Weak father and Ungrateful son
There was once a kindly old mom and pop store. It had been in operation for years and years. It was tucked into a little corner of a little town right off the village square. Generally they didn’t need help running the store but as they had gotten older the couple had slowed down as naturally as a jalopy down shifting toward a stop sign and didn’t want to work as much as before. They thought about closing the place down but their long time customers wouldn’t let them. Besides what would they do? They had been coming to the little shop around the corner for so long it was as comfortable as old shoes.
But to ease their time somewhat they decided to hire someone, their only son’s kid, their grandchild, Beadly. Beadly had been in a little trouble before, talked a little too fast sometimes, was less than perfectly diligent others. But he was their grandchild so they tolerated him because they loved him. He was of them, their own flesh and blood and they were predisposed toward him, forgiving perhaps to a fault of both his excesses and his failures.
Now this was a simple rather than a tight ship and so they had never bothered keeping very detailed receipts. The cash register was figured up at the end of the day and written down in a little frayed notebook for a year and then they got a new notebook. They were generous with credit sometimes to those who couldn't pay right away for one reason or another. They also habitually paid for things they needed right out of the cash register drawer and just remembered to make good on it later. In short, it was a very casual accounting system they operated under, but it had always worked just fine and with it they had gotten through all the little hills and dales of life easy as you please.
After their grandson had worked there for awhile, however, they noticed a change. The receipts often seemed to not quite add up. Since their methods were so loose and casual, so ad hoc, they really couldn’t be quite sure what had caused the subtractions in their receipts, but the inescapable truth was the only addition to their store recently was their grandson. They each separately reached the uncomfortable realization that between these two things there might be a correlation.
The last thing the old couple wanted to do was to accuse their own grandson of nefarious acts particularly if they weren’t absolutely certain he had committed them. With their loose accounting they quite couldn’t be sure but they had to know, not only to stop the losses but to ensure that it wasn’t their own senility that was causing them to imagine losses that weren’t really there. To this end they devised a small plot to find out.
They discreetly marked a number of the bills in their register with a small red dot in the corner that wouldn’t be noticed unless you were specifically looking for it. Several days later on the pretext of not having enough change on hand for the register, they asked their grandson if he happened to have any cash on him. With the fatal pride of the unsuspecting, Beadly rather ostentatiously pulled out a surprisingly large wad of bills and proceeded to make change for them with their own money. Many of the bills had the telltale small red dot in the corner. The elderly couple was devastated to have their fears confirmed. They would have preferred to have been proved senile.
As they were kind and gentle people, at first they tried to make excuses for him. Maybe it was their fault, maybe they just hadn’t paid him enough money, maybe they were just too trusting or alternatively, too demanding, etc. For a time, after giving him a raise, uncertain what to do, they merely let him get away with it. But even after the raise, the thefts not only continued but increased. Finally, despairing, they went to talk to their son, the Beadly’s father, and explained the problem. Instead of confronting the boy with an eye to punishing him if he was really doing this, their son flew into an intemperate rage against his own parents and called them liars and senile and worse, flatly denying that any son of his would ever do such a thing.
So the old couple dithered and fretted. Meanwhile, unaware that anyone was the wiser, and thinking that he was getting away with it, the intrepid Beadly lost all pretense of respect for his stupid grandparents and became even more brazen and rapacious in robbing them. He also came in late, left early and hardly did any work when he was there. He was lazy, impertinent to customers and talked back to his employers. Often he lied right to their faces, not caring whether they knew it or not.
Worse not only did he continue to steal but he began to steal more and more. Eventually he was not even just content to pilfer a part of the day’s receipts. He started to steal from the till into the principle and leave an IOU for the next day’s profits he had already diminished. Finally, the effrontery and indignity to the old couple at the hands of this spoiled brat became unbearable.
To prove to their blindly trusting son the criminality of their grandson they not only repeated the red dotted bill trick but set up a video camera to catch the boy Beadly in the act. Then they took all this evidence to their son. Even with the proof of the marked bills in his hand he was more dismissive than helpful. He showered them with a torrent of excuses.
