Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

Sardines are very insecure by nature - they have a very strong need to belong. This need drives each sardine to do what the next sardine does, and motivates each sardine to need what the next sardine has.

A bunch of dolphins understood this, and decided to capitalise on it because pollution and over-fishing by human beings had made times quite hard la, and they had to find new ways to make a living somehow...

So, they applied their wits and business sense to making some money to buy some food from the humans instead.

They had a stock of abandoned flippers (from irresponsible divers and general waste), and they marketed the idea of wearing or living in them to the sardines.

"Tired of skirting Helter Skelter? Get shelter! Safety flippers for sale! (Made of 100% recycled material.)"

It was a big hit.

The sardines snatched up the flippers with the money they earned by selling intelligence on the whereabouts of secretive sardine schools to the human beings.

Red Tape

There was a boy who was very helpful. He tried his best to help everyone around him to do everything they asked him to help them with. He did not think too much about it. He was neither very proud about it, nor did his actions spring from an inferior-complex need to make anyone like him better. He just helped in anyway he was told: tabao chicken rice for his family's dinner from the kopitiam downstairs, massage his mother's shoulders, mend the hole in his father's underwear, change his sister's diapers, clean his grandfather's dentures...

Then, he got old enough to go to school.

So he went. And made "friends". And helped his teachers to carry books here and there, and got labelled as being a "por2" (apple polisher). And helped his "friend" to tie her shoe-laces, and got called a sucker. And helped another "friend" to touch the teacher's backside, and got into serious trouble.

"Why do you always help them do these things?"

"Because they said that they needed my help?"

"Have you ever wondered if they were lying? Just making use of you?"

"But, what if they were not lying?"

"You do so much for them, what have they done for you in return?"

"I should be happy and count my blessings that I've not needed their help so far. But if I need their help one day, they'll help me too?"

"What if they say they forget you've ever helped them before?"

"Then I'll help them remember...?"

After getting into more and more serious trouble repeatedly, until his teenage-hood, and the people around him had less and less respect for his moral high-ground, the boy started to keep a log book, in which he would record down whenever people ask him for help, and how he helped in return. This became a habit that he could never stop. And he suffered for it and perhaps from the anxiety and doubt that people may forget about what he has done for them? And perhaps from the stress from being cheated and getting his heart broken too many times?

By the time he was an adult, he was logging in requests from himself, because he did not have a lot of friends nor was there a lot of people who would talk to him.

It started with: "I asked me to help me to buy chicken rice."

Then it gradually grew to become: "I asked me to help me buy chicken rice, and I asked my left hand to hold the spoon and the right hand to hold the fork to help me eat it."

Still, he managed to get himself into the most serious trouble he'd ever get himself into:

One day, as he was eating chicken rice, and busy logging in his request to his mouth to spit out the stuff it contained, and his throat and lungs to cough, and his legs to get up and run to the toilet, and his hands to hit his chest or flail around for help...