As I was walking through my yard
I came upon a little snail.
He had no reason to be there
And leave his yucky slimy trail.

I picked the little fellow up
And threw him very far away
And then forgot about the deed
That I had done that summer day.

A year had passed and then one day
I heard a knock upon my door.
And sitting there upon my step
I saw that snail from long before.

I’d never seen a snail so mad.
I didn’t know that they could shout.
He looked me in the eye and said,
“Okay, just what was that about?”

Some people are a little slow to catch the humor in SLOW. It was a long trip for the little snail. In a year of nursing his anger, it would seem that he could have thought up a much better response than, ‘Just what was that about?’

All of us have said, after an unhappy encounter with someone, ‘I wish I would have thought to have said such and such.’ If we always had a year to think up our response, like the little snail, I wonder what jewels of wisdom we could come up with? When we do something that’s not nice to someone, we forget what we did a long time before they do.

Of course, one other way of looking at it, the little snail could have spent that year of his short life much more effectively than brooding over how someone had mistreated him and how he was going to give that person a piece of his mind next time he saw him.