Both Sides of the Fence by Teresa Bateman

If you had a fence, what side would you be on? The narrative, “Both Sides of the Fence” by Teresa Bateman is about a guy named Alberto ho has an apple tree. He thinks that he should be the only person who should enjoy the tree so he puts a fence up around it. One day one of the branches gets long and starts to intrude on the neighbor’s property. So instead of letting the apples go to waste, the neighbor, Juan, takes the apples. Juan the neighbor is generous enough to make the apples into a cake, and gives the cake to Alberto. Alberto is furious at this and so he runs to the mayor and complains that Juan is stealing his apples. He goes to talk to Juan by orders of the court and the mayor to find that Juan is actually really nice and grateful for the apples from the tree. Seeing this, made Alberto change his way of thinking. So he ran home, picked a basket of apples, and brings them to Juan’s family. You should hear both sides of a story before making a judgment, because you could be wrong.
Alberto begins to learn when Juan makes him a cake. After the branch goes over to the other end of the fence, he leaves it so as not to damage such a fine tree. This at first bothered him because he thought Juan using the apples had a different meaning than just using apples so they don’t rot. “Then one day, Alberto discovered an apple cake on his doorstep…. He was furious.” (Bateman, 1). Alberto saw the cake and saw it as a slap in the face, even though it had a ‘thank you’ note. He just saw it as he was ‘using them’, not, ‘making use’ of them so they didn’t go to waste. Alberto didn’t really start contemplating about Juan’s side of the story until the mayor asked him a number of times. By the time Alberto goes to visit Juan to confront him about ‘stealing’ the apples from the tree, Juan thanks him and explains how much use he got out of the branch.
Alberto also learned when after going to the mayor, he went to go talk to Juan, and Juan thanked him. Juan tells him about...