An older friend says, "If I had known how much fun grandchildren are, I would have skipped having kids entirely and gone straight to being a grandparent!"
That skip-a-generation theme is the basis for a classic Russian story. A man spends his rubles on a bottle of vodka, drinks it, but fails to get the buzz he wants. Frustrated, he digs deeper in his pockets. He finds several kopecks and buys a succession of smaller glasses of liquor — none of which pushes him into intoxication. Finally, in desperation he uses his sole remaining coin to purchase a tiny spoonful of alcohol which he swallows. With that he achieves the drunken state that he seeks. "Oh, if only I had bought that last spoon of vodka first!" he complains.
Silly, sure — and we do it constantly: blaming current leadership for the consequences of decisions taken a decade ago ... praising the player who happens to score the final goal of the game ... punishing children whose parents neglected them in their infancy ....
Thursday, May 18, 2000 at 21:38:55 (EDT) = 2000-05-18
(correlates: RepoMan, StatusGenetics, PhilosophicalBumpersticker, ...)