Debunker

A short morality tale where a man awakens to a higher mind thanks to an unlikely teacher.

                 Clever Bob slurped on his snow cone as he meandered his way through the state fair celebration.  Bob used his Holmsian perception to notice the little details about the people around him so he could deduce hidden details about their lives.  He just assumed he was good at it because he had no way of confirming his assumptions about people.  A sleeveless shirt was a man who beat his wife and too much makeup with skimpy clothes was a s**t.  Perhaps he was right; he assumed it was so.

                The colorful gypsy tent of a fortuneteller caught Bob’s eye.  The sign out front promised palm reading, Tarot cards, and a crystal ball.

                Madam Mezmerelda sat behind her little table as Bob entered.  The interior of the tent was dark and mysterious.  The decorations included a dream catcher and a human skull on a little pedestal.  She gestured for him to take a seat across from her, “Would you like to know your future?”

                As he sat down, Bob scoffed, “You think you are so smart, but I am smarter.  I know that this is a scam.  You can’t read the future.  I am just here to debunk you.”

                Mezmerelda only smiled with supreme confidence as she gestured to her jar that had a little message on it that he should pay his $5 for the service.

                Bob knew he would expose the woman as a charlatan so he tossed in his money.  He offered his challenge, “If you are psychic, tell me what I am thinking right now.”

                She reached into a secret pocket of her gypsy dress then took out a pack of cigarettes.  Mezmerelda lit one with a golden zippo then placed the pack onto the table.  After a long puff of exhaled smoke that seemed to sooth her immensely, she said, “You are thinking you are much smarter than you are.  I see in your future that you will leave here much the wiser and sad because you will understand that you are entirely a fool.”

                Bob pursed his lips with barely veiled contempt, “I am a Mensa member.  I am anything but a fool.  I am probably the smartest person you have ever met.”

                That comment made her smirk, “I must admit that I don’t meet many smart people in this job.  None of the smart people ever come in here.  Some of my customers just want to have a little fun and take an interesting memory home with them from the carnival.  Some are actually silly enough to believe that I can tell them their future.”  She smoked a bit then tapped the ash.  “My best customers, about seventy percent of them are people who come in to my tent to debunk me.  If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t even be here.  I could not make a living otherwise.”

                Enlightenment struck Bob like a flung sandal.  In that moment, he realized how much of his life he had pissed away with his stupid behavior.  He watched the propaganda network news to debunk it.  Bob went onto blogs and into internet chat rooms to argue with uneducated fools to debunk them too.  He had argued with amateur practitioners of religions and pseudo-intellectual scientists who had never studied or worked in any science profession.  To prove the worth of his own mind he had squandered it in contest with one obvious ignorance after another.

                Bob got to his feet, “You have lost then and I have won.”

                She gazed up at him with only a slight hint of surprise peeking out through her otherwise wall of tedium, “How so?”

                He tossed another $20 into her jar before he turned to walk out.  “I am leaving happy and so much the wiser.  You predicted that I would be sad and depart feeling like a fool.” 

    Bob left the tent so he could get home and work on some important projects he had been neglecting.

Reviews

[Marie]

THis is pretty good. Bob was really smart after all. He found out what he didn't know, and knew that he didn't know it. However, Madam Mezmerelda was smart too. She made $25.00