Lost Property

ASSISTANT: Can I help you Sir?

ME: Yes please. I wonder if anyone has handed in a glove at Lost Property. We were in this store about an hour ago and my son has lost a glove.

ASSISTANT: A glove, you say? No … no gloves handed in. But you can have a pencil instead.

ME: A pencil?

ASS: That’s right. You can choose any colour. Does your son like a blue one? Red perhaps?

ME: No thanks. We came in for a lost glove.

ASS: But, we have plenty of pencils. No one ever hands in a glove to Lost Property it is always pencils, or pens, or rulers or envelopes.

ME: No wonder people hand in pencils and pens. This is a stationery store after all!

ASS: Yes it is a stationery store … but we’re moving tomorrow. Just next door. It’s just to confuse the customers. We’ve been here as a stationery store for two years now. So we decided to move next door. It’s like they do in supermarkets. They move things around every so often to confuse the customers. You go in looking for soap in the usual place and instead they have put tins of beans there. The soap is where something else used to be. It’s to get customers to walk around the store and buy something else; like dog food, even though you do not have a dog. It’s called Retail Planning Layout. So we’re doing the same and moving next door.

ME: I understand. I only came in to check if someone had handed in a glove.

ASS: And one more thing. Did you know that no matter how much you push the envelope it still remains stationery? Unlike us. We're moving tomorrow.

(Voice from behind me): Dad, I have found it. It was in my pocket all the time.

ASS: Ah … I see your son has a glove. We do not encourage pickpockets or shoplifting in this store.

ME: But … it’s his own glove. He had it all the time.  

ASS: So you say. He most probably picked it up without paying.

ME: But it’s the same as his other glove. Look!

ASS: So you admit he has stolen two gloves? I must insist you see the manager or I’ll press this panic button down here. I don’t know what it’ll do; but I’ve always wanted to find out.

ME: I assure you, my son has not stolen any gloves. You can see they are worn out. Besides, this is a stationery store. You don’t even sell gloves.

ASS: I told you we are moving tomorrow so we're not that stationery are we? Besides, he could have stolen the gloves from another shop. How do you explain they were in his pocket?

ME: If he stole them from another shop; which he didn’t, it would hardly be any business of yours. Would it?

ASS: You’ve got a point there. And so has this pencil. Would you like a pencil? It’s got a point too. A pencil without a point would be pointless. But all our pencils have points; in many colours too. Blue, red, green, yellow, mauve … now that’s an interesting colour … mauve … rhymes with move, which we are doing tomorrow.

MORAL OF THIS STORY:

Life is complicated. More so than it was a generation or two ago.

Everyone thinks he has a point of view, no matter how badly thought-out, or perhaps not thought-out at all, is that point of view; or perhaps just borrowed from someone else so as to make it totally pointless.

Consequently, many people push their point of view forward at every opportunity regardless whether it is a good point of view or totally pointless.

And a pointless point of view is not worth the brain cells it is written on.