Once upon a time, there was a little boy who loved 

to hammer nails.   

The boy had many toys and games, but more than 

anything he liked to sit at his work bench, tap-tap-

tapping nails into blocks of wood. 

One day, the boy's father gave him three new nails. 

These were much longer than any nails he had ever seen, 

and he knew that it would take a long time to hammer 

them into his piece of wood.

He began that very afternoon, tap-tap-tapping the nails, 

taking turns hammering each nail a bit before moving to 

the next.   Very slowly they began to disappear into the 

wooden block.

Finally, it was dinner time. The boy put away his 

hammer and left the wooden block and nails on his 

work bench for the next day. 

     Soon after the boy left, the first nail began slowly trying to twist in his hole. This startled the other two nails.

     "Hey, what do you think you're doing?" cried the second nail. 

     "Yeah!" said the third nail. 

     "I'm gonna try to get out of this hole," said the first nail. "I don't want to be stuck in this piece of wood for the rest of my life." 

     "But we're nails," said the second nail. "We get hammered into pieces of wood. That's what we do.”

     "Suit yourself," said the first nail, and he continued to huff and puff, slowly but surely squeezing himself up, up, up and out of the hole. After great effort the first nail grew exhausted and took a nap, joining the other two nails that had fallen asleep much earlier.