What Was I Scared of

What's a pair of empty green trousers doing standing by itself in the woods? Or riding a bike in Grin-itch? Or fishing on Roover River? The narrator certainly doesn't want to find out but wherever he goes, he's haunted by the spooky empty pants. Finally, when the two find themselves hiding from each other in a Snide bush the terrified narrator realizes, "I was just as strange to him as he was strange to me." This little Seussian gem, plucked from the back of The Sneetches and Other Stories, shines on it own as it delivers a timeless message about fear and tolerance.