Thursday, October 06, 2011

An old joke I recalled and the epiphany that resulted

Suddenly I recall an old joke told to me when I just joined the boy scouts during my secondary school days..

All new boy scouts have to go through a test that will prove themselves to be good enough to join..
There are tons of questions to be answered in the manner of a 1 to 1 interview..
Though the questions seemed trivial now, it was quite challenging for us, young boys to remember so many answers...

So, a senior told us a joke on how "not" to cheat..

So the joke goes, this budding boy scout was afraid that he couldn't answer all the questions correctly.
So he practiced very hard.. There was only one question which he always stumbled and forgot the answer..

The question was "Who is the Chief Scout of Singapore". This position was usually held by the President of Singapore and then it was "Benjamin Sheares". The boy found it hard to remember the name and wanted so badly to get all the questions correct, so he thought up a scheme to cheat just for this one question..

He'd written the answer on a small piece of paper and stapled the paper to his underwear outer rubber band, so he can take a quick peek at the answer on the pretense of adjusting his belt.

On the Q&A interview test itself, guess what he said when he was asked the question?

Q: Who is the current Chief Scout of Singapore?
A: Crocodile


Looking back sometimes at the problems and difficulties we had when we were young,
everything seemed so trivial when we look back it them. 
However, when the problems are current, they always seem bigger and unsolvable by the current version of us. 

If I might say, 
Challenges, beyond our wisdom to tackle, are constantly presented to us.
Yet, if we do not attempt to tackle these challenges,
Our wisdom will never grow.

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