“Oh well, kids today are just different than we were, you know. Ethics are different, not the same as when you or I was young. Besides it really isn’t that much money, you don’t pay him much and he just needs a little catting around money, you know. He worked hard to get that athletic scholarship to go to college this fall. That’s the important thing. I don’t want anything to happen to jeopardize that. He deserves this fun, probably just needs a little extra money for the girls, if you know what I mean. Man are they after him though. But he’s really a good kid, means well, just having some careless fun. But don’t worry, if it gets worse maybe I’ll have a little talk with him one day. But for now let’s just keep this to ourselves and I’ll make it up to you later. It’s really not worth making a big deal about. I don’t want to embarrass him by letting him know we know…” and on and on it went.
To this weak and supplicant parent’s excuses his parents didn’t have much to say. Reluctantly, seeing this was his attitude, they knew exactly what they had to do. First thing next morning they called the police. They showed them the marked bills and the video and when their grandson finally showed up for work several hours late they had him arrested on the spot. Beadly was outraged, screaming in full tantrum: “But you’re my own grandparents. You can’t have me arrested like a stranger.”
“Yet you robbed from us like we were strangers. And if we were strangers and you robbed from us why wouldn’t we have you arrested?”
When the boy’s father arrived he too was livid. “I thought we had this all worked out. I said I’d pay you back.”
“Why? Because you are such a weak man that you were willing to ruin your own son rather than stand up to him? Maybe you even vicariously reveled in his bad deeds. But we couldn’t sand by and let you let him get away things we never would have let you get away with. You were not raised to be a weak or dishonest man and yet you are raising a weak and dishonest son.”
“But I told you kids are different today, they demand more. By having him arrested you are going to ruin his future. It will be on his record. They will rescind his scholarship.”
“And why shouldn’t it be on his record? The old couple replied. It is the record his behavior has earned. As for his scholarship he’ll learn more from losing it than he would’ve learned by getting it the wrong way. All the education in the world can’t substitute knowing the difference between right and wrong. And you’re wrong son, kids are no different today than they ever were because the world hasn’t changed.”
The father begged his father to drop the charges but he wouldn’t. Beadly went to court and was sentenced to a year’s community service and to make full restitution with a penalty to his grandparents. They got back every dime. Then they hired him back at the store (no on else would) and helped him earn enough money honestly to pay his own way to college.
The moral of this is, once patterns of behavior are set they cannot be easily be broken but by a shock of change. Weak people who get away with bad behavior never grow strong.
Since 1980 the Republican Party has been in charge of the White House eighteen out of the last twenty-six years. The last twelve years they also control both houses of Congress. The only years our government didn’t spend lavishly over budget was the last years of the last Democratic presidency. The current administration actually inherited a budget surplus. It squandered it and immediately returned to deficit spending. Since 2000 they have added another 2.7 trillion dollars to the federal deficit. By this record alone, the modern Republican Party has proven itself to be the most profligate, dishonest and corrupt in the history of the US. Don’t expect them to get better on their own.
The Terribly Taxing job of Georges the Caterer
There once was a very exclusive organization called the Hundred. Its membership was always held strictly to a hundred people and could only be gotten into by special appointment and a vote of the members. It was so exclusive that often the membership was passed from father to son or mother to daughter. On the hundredth anniversary of the hundred member organization the Hundred decided to have a celebratory memorial dinner and banquet to honor their traditions and their founders.
An expensive caterer was engaged, a regal hall rented and special invitations engraved and sent to each of the members. On the appointed evening, given the special circumstances of the occasion, all one hundred members showed up in their finery. In the way long anticipated events often generate their own special energy about them, the air itself was tremulous with expectation as the select few gathered in the foyer waiting to be admitted to the grand ballroom and the beckoning feast.
