About a yellow elephant
Tell me another story!
What about?
About a yellow elephant. And a purple tiger.
Okay. One day a man went to the store to buy ice-cream. This was in England, so when he got to the road, he saw a red man on the lights, and he pressed the button and waited for the green man to appear. After a long, long time, a yellow elephant appeared instead.
"What's this?" asked the man. "I've seen green men to say that men can cross (and women and boys and girls... and dogs, yes) and green bikes to say that bikes can cross, and green arrows to say that... arrows can cross... I think... but I never saw a yellow elephant. Does that mean elephants can cross?"
"No," said the yellow elephant, "it's just that the green man is on vacation. He asked me to stand in for him while he's away at the seaside."
"Okay," said the man, and crossed the road and bought his ice-cream. When he came back, he pressed the other button to cross the road the other way, but there was no red man there any more. Instead, a purple tiger appeared next to the yellow elephant.
"What are you doing there?" asked the man.
"I heard about the ice-cream." said the purple tiger. "All the animals from all the signs in the world are talking about it and they all want some."
"Well, you can't have any of mine," said the man. "You'll have to get some of your own."
But more and more animals started crowding into the light. Soon there wasn't much room to see which was which.
The people and the cars started getting confused, and went and told the mayor. When the mayor heard about it, she hurried over to where the man was and asked him about the problem. Then she thought hard until she realised how to solve the problem.
She went to a part of the city which had lots of lights and almost no people. It was one of those places where people go to work, but nobody lives there all the rest of the time. Next to a great big light, she parked a whole van full of ice-cream, enough for all the people and animals on all the signs in the world. Soon, all the sign creatures who wanted ice-cream had gone to share that ice-cream, and nobody was crowding into the crossings where the people were. So the man got to go home and eat his ice-cream in peace. And that's the end of the story.