I promised myself I was not only going to remember the Thursday PT this week, but also put some effort into researching an interesting header topic instead of producing scrambling apologia at best. Alas, it’s now almost midnight, and I have work in the morning, so you get my late-night ramblings instead.
For no reason at all, today I found myself thinking about a story I read as a kid. I think it’s a common story, actually, but my memory tells me (rightly or wrongly) that the version I read was one of a series of short tales about a clever judge, or a clever monk — something like that. I’m pretty sure my version was set in “the Orient” (I hail from a less culturally sensitive century), but I don’t know the actual origin of the tale.
Anyway, some time ago in a land somewhere that you can code however you wish (I’m obviously now envisioning an all-owl cast),
click here for story
a poor man walked down a city street just after dawn. His poverty showed in his bare feet, his thin — though clean — clothes, and the way he ate a hunk of coarse, stale bread as he walked, taking small bites to make it last as long as possible. As the man passed a bakery just opening its doors, he slowed, then stopped. He sat on a bench opposite the bakery and breathed deeply as he finished his meal. He even licked his fingers clean of dry crumbs with a satisfied smile before rising to resume his journey. His spirits bolstered, the poor man stepped into the bakery to thank the baker for creating the wonderful aromas that, for just a moment, had turned his meager meal into a delicious feast. The baker was anything but pleased, however. “Scoundrel!” he shouted, “Thief!”
Before the bewildered man knew what was happening, he found himself standing beside the irate baker in front of [Wise Judge’s (possibly Monk’s) Name]. The baker, accustomed to being heard, immediately launched into a tirade, describing the poor man’s offense. The wise judge frowned in reaction to the baker’s tale, then sternly asked the poor man if it was true that he had profited from the bakery’s aromas without compensating the baker — that he had, in fact, brazenly stolen the baker’s smells. The poor man replied that, well, yes, he’d enjoyed sitting outside the bakery while eating his breakfast, but — Here the judge interrupted him. “I’ve heard enough,” he said, and he ordered the poor man to bring a significant sum to the courtroom to compensate the baker for his loss.
The poor man protested that gathering that much money would beggar him and his family; they would never be able to escape the debt. But the judge was unmoved, so the poor man pawned every possession, pulled every string, called in every favor, and pledged every future happiness to gather the money necessary to satisfy justice.
He returned to the court and stood once more beside the smug baker, facing the impassive judge. The judge brusquely ordered the poor man to hand the money to him, then told the wealthy baker to step forward. The baker did so eagerly and all but rubbed his hands together with greedy glee as the judge poured the coins out of the bag and onto the bench, then slowly gathered them up in his long-fingered hands and let them clink back down, one by one, over and over. The courtroom remained silent throughout the judge’s strange performance.
Abruptly, the judge dusted his hands, then unceremoniously scooped the coins back into the bag before tossing them back to the poor man. The poor man and the wealthy man alike looked at the judge in confusion.
“Where is my justice?” demanded the baker.
“You have had it,” replied the judge. “The debt is paid: the sound of money for the scent of bread.”
Then, to compensate everyone for wasting their time, the wise judge ordered the wealthy baker to pay the poor man double the sum he had scraped together, advised the poor man to invest his new wealthy wisely, and told everyone to get the fuck out of his courtroom and go touch grass.
The End
I might have taken some creative license with the ending there. Anyway, I’m exhausted, and somewhere in the long-winded retelling of that, I forgot the half-baked point I was going to make. Something about the entitled baker, maybe, happy to profit from a warped version of justice while the poor man obeys the law and is crushed, or the zero-sum mindset that leaves people convinced that another person’s gain is their loss, or how money is all just an illusion anyway maaaaan. Maybe I was going to tie it into how Trump’s DOJ is gearing up to weaponize this “frivolous lawsuit” thing. No idea.
So take from the story what you will, or maybe just be glad that at least in some half-remembered tale from jake’s youth, the good get good, the bad get got, and justice gets upheld. And who knows? It could still happen here!
Take care of yourselves and each other, go outside some (but not to harm or threaten to harm Mayor McSquirrel), and have a just and happy Thursday, Avocados!