What the Fannie/Freddie Execs Should Have Said…
Isn’t it frustrating when a major scandal erupts, like oh say, the collapse of our economy, and immediately everyone involved starts pointing fingers at everyone else and trying to escape blame despite the fact that everyone else on the planet can plainly see the truth? Wouldn’t it work more to their favor to own up and say something really witty and unexpected? Wouldn’t that make us all smile and think, “Hey, they’re not so bad!”?
Take this example as expounded by the children of our CTR 5 primary class (that’s sunday pre-school for you heathens):
My wife was teaching a lesson on honesty, which 5 year olds understand intrinsically of course. She was reading to the kids a story about a little boy whose Mom had made a fresh batch of cookies. The Mother left the cookies out to cool on the counter, instructing the boy not to eat them, and left to do whatever Moms do when they’re not baking cookies or leaving pies on the sill (must have been laundry day… *SLAP*). Well, as you can guess, the boy ate all of the cookies (he was a very fat boy). When the Mother returned, she saw the cookies were gone and, rather naively if you ask me, said to the boy, “what happened to the cookies?”
At this point my wife, who had the kids at rapt attention, turned to them and said, “What do you think the boy should say to his Mom?”
There was a very split-second moment of silence as the kids processed the question and then Evan, who has a condition similar to mild autism and is thus very wise, threw his hands up in the air and shouted, “SURPRISE!”
We did not correct his answer.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Evan for president.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:00 am
This reminds me of my current favorite dumb joke:
A magician is about to perform his final trick for his show and asks for a volunteer from the audience. He selects a large man from the front of the crowd and gives the man a hammer.
“Sir,” the magician says, “I want you to hit me on the head with this hammer.”
Two weeks later, the magician awakes from a coma, sits up suddenly in his hospital bed and shouts, “TA-DAH!!”
I know, this doesn’t exactly compare, but both punchlines are equally effective.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
“The Senator from California has the floor:”
“So, Mr. Obscenely Huge Bank Director, explain to us, as best you can, what exactly happened to the trillions of dollars that you were supposed to be responsible for on behalf of the American public.”
“Uh…SURPRISE!”
…Yeah, I think that would have worked. Although now that I write it down, I wonder if the bank director did what he did because people had cruelly dubbed him “obscenely huge.” Maybe it’s glandular, people!