenever his teacher asked him to do something like get out his books or put his pencil down, he said, “You’re not the boss of me!” or “I don’t have to if I don’t want to!” His teacher didn’t want the other children to think that this was acceptable behaviour so she sent him to the principal’s office.

The principal knew that Jeremy was a very rude little boy, so she left him to sit outside the office on a chair while she attended to more important business. Jeremy didn’t mind at all, because it meant he got out of doing hard things in class like maths, which he hated. To this day he hasn’t got the faintest clue about decimals or long multiplication.

When the principal finally did see him, she tried to look kindly at him and she said, “Now, Jeremy, you know I don’t like having to speak to you like this. Being rude is not a very nice way to behave, is it? Don’t you think you could try to be a little bit more thoughtful and kind?”

Jeremy actually poked his tongue out at the principal, and said, “This school is stupid, and you’re stupid!”

The principal sighed and said, “It might be best if you spend some time by yourself with a book or a puzzle, to try to calm down. When you’re feeling more like yourself, you can go back to class.”

Jeremy was already feeling exactly like himself, so he went back to his class and was just as rude all over again. He hadn’t done his homework, because whenever his father said, “Jeremy, you’d better do your homework,” Jeremy always answered back, “No way! You do it yourself!”

He tried to copy it from a girl who always did her homework, and did it very neatly. The girl said, very nicely, “Please don’t copy my homework, Jeremy.”

Jeremy answered very rudely, “Who’d want to copy from a dumb-head like you?” The girl was used to Jeremy talking like this so she just closed her book and looked the other way, but the teacher sighed and said for the tenth time already that day, “Now, Jeremy, please speak more kindly to the other children.”

Jeremy said to the teacher, “Why do you have to pick on me all the time, you big meanie?”

Some bears who were passing by outside, heard this. They reached in through the window and picked Jeremy up and took him away. Bears are notoriously rude themselves, and they thought Jeremy would fit in very well with their family.

They took him to their cave. Jeremy was shaking like a leaf. The father bear said, “Raarrh!” which means, “You’re way too skinny. Don’t you eat your vegetables?” but Jeremy didn’t understand, of course. He was sure they were going to eat him.

The mother bear gave him a light cuff around the ear as she did to all her cubs as a sign of affection, but to Jeremy it felt like an enormous whack. He fell over backwards into the dirt and he was sure the End was Near. He began to be sorry for the awful things he had said to people and how he had hurt their feelings.

Then, horror of horrors! the bears put a big pot of water on the fire to heat up. They got out a big chopping board and a great big knife. Jeremy was sure for certain that they were going to chop him up and throw him into the pot and cook him and eat him.

“Please, please don’t kill me!’ he said, crying piteously.

The bears said, “Arrh, awp, awp, arrrh, arrrh!” which means, “Don’t be silly, we’re vegetarians!” but Jeremy didn’t understand, of course.

“I promise I’ll never say anything rude to anyone ever again in my whole life,” he pleaded, sobbing and sniffling, “if you’ll only give me another chance and not eat me.”

The bears said to each other, “He seems rather polite after all, and besides he’s very damp and sniffly and his nose keeps running. I don’t think we should keep him.”

So they put him outside the cave and said “Mmwarrrh!” which means “Run along now,” and gave him a gentle pat on the bottom which felt to Jeremy like a great big smack.

He ran and ran all the way back home, and if he wasn’t perfectly polite every day for the rest of his life, at least he tried to be, which is all any of us can do.