Five Minute Freewrite: a quick nap

A long time ago, there existed a village called Abacus, but unlike the modern town, they did not have any form of government, and they treated each other like family, with each family having a head and all the family heads answering to the Chief, who happened to be the oldest in the town.

The Village Chief believed in the old way of ruling, that is, all men are the providers, and as such, they are tasked with providing anything daily without rest, while the women are tasked with taking care of their homes and children. In order to enforce this, a penalty was set for anyone found doing nothing.

At first, nobody bothered about the penalty as they believed that they would always be able to provide. What's this penalty? The penalty is that anyone found doing nothing would be flogged 24 times in the market square and also expected to provide double for that day.

Days turned to weeks and weeks into months, but nobody was found guilty. However, after a few months, a couple of people were found guilty, and guess what they were doing, they were taking a quick nap. Now, because resting was not added to their rules, it was seen as doing nothing.

So women were also found guilty of taking a quick nap, and the same level of penalty was given. The whole community started talking about amending their laws, but at first, the chief was against this until he was caught taking a quick nap during the day. Being the oldest did not stop him from receiving the same punishment as the others, and in fact, he almost died.

After everything had settled down, their laws or rules were amended to encourage people to rest and take a quick nap. In fact, this led to an increase in the village population as people who had run away started coming back, even with new people. Eventually, everyone in the village understood the importance of rest and even made sure every employee offered a break period to all their staff, and even the village grew to become a town.