30
August
2013 -- Did you hear the one about the two
loonies? Strangely enough, this
comes
from Don Bosco!
"Two loonies, wrapped up in
cloaks
and trembling from the cold, entered a certain inn and asked
the
innkeeper to light a fire to warm them up. The innkeeper
went over and
lit a huge fire, then went off. Meanwhile one of the men got
so close
to the fire that had he been made of straw he would
immediately have
been incinerated. The other stood at the entrance to the
room, pulled
his hands out of his cloak and held them out to the fire to
warm
himself. Meanwhile the one
who was standing right up close to the fire shouted: "Curse
the fire!
It’s burning me!" The one who was
standing right back said: "Oh! I’m just as cold as I was
before," and
they called the innkeeper. He came and asked
both of them what kind of fire, what sort of wood it was if
one said he
was just about on fire while the other said he felt no
warmth at all.
And then, noticing that they weren’t quite right in the
head, he said
to them: "The problem is not
the fire, it’s you. If you back there would just take four
steps
further forward, you would be able to warm yourself, and if
you here
would just take two steps back you would not be so hot for
sure." They did as he
said, then after warming themselves for a while they left,
praising the
fire, the wood, and the innkeeper’s advice. The two loonies are
an image of people who don’t know how to use things
properly, thinking
they are bad while instead they are excellent, and complain
about them.
It doesn’t matter how good something is if you don’t know
how to use
it. Riches are good: but they are bad in the hands of
someone who is
either extravagant, squanders them in vice and gluttony, or
is greedy
and keeps them locked up in a steel box".
Then there's this
one: A rough
looking character goes into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender says:
"No way. I don't think you can pay for it." The guy says,
"You're right. I don't have any money, but if I show you
something you
haven't seen before, will you give me a drink?" The bartender says,
"Only if you don't offend the other customers." "Deal!" says the
rough looking character and reaches into his coat pocket and
pulls out
a hamster. He puts the hamster on the bar and it runs to the
end of the
bar, across the room, up the piano, jumps on the keyboard
and starts
playing Gershwin songs. And the hamster is really good. The bartender says,
"You're right. I've never seen anything like that before.
That hamster
is truly good on the piano." The rough looking character
downs the
drink and asks the bartender for another. "Money or another
miracle else no drink", says the bartender. The rough
looking character
reaches into his coat again and pulls out a frog. He puts
the frog on
the bar, and the frog starts to sing. He has a marvellous
voice and
great pitch. A fine singer.
A stranger from the other end of the bar runs over and
offers the rough
looking character $300 for the frog. "It's a deal" he says,
takes the
three hundred and gives the stranger the frog. The stranger
runs out of
the bar. The bartender says: "Are you some kind of nut? You
sold a
singing frog for $300? It must have been worth millions. You
must be
crazy." "Not so", says the
rough looking character, "The hamster is also a
ventriloquist."
Not sure what moral to draw from that one but if there is one,
Don
Bosco might have thought it worthy of his collection! That
aside, he
had to find a way to get the boys at the Oratory to begin
reading. He
was mad keen on reading, so long as the content was uplifting, carried
a message... so he scavenged all kinds of stories and
anecdotes from
respectable authors, including his good friend Silvio Pellico,
and put
them together in a work called "Selected
Short
stories and anecdotes...".
It is yet another treasure from our Father and Founder, and
whether or
not you find any of the stories of value, you will quickly see
from
their length (very short) and content (a message and a moral
in
everyone) that here is the educator in action, no longer
talking about
how, but showing us how.
