Man from somewhere else

Well our poor everyday man was returning home in the night after an exhausting days work and as luck would have it he ran into two of the roughest characters around, both heavily drunk and in the middle of a heated argument. One was holding forth that the shining thing in the sky was the moon and the other was pretty sure it was the sun.

Our man was immediately noticed by them and was held up.

Mate, one drunk pawed him, see, that thing over head, isn’t that the moon?

The hell it is, the other guy said, our friend knows it’s the sun.

Our man had a wife and kids at home.

The thing over head was definitely the moon. But truth was not an option in the situation. Either way he is going to be mauled by one of them.

He was in a quandary.

He remembered his wife and kids and let out a fervent internal prayer to god to help him.

Of course the god was catching a few winks at that particular moment and did not respond.

Come on, the ruffians said; just tell the truth, we will look after you whatever it is, we promise you.

(Well that was what our poor guy was most afraid of. Especially that “we” looked definitely promising)

Then he had a brain wave.

He said:

I am sorry guys, you see, I am not from these parts. I am from the Valley of Silence.

The drunks were crestfallen.

Well in that case leave peacefully stranger, you wouldn’t know about it would you?

The story ends.

Is there a point to this story?

May be there are several. But being unintelligent I can’t think of any. Some friends volunteered though; here are a few of their suggestions:

1. On occasions saving your ass is better than saying the truth. (Elementary Watson, even I could have guessed it)

2. Be evasive where your personal interest is not at stake. (Sketchy, dude, very sketchy, but anyway I like the vagueness)

3. Avoid people, who quarrel over the obvious, they have other interests in mind (Definitely pedestrian friend, this could also come under stating-the-obvious. More than that, there was no avoiding them, that was the whole schema of the story, and don’t ask me what a schema is, for god’s sake)

4. Drunks can be duped. (Wrong, everyone can be taken in! You lose heavily brother, no one comes up with a story to con everyone, it would have no moral in it)

5. You can’t rely on god and has to rely on your wits to extricate yourself from sticky situations (Where did the fifty-fifty principle go? God has to do his fifty if we do our fifty, don’t he? You can’t be serious man; it can even be argued that it was God who put the idea into the man’s mind.)

May be there is no moral at all, well anyway, what is this nonsense about the moral of a story, I can make no sense of it.