There were three boxes, big brown boxes covered with thick bands of packing tape, rope, and stickers.
&nb sp; And the boxes were Friends, the best of Friends. They lived together in the attic of an old house, a beautifully built and well decorated house that sat alone on the edge of a deep lake. The boxes couldn’t see the lake but they knew it was there.
One day a young man arrived at the house with a small car. He took two of the boxes from the attic and moved them to a house in the city far away. The boxes were opened, their contents removed, and they were again stored in the attic space.
- The third box had no idea where his friends went, and he thought, “It must be that my contents are less valuable than those in the other boxes.
“But they are my friends,” he thought. “Friends are friends because they have many things in common.
Have I been mistaken all these years?” And he worried, “Do I smell bad?”
Mildew was a problem for the boxes. The third box knew that. “Maybe it was mildew,” he thought. “That’s why I was left behind. Or, perhaps I am too old. Boxes can get old and no one wants them. But we three boxes are all the same age. And we’re best friends.”
&nb sp; The third box tried very hard to think of what he had done, or not done, to be left behind.
; Months passed. Finally the third box was picked up and moved to the house in the city far away. Its contents were removed and it was again stored in the attic space next to the two other boxes.
“So,” said the two boxes to the third. “Why did you stay behind? We thought you didn’t like us anymore. We were worried that maybe our mildew had become too strong, that you thought we were too old. We thought that you thought your contents were more valuable than ours, that you no longer wished to be friends.”