Once there was a young man, who tried to install a light switch, but he made a mistake with the wiring, and the switch exploded in his hand. His fingers were red and slightly swollen, and even though these injuries were minor, the boy was very sad, because dumb mistakes were always happening to him.
Not long ago, he had been lighting fireworks on the Fourth of July. One of the mortars didn’t go off, so he looked down the tube to see if the fuse was still lit. What he saw was the last sparks before the shell ignited, and he had just enough time to say, “Oh no!” before a fireball shot up and struck him in the forehead. He was brought to a hospital and treated for a concussion and first degree burns. He was mad at himself for making a foolish error. He vowed to be more careful, but a few days later, he accidently mailed his tax returns to his mother, and to the IRS, he mailed a list of things he wanted for his birthday…and the following day, he baked a cantaloupe, cut a hole in the center, and put a wig on the heated-up fruit, hoping it could be used to simulate oral sex, but somehow he cooked the fruit for too long, and as a result, he burnt the tip of his penis. He screamed and danced across his living room. He applied ointment and a bandage, and later found himself lying in bed while scowling at the ceiling. He wondered why he had ever thought it was a good idea to have sex with a melon. He wondered why he had not foreseen any of the missteps that caused him injury and humiliation, and in the wee hours of morning, he was forced to wonder if he might indeed be stupid a person.
“Dear God,” he muttered in the darkness of his room.
If he were stupid, it would be terrible, because he wanted to do meaningful things with his life. He wanted to help end war and racism, and how would he do anything that mattered, if he was dimwitted?
He told himself it wasn’t true. As the sun rose he made a list of clever things he had said at cocktail parties, and for a while this list made him feel more confident, but while driving to work his car ran out of gas, and while driving home, he missed a turn and got lost, and before long, he was again wondering if he might be a moron.
For months he debated the matter in his mind. The question consumed so much energy that he was often grumpy and disagreeable. His parents asked him not to visit for a while. His friends abandoned him, and one night, he was all alone with nothing but a black carpenter ant for company. He noticed the insect crawling across the floor, and he was in such a foul mood that he tried to stomp on the ant, but the insect escaped and crawled into an electrical socket.
“I can’t even kill at ant!” the young man screamed.
Unwilling to give up, he grabbed a dinner fork and tried to stab the ant within the socket, and as a result, the boy received an electrical shock that knocked him unconscious. This was the worst injury the boy had ever sustained. His heart skipped a few beats, but within the hour he awoke wondering how he could have done something like that. He had thought on this subject for so long that perhaps he had exhausted himself — or perhaps all those volts passing through his body had done something to his mind, but whatever the reason, an epiphany settled on the boy like a warm blanket.
Of course he was stupid! Why had he not he seen it before! The fact felt like a great weight being lifted from his shoulders, because how could he possibly end war or racism if he wasn’t smart? It was a good thing he never tried, or probably he would have made things worse. In fact, his former ambitions now seemed so ridiculous that he smiled and began to giggle.
He was still giggling when he arrived at work the next morning. The happy thoughts in his mind were so distracting that he accidently shredded some important documents that he was supposed to photocopy.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” the boss demanded. “Are you stupid?”
The boy smiled and shrugged.
“Yeah,” he said.
And his answer came with such ease that the boss was dumbfounded and could think of nothing else to say.
For the next five years, the boy continued to work at the office, and his coworkers now found him fascinating. They had never met anyone who was so quick to admit to their shortcomings. They had never met anyone so carefree and comfortable. Before long the young man had more friends than he knew what to do with. He was invited to his boss’s Christmas party, and since he was no longer afraid of saying something foolish, he talked freely and people gathered around to take notes, as if the odd things the boy said were proverbs to be valued. And then, a strange thing happened. People not only quoted the boy, but they began to imitate his kind ways and easy mannerisms. These people were then imitated by other people, and before long, journalist across the world were writing about miraculous events, and next year, all major news papers reported that for the first time in history, the world was without war or racism.
