Bob was strolling past the park when he noticed a man holding a cigarette. He walked over to ask him to stop smoking in the park, but then he noticed that the cigarette was not lit. He asked the man why it’s not lit. The man looks surprised and replied, “Don’t you see the sign that says ‘No Smoking’”? Bob frowned but agreed.
Then the man took out what looked like a brick. Soon, a flock of pigeons appeared. The man told them to go away. Bob asked him why he was shooing the pigeons away. “Don’t you see the sign?” the man asked. The sign warned against feeding the pigeons. The brick was a brick of birdseed.
“If you don’t want the pigeons to eat that, why did you take that out? There aren’t any other birds here. And won’t the pigeons eat it anyway?”
“That’s their business”, the man replied. Bob was outraged. This man was clearly insane.
“Why are you doing this,” asked Bob, “what kind of insane person does this?”
The man took out a book. The title was “Why am I doing this?” with the subtitle “Answers Inside”.
Bob was so curious that he asked to read the book. But the man told him that this book was only for members of the Secret Society of Serious Serial Stenographers. Bob begged him for answers, but the man was adamant. Only members of the secret society could know. In that moment, he made his decision. He needed to know, and he had nothing else to do. He would join the Society.
The next decade of his life was spent working toward his goal. In that time, he applied for the society 30 times and worked hard at 7 different stenography jobs. After he was fired from the seventh job, and was on his way to a job interview for the eighth, the man approached him with a letter of acceptance. He was finally a member of the Society! The next day, after acing his job interview, he ran over to the Society’s headquarters to buy the book. He opened it and read it from cover to cover right there. And then he finally understood the reasons for the man’s actions in the park a decade before. It was all crystal clear.
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