Part 16

It Depends on How You Look at It: Eight Vignettes on Perspective

A man's house burned to the ground. Upon hearing of it, the man said angrily, "This is the fault of oxygen!" For, as he explained, if there hadn't been any oxygen in the atmosphere, his house never would have burned.

* * *

When the boss called Smervits and Jenkins into the office, Jenkins was very nervous because his plan to salvage the Freeble contract had not worked. Smervits wasn't worried because he had shrewdly stood by while Jenkins floundered with the contract.

"Jenkins, you failed," the boss said forcefully after the two men had entered. "That's good," he added, "because it shows that you tried something. Smervits, you didn't fail, but you didn't try anything, either. You're fired."

* * *

One day the power went off in the mine, leaving the miners in absolute darkness. One miner found a match and lit it. "What a dinky little flame," said one of his companions, with contempt.

"What a great light in the darkness," said another, with awe.

* * *

"Just think," said the man in the orange hard hat, "to us that's just a useless pile of rock. But to someone with greater vision it has value. It can be changed by his direction into something useful."

"How's that?" someone asked.

"First it has to be crushed, and then heated in a furnace, to give up its old properties and take on new ones. Then it can be mixed with water and molded into something beautiful."

"So that's how you make cement, huh?"

"No," someone said, "that's how you make a Christian."

* * *

An officer came upon a young soldier so weighted down with weapons and ammunition that he couldn't move. "You know why you aren't attacking the enemy, don't you?" asked the officer.

"Yes," replied the soldier. "I'm waiting for more ammunition."

* * *

Once in a pleasant garden there stood a tree, from which, legend said, God himself would one day reign. But instead, a group of wicked men broke in and chopped the tree down. They hacked the tree into a beam and nailed a holy man to it, leaving him to die upon a hill. So the tree of hope now had become a beam covered with blood and death. "See here," the wicked men said, laughing with scorn, "in what manner God's promises are fulfilled."

* * *

The chairman of the department asked the young professor how his book was coming along. Said the professor, "Oh, the book is already written; I just haven't put it down on paper yet." The chairman patted the man on the back and told him to keep up the good work.

A construction worker, watching this scene transpire, decided that what was good enough for academe was good enough for him, so he sat back and opened a beer. Presently his foreman came along and wanted to know what was going on. Said the worker, "Oh, the hole is already dug; I just haven't taken out the dirt yet." The foreman, not having been enlightened by Higher Education, fired the worker, right in the middle of his beer.

* * *

A man on foot approached an abandoned auto wrecking yard that still had many old pieces of assorted cars lying around. "What an enormous pile of worthless junk," he said to himself as he walked by. The next day another man on foot approached the same yard. "What a wonderful pile of worthy raw materials," he thought as he surveyed the area. A few days later the second man drove away in his own car.

The Strange Adventure

Once upon a time, so long ago that it seems like yesterday, circumstances so occurred that two youths found themselves lost together in the desert and forced to spend the night without the services of modern technology.

"What a terrible thing," said the first one. "We're stuck out here all alone among who knows what frightening stuff."

"This is great," said the other. "What an adventure. I can't wait to see what happens."