An honest days work
In glorifying my early twentieth century street urchin garb, most of which was donated by the late father of my good friend Tyson [as an aside, I don’t think she will appreciate this moniker. Hence, it will likely change in future posts], I made a paperboy joke. You know, “extree! extree! Read all ‘boudit!!” and all that. I happened to be in the presence of Mr. Turly (on the elevator of course…I’ll explain the ‘of course’ at a later date).
Turly wondered aloud whether that was what street children did for money. My response was that they only sold papers if less honest work could not be found. I expounded further. They would only do honest work when there was no dishonest work to do. Further, honest work only makes you too tired to think about, plan, and carry out dishonest work. I said this in reference to street urchin of the early twentieth century, but Turly knew I meant it for everyone.
Turly was less than confident that I was: a. correct in my theory & b. being completely forthright with him. The latter is quite understandable, as I often am not within the Mississippi’s width of being completely factual in espousing my…ehm…let us call them theories.
As this discussion progress, it was decided that based on anecdotal evidence (i.e., what I see in people), it is not at all an unfounded observation that the folks that are dishonest are more likely to get ahead. Look at A.G. Bell. He made a windfall by stealing (sort of, but kind of not really) his the ideas of one Elisha Gray. Actually, it seems that Bell simply had better lawyers, which I find intellectually dishonest. People always seem to be pushing the government enforced restrictions on dishonesty to the limit, simply to get ahead of the rest of us honest folk, whom would, given the option, stay far from those boundaries of honesty. And that was that.
Ohh…we also decided that I might be a tad cynical.
Any one disagree?