Joe: “I don’t like my son’s biology teacher.”
Pete: “Why not?”
Joe: “He has lots of skeletons in his closet.”
Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Aesop’s Fable, The Wolf and the Lamb. Aesop’s Fables is available for free download here.
The Fable
“A Wolf came upon a Lamb straying from the flock, and felt some
compunction about taking the life of so helpless a creature without
some plausible excuse; so he cast about for a grievance and said at
last, “Last year, sirrah, you grossly insulted me.” “That is
impossible, sir,” bleated the Lamb, “for I wasn’t born then.”
“Well,” retorted the Wolf, “you feed in my pastures.” “That cannot
be,” replied the Lamb, “for I have never yet tasted grass.” “You
drink from my spring, then,” continued the Wolf. “Indeed, sir,”
said the poor Lamb, “I have never yet drunk anything but my
mother’s milk.” “Well, anyhow,” said the Wolf, “I’m not going
without my dinner”: and he sprang upon the Lamb and devoured it
without more ado.”
.Note: I’ve heard this fable told another way, a scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog refused telling the scorpion, that he didn’t want the scorpion to bite him. The scorpion swore an oath that he would not bite the frog. The frog agreed to transport the scorpion. When they reached the other side of the river, the scorpion bit the frog. The frog gasped, ‘But you swore an oath.’ ‘Ha, said the scorpion, I only can be what I am, a scorpion.’ Both tales caution us to be wary of those who will try to dupe us to accomplish get their way. A rule of thumb to remember, “The best predictor of future performance is past performance.”
I have gone back in boyish wonderment
To things that I had foolishly put by. . . .
Have found an alien and unknown content
In seeing how some bits of cloud-filled sky
Are framed in bracken pools; through chuckling hours
Have watched the antic frogs, or curiously
Have numbered all the unnamed, vagrant flowers,
That fleck the unkempt meadows, lavishly.
Or where a headlong toppling stream has stayed
Its racing, lulled to quiet by the song
Bursting from out the thickleaved oaken shade,
There I have lain while hours sauntered past—
I have found peacefulness somewhere at last,
Have found a quiet needed for so long.
According to Google’s Generative AI Bard here are the 5 reasons people should eat Almonds.
Joe: “I can tell when people are judgmental.”
Pete: “How do you do that?”
Joe: “Just by looking at them.”
Joe: “Some bald guy stopped me on the street and asked if I knew where he could buy a toupee.”
Pete: “Did you know?”
Joe: “I said, ‘Not off the top of my head.'”
