Once upon a time there once was a guy who had a bad temper. He had temper tantrums and said very, very bad and hurtful things to his best friend. He never apologized, never admitted to his hurtful words, and hurt his best friends' spirit. After he was done, he pretended that they never happened. So many times his best friend would try to talk about the tantrums and tried hard to do everything right. That best friend sadly eventually gave up trying and her heart was embellished with so much hurt. She lost her voice. The man longed for the simplier yesteryears. He told another friend how badly neglected he felt.
His other friend told him to call upon him every time he had a temper tantrum. And that friend gave him a bag of nails and told him that everytime he was about to loose his temper, he must hammer a nail for every hurtful word and thought, into the back of the pretty picket fence.
The first day the angry man drove 43 nails into the fence. Months passed, and the number of nails he hammered into the fence dwindled down and so did the tantrum calls to his other friend. The man discovered that it was getting easier to hold his own temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Besides, it took too much time away from watching the television, too much engergy, his arm was sore and he noticed that his best friend stopped talking to him and looked sad. Finally the day came when the man didn't loose his temper at all.
He told that other friend about what he did and his friend suggested to him to go and pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. Some nails could be pulled out easily from the fence, others were bent and took longer to remove. Time seemed to pass slowly and the man finally told his friend that all the nails were gone. The man did not understand the reasons for the project. His friend told him he would understand very soon.
The man's friend asked him to go for a walk with him. They went and looked at the pretty picket fence. His friend then said to him "You have done well, my friend, but look at those holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say and do things in anger, they leave scars, just like these. They may be invisible to the eye on the other side of the fence, but, they are there. You cannot make the scars go away by denail. You cannot make the scars go away by stopping. You can say I'm sorry but the wounds are still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one. And we all know too well, even worse. They are never forgotten, only sometimes forgiven."
The man now understood how the fence project was a parable to the way he lived his life and his best friend. But ... it was too late. The inflicted scars remained, the remnants of too many angry words.
