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There was once a town which was known for a dark cloud that loomed over its buildings and hung over the heads of its residents each winter. For the first few years, the people of the town found that the skies seemed perfectly clear, almost as though the cloud had ceased to exist. Little birds flew high in the sky, the children played basketball outside, and the adults would fish and barbecue all throughout the summer, through early autumn. And the residents, every year, fooled themselves into believing that the cloud would never hide the sun again.
In 2004, a man moved to town. At this point, the cloud had been come and gone each winter thirteen times. The man had chosen this specific town because he knew, that after so long, the residents had given up hope of ever ridding themselves of the cloud. The children were sometimes seen walking around outside, but they had all adapted to staying inside. After all, none of them had known a life outside the cloud. And although the cloud did not prevent them from playing outside, it did stir something inside them which made them lose motivation and interest for their favorite activities, and made them feel tired every time they were active for more than a few minutes.
The adults wanted desperately for the children to go outside and play, but, despite their best efforts, the children were just convinced that there was no point if the cloud would come soon and ruin the fun anyway.
Although there was an underlying sense of unhappiness amongst the people of the town, people were genuinely content. Especially the man, who was grateful for the restful sleep he got every night, and for the peaceful outdoors, and for the fact that there was never any traffic or crowds around.
Late in the year, a few weeks before the cloud was due to fall, a young girl moved to the town. Immediately, the girl challenged the town’s hermit lifestyle and encouraged the other children to get outdoors and be active. The children, knowing the truth about the cloud that would soon put a damper on their activities, didn’t listen. The man heard of this girl and felt slightly alarmed, but he had faith that the children would not go outside, so he did nothing. This man, being a typical adult, assumed the children refused to play outside for trivial reasons - they had no toys, it was cold, they were tired. If, at that time, he had known the true reason the children didn’t go outside, he might have held a different opinion.
The girl, feeling exasperated that no one wanted to play with her, called upon another man - one who was the complete opposite of the lazy man that resided in the town. He was energetic, outgoing, and loved to play outside. From here on out, we will refer to the lazy man as “Purple” and the active man as “Blue.”
Purple saw all of the children being coerced out of their comfortable homes, out into the light, and he became irate. In his mind, he wondered why Blue thought he had the right to rip these children away from their lifestyles. They clearly did not enjoy playing outside, so why force them to?
From that moment on, Purple decided he would sit outside, near the children, to make sure that they weren’t uncomfortable. As tired and anxious as this made him, he did not think twice about it. His main priority was the children. For the most part, he was ignored, but he didn’t mind. In fact, it was almost nice. He had the opportunity to get the vitamins he needed without having to worry about social interaction.
Soon, winter fell, and the cloud came with it. The children abruptly stopped playing outside, which baffled both Purple and Blue. The only child who bothered to try was the young girl, but, after a while, even she became too sad and weary to play, and began to sleep and stay indoors all day long. Blue was clueless; he was such a ray of light, he couldn’t possibly understand why the cloud weighed so heavily on the young children. But, after a few weeks of observation, Purple found he understood all too well.
He, too, had experienced clouds such as this one. While they didn’t affect them as much as they had when he was a child, they still had the power to trap him under their spell and lose interest in the things he once held so dear.
Purple knew what he had to do. After what felt like years of remaining stagnant and completely silent to the outside world, Purple found himself knocking on the doors of all the townspeople. He was wearing a disguise, and was surprisingly unrecognizable to the children. Blue, of course, still recognized him, but decided not to say anything.
“Can you help me?” he would ask when the children opened the door. “I seem to have lost my dog. Will you help me find him again?”
The children, who had been taught by Blue to be helpful and compassionate, all agreed, and they set off to look for Purple’s dog. The dog itself was not technically real, but a mechanical dog that Purple had built himself. It was fully operational, and had been programmed to run away barking and wagging its tail when someone other than himself approached it.
Within minutes, the children were laughing happily as they chased the dog around the town. It was only about an hour before they captured the dog, with one of them standing behind it with a net while another chased it toward the trap. After they returned the dog to Purple, they all went back inside to play a game together, their spirits having been lifted. While it wasn’t exactly what Purple had been hoping for, it was a start, and he was still happy for it.
Every day after that, the children would find Purple at their doors, a different disguise on and a new scheme at the ready. Each day they had something new to do together, whether that be working together to earn something, or working together to overthrow an evil villain who was trying to destroy the town.
Blue would take these short opportunities to ingrain the idea of the importance of teamwork and staying active. While the children were skeptical, they still begrudgingly tried to humor both him and Purple.
After a while, the children were so distracted by the games they would play that they hardly realized there was a cloud hanging above their heads anymore. While there were still days when they remembered why they had encased themselves in their bedrooms all those winters, they were grateful to have the distraction of Blue, and, whether they knew it or not, the help of Purple. Without him, they might not have felt happy on those days when they thought they were destined to be sad.
Years passed, and the children were all grown up. The cloud still came each winter, but they had other things, such as school, work, and their home lives to distract them. When they had finally learned what Purple had contributed to their lives, they were very thankful and vowed to help him out any time he needed them. And they did.
A time came when Purple discovered he could no longer afford to live in the town, and would have to leave unless he could come up with some money. The residents of the town, and even some from neighboring towns, all worked together and tried to come up with the amount needed before the day that Purple would have to leave. They held bake sales, shows, and they even washed cars. However, they were not able to raise enough money before the day came. Purple packed his house and walked out into the middle of town with his luggage, which was filled with a minimal amount of clothes and dozens upon dozens of letters, stories, and drawings that the residents of the town had made just for him.
Purple stood before a crowd of what felt like millions of people, young and old, and watched as they despaired that he would be leaving them to go somewhere far away and unreachable. Before he left, he turned to them and thanked them. Thanked them for the effort they put into helping him stay in the town, although they had run short by only a small amount. The residents were sad, but felt incredibly blessed to have known Purple, and to have had the opportunity to watch and learn from his silly shenanigans, which they realized had actually been like little lessons. Everyone in the town came together and knew that Purple had given them something beautiful, which was the knowledge that happiness can be found in even the bleakest of times.
After saying his goodbyes, Purple picked up his many gifts and left the town.
Although Purple was gone, the residents of the town still felt his impact everywhere they went. They felt him in their doorways, where he had came asking for help that first winter. They felt him in the park, where he sat and watched them play and work together to solve a problem. They felt him in their hearts, where they had learned to store everything he had said and done over the years which had touched and inspired them. In that way, every person in the town had different versions of Purple that they carried with them everywhere, and, when they worked together, they were able to bring every aspect of him back and remember him as if he had never left.