Page 20 - SB-Playful Paul

Cosmos Explains Playful Paul
Playful Paul liked having fun and he liked it when others paid attention to him. He would do funny things to get the zoo visitors to throw him treats and he was very popular.
If Playful Paul was going to live in a zoo forever, his behavior may not have been a problem. But you learned later in the story, that the zoo keepers wanted Paul and the other young pandas to return to their native forests.
Learning how to be successful and happy in the forest meant that the young pandas needed to learn a lot of new and difficult lessons. Unfortunately, Paul was more interested in having fun and having others pay a lot of attention to him than he was about learning his lessons.
Because his behavior of “being funny” and “seeking attention” was such a habit, it was hard for his instructors to help him learn how to get food and how to avoid tigers.
Not being prepared to leave the zoo meant that Paul would have to stay behind until he could learn those new lessons. It was not that Paul wanted to be left behind or even that he could not learn the new lessons.
Paul was letting his stinky thinking about “having fun” and “being popular” get in his way of paying attention and learning his lessons. Cosmos Crow does not want you to be like Paul and get “left behind”.
17