It was a hot Saturday morning. And like many other Saturday mornings, the village boys flocked to the playing field early. They often gathered boys of all ages in the field to play a variety of games. But the most popular games they played were football and cricket.
This Saturday was no exception. Despite a short burst of rain prior to sunrise, the rest of the morning remained dry. The field was wet, with puddles of water scattered and hidden by the grass. The boys voted to play cricket. Matthais was one of two boys who owned a bat. Todd owned the other.
Sure enough, after the vote, the boys realised that Todd had not come out to play. A handful of them sprinted off the field and headed down the hill to Todd's house. Todd was an older boy. Like the other older boys, he was attending St. Phillip's High School.
This particular Saturday, Todd was going over his lessons, preparing for the big mid-school exam. He didn't have time to play with the other boys.
"Todd!" The younger boys screamed at the top of their lungs.
The boys stood in the street in front of Todd's house, yelling for him to come out and play.
"I can't. I've got exams." He replied, standing in the doorway.
"Then can we borrow your bat to play?"
Todd thought carefully for a moment. He was on the school's cricket team. Before, he wouldn't have hesitated to lend the boys his bat. But now that he needed it for practise, he couldn't lend it out freely like before.
"I can't, sorry. You guys will have to find something else to play." He said, returning to his room.
Dejected, the boys returned to the playing field and let the others know that Todd wouldn't play or lend them his bat. They thought for a while and tried to substitute with many different things lying around the field. But nothing quite worked.
"How about this?" Raul asked, hauling a dried coconut branch to the group.
The other boys looked at the coconut branch and took turns raising it. It was long and awkward to use, but they could play with it. And so they did. For several turns, the boys played with the coconut branch, often swapping to Matthais' bat for batting.
Joe-Joe, one of the boys' uncle, stopped by the field on his way to go hunting. When he saw the boys struggling to use the coconut branch, he stopped them. And taking his cutlass from its sheath, he took the coconut branch and made quick work of it. He swung his cutlass, and strips of the branch flew off.
Within a few minutes, Joe-Joe had chopped the branch down and made a crude, smaller, and easier-to-use bat. The boys were elated. With coconut branches, they never had to worry about not having bats to play with.
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