When the doors were finally flung open a collective gasp gripped the crowd. No one expected or ever hoped to see such an opulent and succulent spread of rare delicacies in their lives. On a huge, long center table glistening beneath the crystal candelabras was laid out every kind of foodstuff, every kind of meat and wild game, every rare fowl, exotic fish and even a few endangered species, set among beds of fresh vegetables and fruits gathered from around the world and prepared in every imaginable way. Each delicacy was elaborately cooked and seasoned to perfection, casseroled to precision and displayed with flair. The desserts alone looked fit for a monarchy and covered a considerable place in the layout. Every mouth wateringly rich cake, pie, cream and delectable confection known to humankind, from the elaborate to the merely scrumptious were arrayed like the picture in an encyclopedia next to the word luscious.
From the heavy to the delicate, the simple to the exquisite, the fresh to the carefully aged, every rare wine, champagne and alcohol from the farthest reaches of the world could be found on the table in front of them. The fragrances and aromas surrounding the table and the marvelously rich and colorful display all blended and balanced together so perfectly that it tittered the taste buds and excited the awe of the imagination. The overall effect was almost spiritual, nearly celestial and sublime with the wondrous beauty and plenitude of it all. What benevolent and gracious God has ever made such an abundant array available to his favored people? What blessed people we were to have such a creator. It was downright humbling. Those who weren’t religious thought about converting.
The table itself was so heavily laden and so long that it seemed to sag beneath the weight of the feast. It was all there. No one could think of a single rarity missing. You had only to conceive of a foodstuff you had only ever heard of or imagined in your dreams and mention it out loud for a white smocked assistant to proudly point you to it.
The members could only gape and wonder and wander around the luxurious marble hall surrounding the table for some time as if afraid to disturb the magnificent artistry and assemblage of the sensually overwhelming cornucopia of gluttonous pleasure which confronted them. Finally, after all the oohs and ahhs, after all the stunning shock of the succulent and savory array had subsided somewhat, after looking one more time at it and looking at each other, in unspoken decision they began to move almost as a single body toward the massive pile of food fully prepared to do their best and worst to diminish it.
That’s when an arrogant, flustered little man in a white apron came running over to stop them. It was Georges, the caterer, their very highly paid master of ceremonies. “Whoa now, people, let’s hold on a little minute here fellas and ladies, this ain’t fer the likes of you, you know.”
The crowd was confused. “Well who’s it for then?” one of them finally asked.
“Why for those gentlemen over there. They are ones who signed my check.”
The crowd looked its collective eye as one over to where the ten member board of directors stood off skulking by themselves. They were smoking cigars and sipping brandy in a superior fashion and pretended not to notice this debate. They were letting the caterer make their case for them so they wouldn’t have to.
“But they’re no better than us. We’re all part of the same organization. We just happen to have elected them to the Board mainly because no one else wanted the job. They’re only paying you on our behalf out of the dues we all pay in to the general fund. You work for all hundred of us not just them. We’re really the ones paying for all of this.”
“Well sorreey, neighbors, but I don’t know anything about that. I just know what I’m told to know. They’re the ones who hired me so they’re the ones I work for. You’ll have to take it up with them later. Besides you are being unfair to them. So you wouldn’t go hungry, they had me prepare your food, the food for all the rest of you, and put it over on the other table. Your feast is over there. It’s an arrangement that couldn’t be more fair.”
Again as with one eye the heads of the ninety shifted along the line of where the caterer’s finger pointed them to a dimly lit alcove where there was a much, much smaller table, a tenth the size of the main, opulent one laid out so enticingly in front of them in the well lit grandeur of the main room.
There was a lot of mad grumbling among the ninety, irritation and outrage, to be sure. But finally, when they had inspected the other table and found that even that small table - although some of the more lavish, expensive and rare delicacies had been removed and (unapparent to them) their meal had been prepared with much inferior ingredients – still looked ample and impressive. If properly apportioned, they decided, there should be more than enough for the ninety of them to dine quite well.
