Saturday, September 8, 2007

A HARD TO ANSWER QUESTION

I once had a spinster officemate who was too all-knowing to answer any question about any general subject.
Each morning as we prepare for work, we used to talk casually about anything: love, family life, experiences, business, mathematics, literally anything, and this woman always has something to say, after all, she was the "lady know it - all" of our office.

Out of our foolish curiosity, I and my male office mates decided to put up a secret contest that whoever can ask her the simplest question about general knowledge that she couldn't answer directly in 10 seconds will be given P100.00 by each participant. Each participant is allowed to casually ask only one question and if it is answered, he is automatically eliminated. If everyone's question is answered, another round must be made on another day so she wouldn't notice the joke that we play.

I tried to discover for myself what could possibly be the question that she cannot answer. So I observed her for days, attentively listening to her stories trying to find out for myself the waterloo of her mind.

My counterparts were asking her their questions one after another, about events, how-to's, capital cities of places and things of that sort, but these were all answered.
I was the only one left to ask the great question which I did out of careless resignation.

And so I asked: "Marge, I think you really know everything, you must have accumulated a great deal of experience in your life, how old are you"?
To my surprise, everybody was amazed because she was not able to answer my question directly.

I got P600.00 that day.

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