It was Sunday afternoon. Fishel and Faivish had been sent upstairs to their room by their mother, with strict instructions not to emerge until they had cleaned up what she described as “an absolutely horrendous mess.”

Right now they were sitting on their beds, relaxing from the severe strain of having picked up one pair of smelly socks each and tossed them somewhere in the region of the laundry hamper.

“I hate cleaning up,” declared Fishel. “When I’m big, I’m gonna be president. I’ll live in the White House, and I’ll never, ever clean up a single thing. Why, I’ll have a team of a hundred servants to cater to my every whim.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, you can just forget about that, because I’m going to be president, and it’ll be my team of servants in the White House. And I’ll have two hundred!”

“I’ll have a thousand!”

“I’ll have ten thousand!”

“I’ll have a billion!”

“I’ll have a shmillion!”

“There’s no such number, na-na-na-na-na,” sneered Fishel.

“There is, I just made it up!” retorted Faivish.

Biff! Bam!

Socks, pants, and sweaters went flying as Fishel and Faivish launched into yet another fight. The room, already in pretty poor shape before, now looked like as though a dozen hurricanes had hit. When Mrs. Friedman heard the commotion and came upstairs to see what was going on, she almost fainted.

“Fishel! Faivish!” she gasped.

Unfortunately the troublesome pair didn’t even hear her. Gathering her wits, Mrs. Friedman hurried downstairs to fetch her husband.

“Stop that at once!” A stern voice made Fishel and Faivish stop in their tracks. It was Mr. Friedman.

Poor Fishel and Faivish. There was nothing to do but to get down to the task at hand. Under the watchful glare of their father, they had to clean up every bit of the mess in their room; and this time there was none of the usual shoving anything they couldn’t be bothered with under the beds, where it was “out of sight, out of mind.”

By the time everything had been done to their father’s satisfaction, Fishel and Faivish were utterly exhausted. They flopped weakly onto their beds, Fishel pausing only to reach out for his favorite kids’ magazine, and Faivish for his pet fidget toy.

Suddenly, Fishel sat up.

“Hey! Did you notice something?” he asked his brother.

“What do you mean?” responded Faivish.

“Did you see how I found that magazine in one second? I didn’t have to hunt all over the place for it like I usually do.”

Faivish looked thoughtful. “Yeah. And I found my fidget toy immediately.”

“Maybe it’s not so bad to have a tidy room,” Fishel speculated. “Every once in a while, I mean,” he hastily amended.

“I guess,” Faivish conceded.

“I just stretched out my hand, and it was there,” Fishel continued dreamily. “Just like magic — or like one of Jolly Solly’s clever tricks.”

“Yeah.” Faivish found himself unexpectedly in tune with his brother’s views.

Soon there was the sweet sound of silence as the brothers relaxed, in unaccustomed harmony with each other.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha Jr., Issue 736)