Envy: The Biggest Evil

A long time ago, in an Italian city, they built a beautiful tower which was admired by everyone passing through. A little further down the road, in a neighbouring city, they had built a tower of similar beauty. The two towers were equally well known. The people of the second city, envious and filled with pride, planned to destroy the neighbouring tower so it wouldn't take attention away from their own. One dark night, they came to the tower, with picks and shovels, and began to quietly undermine its foundations.

The next morning, the tower was leaning slightly, but nobody seemed to notice. The same happened for the following few days until a little girl who was passing by pointed up at the tower and said: "I think that the tower is going to fall down." And everyone around looked closely and could see that she was right. Nervousness spread through the city. They tried no end of solutions to try to straighten the tower, but the days passed, and nothing seemed to work. That was, until one day when the same little girl was walking by again, and she leant her arm on the side of the tower, to rest. She felt the tower trembling slightly, amid the sound of creaking and groaning.

When she took her hand off it, the movement and the noises stopped. And when she put it back on again, the same happened. The girl spent a while doing this until she was completely certain of what she had discovered: "The tower is ticklish!!".

She ran to get some flowers and plants, and she planted them right next to the tower. Now if the tower leant over any further it would be tickled by the petals and leaves of those plants. Being a ticklish tower, it would then have to return back to where it had been. In this way, the girl managed to make sure that the tower didn't collapse, but still kept it leaning a little. The fact that it was leaning made it even more famous, and this taught a fine lesson to the envious people of the neighbouring city. Being jealous types, they tried to copy the lean of the first tower, but they couldn't do it, and the tower ended up collapsing, leaving the city not only without a tower but also without a city hall.