It’s All in the Book!
“Well, If she can do it, why can’t I?”
“One, because this is not a fairy tale. And two, because you are a male. Males don’t spin thread.”
“No, you’re wrong. First of all, the words in the story say that she couldn’t spin straw into gold, yet she did. And it says nothing about a male or female, it just happened in the book that it was a female. Why couldn’t it be a male?”
“All right, I’ll give you that argument. So, what is it exactly that you want me to do?” she asked.
“As the story goes, you have to lock me in a room, I guess that would be the back room, and if I can’t spin straw into gold, then you have to kill me.”
“That’s ridiculous!” she said. “I’m not going to do that. Why should I kill you? I just met you. And furthermore, we don’t have a spinning wheel in the back room, it’s a freezer. We don’t have straw either. That would violate the health code.”
“Okay, if that is not possible, let’s just jump to the chase. In the book, after the guy with the weird name does all of the spinnings, the girl has to promise to give him her firstborn child after she marries the king. She can get out of it if she figures out his name. When she does, the imp loses and jumps in a hole in the ground, and the king and queen live happily ever after.”
“Okay,” she says, “So what? As I said, it’s only a story.”
“Well, here’s the deal. I don’t need to spin thread because even if all that happens and I have to discover the imp’s name to save our firstborn child, I already know its name, so that’s not a problem.”
She looked at me with an astonished look, “Wait a minute, what do you mean our firstborn child? I only just met you.”
“Oh,” I replied, “Did I skip that part? I thought I said in the story she marries the king. Ergo I marry you.”
She replied, “But I’m not a king, and you are definitely not her.”
“Simple mistake,” I answered. “You see, I want to marry you, and you do work at Dairy Queen; therefore, I believe the analogy works.”
Well, believe it or not, this was not the worst pick-up line that I had ever used, but in this case, it worked. It worked so well that we have been married now for 32 years. And I never had to reveal anyone’s secret name to save my child.
