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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 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.

    The next day, the boy came to his work bench to 

continue his hammering.

    "That's odd," he thought, "How did this first nail 

get so much higher than the others?" He began tap-

tap-tapping on the nails again, but spent most of his 

time hammering on the first nail down so that it 

would be even with the others.  

Finally, when it was dinner time again, the boy put 

away his hammer and left for the night. 

       As soon as he was gone, the first nail began to huff and 

puff, straining to get himself out of the wood.

    "Can't you see that it's hopeless?" said the second nail. 

    "Yeah," said the third nail. "A nail that sticks out gets 

hammered down.”

    The first nail said, "I'm gonna get out of this piece of wood no 

matter what it takes.”

    "But we're nails," said the second one, frowning. "We get 

hammered into pieces of wood. That's what we DO.”

    "Yeah," said the third nail. "Where do you think you're going 

to go anyway?" 

    "Up there," said the first nail, nodding in the direction of the 

boy's toy shelf. 

    From the work bench, the nails could see the collection of  

toys. There were cars, boats, blocks, and of course the boy's 

hammer. 

    "Ha ha," scoffed the second and third nails. "You think you 

belong there? You're a NAIL, not a toy.”

    But the first nail didn't care. He just kept on wriggling back 

and forth, trying to get loose.

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