The Rainbow Fish

So one day I'm substituting at a local elementary school and the assistant is about to read a story to the children called "The Rainbow Fish".

The story is a very simple on about a pretty rainbow fish with shiny glittery scales that makes him the center of attention in the waters where he resides. But rainbow fish is very arrogant and thinks he is took me to associate with the other fish. One day a bluefish comes up to Rainbow fish and asked for one of his scales and he pretty much told the bluefish to get out his face and how dare he ask for a scale. The bluefish went back and told the other fish in the ocean about how Rainbow Fish treated him. Then none of the other fish would associate with him and Rainbow fish got lonely and wondered why none of the other fish would communicate with him. He asked a starfish and he deferred to an octopus who told him to give away his scales and he would feel better.

Upon the advice of the octopus, Rainbow fish returned and the bluefish returned to asked about a scale. He reluctantly gave him one of the smaller scales he but it gave him a great feeling. Pretty soon the other fish lined up and asked for scales too which Rainbow Fish, with his new deposition on life, glady gave away his scales until he had just one glittery scale left. Now all the other fish accepted him and they lived happily ever after....

Socialist Propaganda if I ever heard it

But I'd never heard of this story and called up my girl Mae Mae (Aye Mae Mae!) to ask about it since she worked with kids.

I told her what I thought about it and she said I was nuts and that it was obviously a story about sharing and giving nothing more nothing less. I refused to give up so I dared her to go online, go to google and type in "Rainbow Fish-Socialism" Having never researched the matter myself. Because I was confident I wasn't the only person who picked this up.

I just looked it up and there were 12,300 hits

At this point (and yes this is another post dedicated to spite Meagan)...she was forced to acknowledge the legitimacy of my claim.

He had pretty scales and all the fish wanted them and he became unhappy because of his exclusion from society and the solution was to give away his most prized possessions???

Who the hell wrote this? Karl Marx?

Now for those who say "It's a kids story" I dunno...my version would have been if he had a ball and wouldn't share and he found playing alone was not fun and discovered that through sharing he had more fun.

The sound more like some class stuff because of the pretty rainbow fish looking down on the common blue fish, and being excluded from normal society much as a rich person could find themselves, then finding that through giving away his scales or in the case of a person...giving to charity and sharing their wealth they were happier and had a sense of belonging and purpose.

I'm not a hardcore capitalist or anything but let's just keep the indoctrination away from the kiddies wheter the propaganda goes one way or the other