Susan Beckett

My husband often uses his GPS navigation device while driving to sites never before visited. Recently, we took my mother for an unexpected trip to the ER, and with her living in Fallbrook, we wanted the quickest route to our destination. Being 5 pm - peak traffic hours - we chose to drive south and ended up using GPS to guide us. Alas, the GPS had a mind of its own that evening and we took more than one wrong turn. Ughhh. So frustrating when time and purpose are of the essence. When we needed it the most, the system failed us!

Pretend for a minute that you are a brainiac and have just discovered the cure for cancer. No doubt about it - you nailed it. So now, do you donate this priceless information or charge an exorbitant fee? Or, let’s pretend for a sec that you are a genius who has worked relentlessly on a car that runs only on water, and….you did it. It’s a miracle! So, how do you share this world-changing knowledge? And what’s your price tag? Or, do you behave like Martin Shkreli, the CEO of an American drug company who fitly earned the nickname “most hated man in America?” After buying the rights to a drug used to treat those with weakened immune systems, Martin jacked up the price of the drug by 5,000% - it went from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill. What a great guy. Not!

Have you ever read through a sentence, only to roll your eyes and wonder, “Did that just say what I thought it said, because it almost, kinda, maybe, made sense?” If you have ever had such a reaction, you may have experienced a paraprosdokian - a sentence with an unexpected ending. It literally means “against expectations” in Greek. Here are just a few to boggle your brain:

What’s the strangest thing you ever remember eating? My youngest daughter, at age two, tried to eat a worm, and my husband once ate chocolate-covered crickets; but neither of those comes close to what Michel Lotito devoured! According to funfactz.com, between 1959 and 1997, Michel ate almost 9 tons of inedible and dangerous junk. Among other things, he consumed eleven bicycles, seven shopping carts, a metal coffin, a cash register, a washing machine, a TV, and 66 feet of chain. Then he decided to tackle a big-ticket item; he ate an entire airplane - an old Cessna - which took him 2 years to consume. Michel died in 2007 at the age of 57, the official cause of death being a heart attack. I don’t know - 57 is incredibly young - could he perhaps have been consuming “junk food” that, in the end, took him out?!

How many of you have ever had to referee verbal squabbling between two children hurling slaps back and forth regarding fairness and justice. You hear it all the time - “That’s not fair! He took the last cookie,” or “That’s not fair - she went first last time,” etc. It’s noteworthy that even little children seem to have a built-in sense of fairness and justice!