As provided to The Glen by Steel Dragon in preparation for the 2025 Puppets, Pizza, and Pajamas. 

Mengzi’s Mother Relocates Three Times

During his formative years, Mengzi and his mother lived near a graveyard. He often played games related to the activities that occurred in the cemetery. One day, his mother witnessed him playing one of those games and thought this was no place to raise an impressionable child.

She packed up their home and moved to a house next to a marketplace. Soon afterward, Mengzi began to emulate the hawkers in his speech and actions during playtime. When his mother noticed this, she again thought that this was an undesirable location to raise her son.

Once more, she packed the family’s belongings and moved to another home. This time, she found a modest house next to a school. Mengzi was constantly exposed to children who were educated in manners and academics, and he began copying the examples in his environment. Soon, his speech and mannerisms changed again—only this time for the better. He spoke politely and behaved with decorum. At last, Mengzi’s mother knew she had found the right location to settle her family.

One day, upon returning home from school, Mengzi greeted his mother. She paused her embroidery work to ask what he had learned at school that day. Mengzi nonchalantly replied to the effect of “the same stuff as before.”  When she heard Mengzi’s apathetic answer, she was incensed. Seizing a pair of shears, she cut a piece of fine embroidery she had just finished to shreds. Mengzi gulped and asked why she ruined the embroidery she worked so hard on. “Wasting your opportunity for an education is like ruining this beautiful work before it is completed,” she scolded.

Ashamed and attitude-adjusted, Mengzi never dared forget his mother’s words—lesson learned! From that moment on, he dedicated his heart and soul to his studies, earning the reputation of becoming one of the most famous minds in history.

 

Registration is required to attend this event.  Please review the details and register via The Glen’s Website here.