Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Once upon a time there was a Panda and a Boy. Panda loved eating shoots, and the Boy loved playing kick-ball. They loved hanging out with each other, but they both wanted to do different things. They tried having Panda eating shoots in the goal area, but it ended up with either the ball going straight in with no trouble, or hitting Panda. Panda didn’t actually mind being hit, if it was by accident and didn’t make him drop his shoots. They wanted to figure out how to play together though.
So they came up with a system. Every time Panda finished a shoot, he would yell “Shoot!”. But then they made it so every time he was happy he was eating shoots, whether he had finished it or not, he would yell “Shoot!”. Then the Boy would kick the ball and shoot at the goal.
Every day, Panda and Boy would trundle to the park, carrying shoots and the ball. They would set up their places and then eat and kick. Soon the Boy yelled “Shoot!” whenever he was going to the shoot the ball and the Panda would do the same.
Some days, they even didn’t wait until they got to the park. Panda would call up the boy on the phone, and yell “Shoot!” whenever he was excited about eating shoots. The Boy would then run to wherever his ball was and shoot it. Sometimes it hit the lamp in the hallway. Likewise, when the boy was having fun shooting the ball, he would call up Panda and yell “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”, and then Panda would gobble up shoots.
One day, the boy didn’t call Panda at all. Panda had called the Boy three times to tell him he was eating shoots, but the Boy had never made his own calls. Worried the Boy wasn’t having fun anymore, Panda called him up and asked. Boy said he was enjoying doing it in response at the same time, but then didn’t want to keep playing.
Because of that, Panda and Boy realised they needed to find a new thing the Boy liked. It didn’t matter if it was shooting or not, he just needed to find something. So they took all the balls and bats and shoots and sticks and gloves they could find and carried them down to the park. One by one they went through each piece of equipment.
Boy enjoyed trying to figure out how to be good at each one, but he didn’t feel like yelling in excitement. Then Panda had an idea. He said, “How about every time I yell Shoot!, you have to run and grab a handful of items and quickly play with all of them at once?!” The Boy did that and they laughed and laughed and laughed.
And because of that, Boy discovered that his favourite thing wasn’t kicking a ball, and it wasn’t shooting. It was playing with anything. So whenever Panda called him, he grabbed whatever was around the house and used that to play with. At the park now, sometimes Panda even joins in: throwing shoots into the big pile of equipment. Until finally, Boy and Panda changed the game’s name from Shoot! to Lucky Dip. Because it is more fun when you don’t know the outcome.