When I did my 'Sooo Boreddd' post, I had time to kill, so I thought I'd write this:
Ernest Hemmingway (a famous author) was once challenged to write a six word short story that could make people cry, so he wrote this: ‘For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never worn.’
That 'story' (if it can even be called so) was and still is most commonly associated with death and sadness, most people decide that the baby intended to wear the shoes was stillborn, or died of illness or was maybe even stolen. And that would be enough to make someone cry, especially a pregnant mother, as it would bring all sorts of scenarios created entirely from the psychological mess that is commonly known as the human mind.
Yet there is another aspect of the story that no-one seems to consider – the baby could have larger feet than the average baby, preventing it from squeezing its foot into the shoe – thus resulting in the selling of the shoe. Or perhaps the baby was given other shoes to wear from family, and to show that the gift was appreciated the child would wear the other shoes and then maybe a few years later, the mother and father of the afore mentioned child might find the shoes, realise that they were never worn, and then sell them.
That’s one of many examples in which the human mind jumps to conclusions as soon as certain words are mentioned. As soon as someone says ‘this is a sad story’ and then they tell you the six words about which I have been writing this whole essay (I’m going to call this an essay, even though this is actually something I wrote because I’m bored) the human brain connects the thought of sad things happening to babies to this story, resulting in lots of emotion of the sorrowful kind. Yet if someone were to say ‘this baby had big feet’ (I know, it’s a bad example…) and then told the story you’d be like ‘Wow. Thanks for sharing that with me. Note the sarcasm in my voice as I compliment you.’
No comments:
Post a Comment