Of course, there were a few hot heads among the ninety who wanted to immediately confront these ten with this incredible injustice still fresh in their minds and not let them get away with it. But the majority didn’t want to make any trouble. It was a celebration after all and they refused to let their festive mood be spoiled by the dark and greedy behavior of a few. To appease the others’ anger the compliant majority vowed they would all press for an investigation later so that such an outrage could never happen to them again.
In this way, though none of them thought it was right or fair or just, hunger got the mouth watering best of principle. It was a fateful lapse because rather than fight about it while the food spoiled and cooled, they decided to be appeased by the meal and eat and be happy with the blessings and grace of what they had rather than whine and complain over all they didn’t. With this compromise the ninety accepted the principle of the unacceptable and began to mill as one over in the direction of the small, out of the way table to eat.
But just as they were about to start dining Georges the caterer came running over again all red faced and exercised. “Wait, wait, people, My God, what do you think you are doing?” he screamed. “Do you people think you can just gorge yourself on all this food? Non, non, non, mes amis, it must still to be properly divided up, apportioned with zee ten member board. (Occasionally his accent returned.) After all this is only right, they have the right to eat too, do they not?”
The ninety were almost too flabbergasted to respond but managed to anyway. “But they’ve already got way more food than they can ever eat as it is. They’re going to waste most of it anyway. We were willing to look the other way at the absurd injustice of all this as long as there would still be enough for the rest of us to eat but if we have to share what little there is left with them it means there will hardly be enough left for the rest of us. Some of us will have to do without or settle for scraps.”
“It is to fair, it’s only fair. You people are too greedy and want to hurt the Board of Ten because you are jealous and want to soak the rich of their valuable vittles. Well, I Georges the caterer am too honest to have anything to do with you unfair and corrupt attempt. The contract is the contract. When you agreed to eat at this table you set a precedent and now you can’t go back on it, it is tradition.”
“Tradition? What tradition? We only agreed to eat at this table five minutes ago.”
“A tradition is a tradition, doesn’t matter how long it eh, eh, traduces, before it becomes permanent tradition. It can’t be changed now.”
Dumbfounded, they were too astonished and too hungry by then to argue with this ignorant, foppish little martinet in his little dumb waiter’s outfit. When they tried they could only watch in disgust as he stuck his fingers in his ears, stamped his feet and started to sing “My dog Bill” at the top of his lungs. It was like talking to a particularly dense wall about a particularly obscure topic. Finally he threw himself to the ground and threw a full blown tantrum. “I’m the leader. Nobody gets to tell me what to do. That’s what being the leader is.” Then he went on crying and screaming about how unfair everybody was being to him, etc.”
He got so tiresome and irrational and annoying that finally the ninety just sort of gave up dealing with such self-centered ignorance and immaturity and out of sheer disgust let the spoiled little Fauntleroy have his way. He proceeded to divide the remaining food on the small table to the obvious benefit of the ten on whose behalf he was operating, and gave the remainder to the ninety left. Sadly then, when faced with such shortages; injustice, greed and competition began to take hold even among the ninety and in the food fight that ensued some managed to get much for themselves than was fair while other slower or weaker ones went entirely hungry.
Georges the caterer and the Board had finally managed to create a system so unjust that everyone was forced to turn on each other and fight each other for the few scraps left over. As they filed out that evening none of the ninety felt very good about themselves. Later bitterness among them grew so great that none of them could agree on how best to oppose the ten who’d cheated them by hiring Georges the caterer in the first place. Because of lingering animosities among themselves, some of the ninety even started cutting back room deals with the Board of Ten, deciding that was the best deal they were likely to be able to get. This further divided the ninety’s bargaining power and helped to enshrine the Board’s special privileged positions into the bylaws and make them permanent. That’s how the Hundred became the Ten and the ninety became second class citizens in their own organization.
Moral: Once you accept the first principle of injustice there is no limit to how far it will spread or be expanded.
In this country 10% of the people already control more wealth than the other 90% combined. But they will never be content until they control it all. And there is no shortage of people who will sell the rest of us out to cater to their insane greed to help them make it happen.
