It's All in The Worms, Soldier

An enormous shoe blocks your path. On your right and left, tower craggy cliffs of dried glue and twisted metal cats. The only light breaking through the shadowy reaches of this eerie place is the blinking lights of orange barrier barrels randomly jutting from the overhanging branch-like appendages of gigantic, dried thistles far overhead. The fireworks that shoot off precisely every three minutes, also shed intermittent ambient light. What to do about the five-ton shoe? You must remove it and continue forward on your march. You only have toothpaste, an empty pint jar, a monocle, and gummy worms. Oh, and your combat boots on your feet. Good luck, Soldier.

I hate those kinds of tempting jokes. They feel so random, unnecessary, and entrapping. I get a sense of stupidity until I solve them, mingled with tortured-soul symptoms like ice cream cravings and a base need for chocolate. They are so unrealistic, unedifying, and—am I ranting?

Similar to these riddles, there is no need to answer the scoffer’s question phrased in a hypothetical situational question. While there is a definite place for planning ahead, mentally processing possible situations you may face, a wise man once pointed me to a succinct answer to those hypothetical questions posed to trap. He told me “Don’t answer them. It is jesting to think anyone could—and that’s the point.”

And it is a very weak point of a desperate defender, as long as you can force your mind around solving the false dilemma presented so realistically. Using the weapon of imagination in a conversational debate misses the mark. Besides, how can you take any real beliefs in application into the hypothetical realm with all its unknowns and what if’s?

Actual truths always fit to actual life. And if your beliefs aren’t real, then why do you believe them?

So you use the fireworks to light everything on fire because they are going off every three minutes, anyway. You kick up your feet in the boots; sit back with the monocle in place to watch, munching gummy worms out of the jar, grateful for the warmth of the inferno. The toothpaste? That’s because you don’t want your teeth to decay from all those sugary worms. It’s important.