by Bart King
Positive words like “yes” or “for sure” can be used as much as you want without changing the meaning of what you’re saying. Yet through the magic of sarcasm, the phrase “Yeah, right” somehow takes two positive words and then gives them a negative meaning!
Okay, here’s a different dilemma. It’s probably illegal where you live to drive a car or ride a bike while talking on a cell phone. So let’s say you’re out riding your skateboard when you see a mean kid on a tricycle rob a bank. As the robber makes his getaway (“Look how fast he’s pedaling!”), you have some choices to make. You can:
Follow the kid on your skateboard. (But it could be dangerous!)
Call the police on your cell phone. (But by the time they arrive, that kid will be long gone!)
Follow the kid on your skateboard while calling the police and giving them directions where the little criminal is headed. (But that’s probably illegal. Plus, while you’re distracted on your cell phone, you could get run over by a kid on a scooter!)
So what do you do? Remember, there is no wrong answer—except for one that is really dumb! While you’re chewing on that, here’s another good dilemma: Imagine you were given $100. Sweet! But you have to give your best friend (or sister or brother) part of the money.
You get to decide on how much ($70?) or how little ($3?) to give the person. But the catch is that the other person has to AGREE to take the money! If he or she doesn’t agree, then neither one of you gets any money at all.
You would think that the other person would take ANY amount because it’s free money! And you’d be wrong. Studies show that in lots of cases, the other person will try to get more money than you’re offering. And if you won’t give in, then that person won’t take the money, and you both get zilch.
Why? The person may be someone who values fairness. (“Let’s split it 50-50!”) Or he may think of himself as a good negotiator. (“I won’t settle for less than $35. Take it or leave it.”) Or he may be trying to get payback for what he sees as an insult. (“You’re offering me a crummy $40? Forget it! How do you like them apples?”)
Now, try to predict what kind of deal some of your friends and family members would insist on. Write down their names and amounts and then explain the hypothetical situation to them. And if you don’t think a hypothetical situation will work, try a junior version of the game with a very real $10.[15]
Not only is it fun to consider imaginary dilemmas, but it can also be useful. For example, let’s imagine that you are on a crowded escalator. Suddenly, it breaks down. How will you ever be able to save all the stranded people?
Imaginary Fun!
Imagine what a group of puppies or kittens would say to each other. Would it be like this?
“You’re so cute!”
“Stop! You’re the cutest one here.”
“Nope, I just got a cavity from how sweet you are!”
“Why, you little cutie.”
“Who’s the cute puppy? YOU’RE the cute puppy!”
“I may be cute, but you’re the CUTEST.”
“Let’s roll around on the floor now.”
“Totally!”
Below are even more dilemmas. Think of them like riddles that have more than one answer. And the answer you give is only as good as the reasons you have to explain your answer. (That’s where the thinking comes in!)
You hate cheaters! But during class, you see your brother cheating on a test. Dang it! And he’s not even being sly! So would you turn him in? It is probably the right thing to do...but what about the fact that he’s your BROTHER? (Extra credit: What if you decided not to turn in your brother, and then you saw a known tattletale watching your brother cheating. Would you try to talk the tattletale out of turning him in?)
Hiking in the woods, you come upon a pit of quicksand. Yes! But hey, there are two people stuck in it! One of them is your favorite teacher from school, while the other is that kid you don’t like very much. Both are yelling, “Help me!” and they’re both close to going under. Looking around, you find a stick long enough to reach one of them. What do you do?
You’re in a spelling bee. Yes! And you’re in the finals. It’s just you and some kid you don’t even know. The other kid misses a word. That means if you get your word right, you win!
You’re asked to spell the word “meep.” But as you spell the word, you realize you made a mistake. (“Meep. M-e-p-e. Meep.”) But the judges give you credit for the correct spelling. You won! Or did you? Would you take the trophy? Or would you tell the judges there’d been a mistake?
School Fun!
The next time you have a question in class, try this:
You: I have a question.
Teacher: What is it?
You: An interrogative statement used to test knowledge. But that’s not important right now.
Then ask your question!
You’re wearing a new dress shirt and pants that will disintegrate if they get wet.[16]Yes! But suddenly, your archenemy jumps out from behind a bush and throws a water balloon at you. Just as that happens, a man pushing a baby carriage steps into the path of the flying water balloon. Nooo! If you do nothing, the poor baby will get wet. But if you step in front of the water balloon, YOU’LL get wet. Your clothes will disintegrate, and you’ll be standing there naked! What’s the right thing to do?