Desert Pete’s Dilemma
Once upon a desert trek, thirsty and crawling through the sand, a man espied his salvation. In silhouette against the blazing sun he thought he saw the pump handle of a well and next to it, glinting murkily in the glaring sun was what appeared to be the refraction of a small jug of water in a dirty glass jar. Rubbing his eyes, hoping against panic against a mirage, he struggled to his feet and staggered toward the marvelous apparition.
As he drew nearer and confirmed his vision was real he was overjoyed, saved. Greedily he grabbed the jar and then noticed, strange to say, there was a note attached to the top of it. Though this seemed hardly a time for reading (he thought, My God, is there no act left in life without its own complication?), nonetheless, afraid it might warn the water was poisoned or be a trap of some kind, he felt he had best pause to read the note. Even though he couldn’t imagine what someone would want to communicate at a time like this. It said:
“Howdy stranger, welcome. If you are here son, it’s because you’re lost because you’re far away from everywhere else and nobody comes here intentional. You have taken a wrong turn somewhere, boy, and unless you are an extremely farsighted gent and packed up a lot of water and a tent you are probably a bit baked and parched by now. There ought to be some water in this jug. But wait. Before you drink it, please read this note and consider it carefully.
“This well works well. The jar of water I hope you see in front of you is proof of it. But to get the well to work and draw properly you have to use the water in the jar to PRIME the PUMP. It’s not hard to do and once you do the well will flow like Niagara. You can waste it, take a bath, brush your teeth with it. You can wallow like a hog in the coolest, most glorious water you have ever felt and you can drink to your heart’s content. Then before you go, refill the jug with water and leave it, attach this note for the next unfortunate straggler who comes this way and good luck to you. This is my advice.
“Or you can just drink the jar of water yourself, here and now, greedily and selfishly and destroy the use of this well forever, to the detriment and perhaps death of untold numbers who’ll follow after you. I leave it to you as to what you’ll do. This is your choice. You’ve got to give of yourself if others are to receive, you must have faith and believe, prime the pump, wash your hands to your feet, then leave a bottle full for others, thank you kindly, Desert Pete.”
What this man did is lost to sand and time. But imagine if the traveler before him hadn’t primed the pump? Imagine coming upon a well which couldn’t be primed and only an empty jar and this note? Imagine the frustration you’d feel at someone who’d been too cowardly to think of others and who through carelessness or greed had merely drained the cool promising water of the future away down his own gullet.
In fact there’s a hook to the dilemma which faced the man. Let it be known that if he chose to merely drink the hot, buggy water in the jar it would not guarantee his salvation. It would have burned like fire as it went down, bitter and would not be enough to slake his thirst entirely. One jar alone to a severely dehydrated man could not provide enough liquid sustenance to successfully traverse the searing sands back to civilization especially if was not lucky enough to locate the most direct route off the deceiving sands. In other words, there were significant risks either way. But to perish after effectively spiking the potential for anyone else to use the well would be a particularly cruel way to go. It would be a fitting end to a life lived in selfishness, bitterness and spite.
If the pump worked as promised, however, he could have stayed on and rested overnight near the gusher, let his head clear and come to his best and most reasoned opinion about the best method to walk out of the deadly desert, with a free conscience and debt free heart, replenished, rested and reassured.
The Moral here is that nothing produces plenty like plenty or generosity like generosity. Give forth freely of yourself and you shall receive back tenfold. Hoard and you die alone. There’s a reason miser is just a short version of misery.
It is timely to point out that this generation of Americans is failing to provide for its children’s future. Today’s greedy, corrupt and shortsighted government, pandering to the worst fears and instincts of society has even tried to roll back social security to our elderly. They have gutted foreign aid whenever they can. They have radically increased the divisions between rich and poor. They are robbing the country of its revenues even as they are building massive debts into the structure of our economy. They are thieves of the future who are failing our ancestors by refusing to prime the pump of the economy with a small bit of the excess abundance of today, and threatening to impoverish all who come after.
