“Too Much Information”

I’m all for folks getting an education and making a better life for themselves but I’ve noticed something. Sometimes, too much book sense can cause a person to use a string of two-dollar words when a fifty-cent word would be a better fit. If you’ve been around my porch long, you may know that I’m as partial to stretching out a good story as anyone ever has been, as long as it’s for entertainment value. What I’m talking about here is how some people can’t seem to answer a simple question with a simple answer. Instead they take off on a wordy discourse meant solely to impress their listeners. When that happens to me, I tend to respond like the young boy in today’s southern chuckle.

I used to tell this little story at various speaking engagements until it slipped off my radar. You can’t keep all this in your head, folks. Fortunately, someone asked me about it or it’d be lost in the archives and that would be a shame. It’s just too good.

As the story goes, one day a little boy was sitting outside munching on an apple when his daddy drove up and got out of the car. With him was a fellow business man he had invited to supper in hopes of closing a big deal between their companies.

The little boy ran up to his daddy and asked him a question that had been puzzling him for a while. “Daddy,” he said. “Why does my apple turn brown after I start eating it?”

“Because, son,” the father began, glancing sideways to see if his associate was listening, “When the meat of the apple is exposed to our atmosphere, the air causes the fruit to oxidize, thus changing the molecular structure and turning it into a different color.”

After a long silence, and after looking both ways and over his shoulder, the boy said, “Daddy, are you talking to me?”

~Shellie