Thinking About Ads
One interesting thing to pay attention to is advertising. Let’s say you’re in a toy store and you start looking through its catalog of new toys. Sure, you could just be distracted by the bright colors and cool-sounding names (“I’ve GOT to get a Gorilla-Bot!”), but what if you actually paid attention to the ways the toys are ADVERTISED?
That’s what some Swedish sixth graders did. They discovered that when advertisements showed boys playing with toys, the boys were being active (running, jumping, exploding). “We’re superheroes!”
But when advertisements showed girls playing with toys, the girls were shown as being passive—sitting, standing, or even lying down. “We’re princesses! And princesses don’t run.” Plus, the boys were shown playing with only certain kinds of toys (the macho ones), while the girls got anything girly.
So the Swedish kids filed a complaint with a Swedish watchdog group.[17] And the watchdog group agreed! It found that the advertisements discriminated based on gender and counteracted “positive social behavior, lifestyles, and attitudes.” Everybody hoped this would encourage advertisers to be more thoughtful.
Pretty cool, huh? Those kids made a difference just by thinking about the world around them! But now I have a complaint: I think that toy stores are ageist. Yeah, they discriminate against older people! When was the last time you saw an ad showing a grown man playing with toy trucks?
LeBron James is a really good basketball player. Sure, he practices hard, but the facts are that he’s tall, he can jump really high, and he has lightning-fast reflexes. These are like superpowers that he was born with! Since LeBron didn’t “earn” these abilities, the millions of dollars he makes should be donated to charity. (He should be left with just enough to live on.)
If you disagree with the above statement, that means you think LeBron “owns” his natural abilities. Okay, fine! If we own our own bodies, then what if I want to sell my kidney? I don’t want to donate it—that would mean I’d get nothing for my kidney, and I’m kind of using it right now.
I want to sell my kidney for, say, $15,000. But there’s a problem. In most countries, it’s illegal to sell your own internal organs. What a rip-off! If LeBron can “sell” his basketball ability, can you explain why I shouldn’t be able to sell something I own?
Many people really need organ transplants. But there is always a shortage of organs from donors. Should the organs that are available go to the highest bidder? If not, how should they be assigned?
If your best friend had a really bad cough and needed a very expensive medication to get better, would you shoplift the medicine?
Shipwreck! Luckily, the captai
n is your mom. Unluckily, she can either save you and leave the other passengers behind, or she can save them and leave you to try to survive on the boat. What do you say to her?
Suppose you have to move to either Boston or Las Vegas. If you move to Boston, you’ll fall in love and get married. If you move to Vegas, you’ll get rich but stay single. Should you move to Vegas, if being rich gives you more pleasure than being married?
Little Timmy is a troublemaker. Luckily, his best friend Hurley is always around to stop him from getting into trouble. As a result, even though Little Timmy wants to create mischief, he actually does a lot of good things instead. Does that make Little Timmy a good person?
Wait, there’s more! Suppose Hurley moved away. With Hurley’s good influence gone, Little Timmy plants a stink bomb with a timer somewhere near the kindergarten class. That stink bomb will go off in an hour unless the principal can find it first. Those poor little kids! What should the principal be allowed to do to get the information out of Little Timmy?
Put gum in his hair.
Get mad at him.
Play elevator music REALLY loud.
Nothing.
How should a person get to own something? Does he or she have to work for it? What if a disabled person needs a wheelchair but can’t buy or build one herself? Does she have a right to the wheelchair anyway? If so, why? If not, what do you think is going to happen to her?
Portrait in Deep Thinking!
There was once a man named Emmanuel Kant (1724–1824) who got into trouble for writing about religion. Religion and politics have always been very touchy subjects. In Kant’s case, he had to go before the king and defend himself.
Ulp. One false move, and it could have been curtains for Kant!
Kant chose his words carefully. Knowing the king was a very old man, Kant basically said, “As your majesty’s faithful subject, I will stop writing about annoying topics.” This worked!
The king passed away a few years later. And then Kant could write whatever he wanted, since he was no longer the king’s “faithful subject”!
The Wrong Definition of Fun
Hey, I have a question: Have you ever seen two people get in an argument about a topic they disagree on? Why do they do that? Have you EVER seen someone change his mind in one of these arguments?
If people who argue were honestly seeking the truth, this is what would happen: Each person would speak. The other person would listen carefully. And then the two people would come to a reasonable agreement. But that almost never happens! I think this is because most people don’t think it’s fun to change their mind. Instead, they argue and show off how stubborn they are!
But from now on, let’s all pretend that it’s fun to actually listen to the other person and understand their point of view. That way, the argument won’t get personal. (Plus, if you listen well, at the very least, you’ll have a better argument to use against the other person!)
