The Window

Once, there was a man named Ted. Ted looked out his window as he had many times before. He had seen many things out that window; hope and love - sadness and despair. It seemed to him the most beautiful thing. It was life the way it was meant to be lived - full of good and bad in equal measure. He felt that he understood life quite well, what with all of the time he spent observing it. It seemed quite simple, really, and sometimes he could not, for the life of him, understand why other people had such a hard time figuring it out.
Today, his window showed him Little Bill and Little Annie; they were two of his favorites to see because they were utterly adorable. Little more than six or seven were they, though Little Annie was a little older, and they walked and talked the day away. Sometimes they fought, about little things like everyone else, but they always forgot why in the end. Today they just swung in little swings on the swing’s little seats sitting there ‘till the sun had almost set.
‘Well they must go off to bed sometime soon,’ thought Ted. ‘They seem so very tired, and it gets so very late.’
He looked into the window again and saw Old Ellen. Now this he had seen before; in fact it was the oldest story in the book. There she sat, in her dusty old rocking chair, reading crinkly old books, and waiting, deep down inside somewhere, for her cranky old husband to come home. It seemed so sad, to wait so long in an old chair with some old books.
‘How can she sit there for so long?’ Ted wondered. ‘She must get tired of being so sad.’
Ted looked into his window again, and this time he saw the thing he hated seeing. The thing he looked away from whenever he did. It was Ned, and Ted hated that Ned rhymed with Ted, and so he dreaded the very sight of Ned. He could not stand that Ned never ran, never showered, and never, ever, read. But most of all, he hated when Ned got angry, and boy did Ned get angry. He would puff up and shout, and get all red; he was mean, and bitter, and hard on people - telling them what they needed to do better all of the time. Worst of all, he never tried making himself better, instead. And Ned went to bed, the only one in his own head.
“Why does he pretend like he knows everything?!” exclaimed Ted. “Can’t he see that everyone else knows more than him?”
Ted grew tired of watching Ned and got up from his chair to get a little snack. When he returned, he changed the channel back to Little Bill and Little Annie, who were tucked in and fast asleep with little to wake them. That made Ted feel quite a little bit better again.
THE END.