If you end up changing your mind about the topic at hand, that means you’ve probably learned something! And here’s the greatest secret of all time: LEARNING THINGS IS THE MOST FUN YOU CAN EVER HAVE! (Besides throwing water balloons at your friends.)
Bonus Deep Question!
Have you ever looked at an orange and wondered, “Is this fruit called an orange because it’s orange, or is the color orange orange because of this orange?”
The quick answer is that orange is orange because it is orange, and orange is orange because of the orange.
Oops! My bad. Here’s a quicker way to say it: The fruit came first. The word for the color came from the fruit.
Next time: the tangerine!
* * *
[14] But avoid spoilsports who say, “If it’s imaginary, then it hasn’t happened. Why should I care?” You want people who will play along!
[15] To get the cash, just write to me care of my publisher. (Better yet, just write my publisher!)
[16] I did mention this is imaginary, right?
[17] The watchdog group is called the Reklamombudsmannen. Whew!
Laughter Rules
How many times in your life has someone tried to get you to laugh? I’m going to take a guess and say 596 times. And that means you know firsthand how hard it can be NOT to laugh. Sure, you can concentrate on something super-sad and serious. (Try imagining that you lost this book, for instance.)
But even when you think you have it beat, laughter can strike like a bolt of lightning! And this is not always fun...or comfortable. Like me, you may know someone who has laughed so hard, he spit up juice, shot milk out of his nose, or peed his pants.[18] (There should be a special word for that last one. “Paughed”? “Leed”?)
“Cracking up” like this is a particular danger for actors. In fact, actors have even come up with a special word for someone who starts laughing in the middle of a scene: corpsing. This word got started by actors who were supposed to be playing dead bodies, aka “corpses.” But for some totally illogical reason, actors who were supposed to be holding still and looking dead would sometimes giggle and then get hysterical with laughter.
You can see how that might ruin a scene.
While it stinks trying to perform onstage while your fellow actor is corpsing, it’s fun for the rest of us! People tend to laugh along with someone else, even if they have no idea what that person is laughing about. For example, I love it when DVDs have outtakes of actors corpsing. These make me laugh harder than the movie’s actual jokes!
Performers say there is no way to predict what will make someone start to corpse. But there is a downside to this dreadful condition. You see, while everyone will laugh along on the first, second, third, and even fourth times an actor corpses, after that, they just get annoyed.
But strangely, having everyone else get annoyed does not usually help the corpsing actor STOP laughing. In fact, it can make the problem worse! If you’ve ever gotten hysterical when everyone else was looking at you with a mixture of disgust and wonder, you know this is true!
Of course, you don’t have to be an actor to corpse. Years ago, I was watching a British comedy show called The Goodies. During a skit, a Scottish man in a kilt used his bagpipes to defend himself from a giant pudding. (This was really funny, trust me.) I giggled, and as the Scotsman’s bagpipe kung fu grew kookier, I started laughing. Hard. When someone came into the room and asked me what was so funny, all I could do was helplessly point at the TV with tears streaming down my face.
I was not the only person who corpsed when I saw that skit. A man named Alex Mitchell also laughed really hard at it. Then he fell over, stone dead. Was this a tragedy? Maybe! Even so, Alex’s wife sent a very nice letter to the staff at The Goodies, thanking them for giving her hubbie such a pleasant send-off. (Makes sense! If you have to die, why not die laughing?)
Of course, laughter is not usually fatal, but some people do have a medical problem with laughing. You see, there is a condition called cataplexy. A person who has cataplexy will suddenly collapse if she starts laughing very hard. That’s right, a cataplectic might chortle and then have a sudden physical collapse. She is rendered helpless by laughter! (In this situation, laughter is not the best medicine. In fact, it would be important to find the best medicine to treat the laughter!)
Anyway, cataplectics naturally try to avoid funny situations. One sufferer named Kay Underwood says that sometimes her friends “good-naturedly” try to make her laugh. They like to see her fall over, I guess. To protest this bad behavior, the next time one of my friends tries to make me laugh, I’m not going to—just to spite ’em!
Either that or I’ll fall off my chair, shooting milk out of my nose.
Hail to the Chief!
Get your hands on a long, narrow red rug. Then roll it up and keep it by the front door. When you see someone approaching your house, run out and unroll the “red carpet.” Then grandly invite the visitor to enter. (If your visitor asks what else is part of the red carpet treatment, tell him not to push it.)
Researchers have
carefully studied what happens inside our brain when we laugh. They’ve found that when something funny happens, your brain has to go through all its memories to compare what you just saw to everything else you have ever seen. Then the brain tries to solve the problem of whether what it saw was funny. Then the emotions have to kick in and help create laughter.