In a message dated 06/24/2000 11:54:08 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< There is a Zen parable relating to this idea of "beating a dead horse": >>
There's also an Arkansas parable relating to this idea of a "dead horse".
Billy Joe and Dwight were brothers who lived together, and Dwight was younger
and also had a few burnt tubes in his cerebral media center. Billy Joe would
get extremely angry with Dwight, even though he knew Dwight wasn't the
sharpest pencil in the box, because Dwight was so damn stupid. Probably it
was Billy Bob's fear of his own lack of intelligence, but this is a joke, not
a therapy session.
Dwight would say, "Hey Billy Bob, what's that thing you're running up and
down on, you ain't gettin nowhere."
"It's a stairmaster, you idiot," Billy Bob would say. "I'm not going
anywhere, I'm exercising."
Or Dwight might say, "Hey Billy Bob, what's that dumb thing you got on your
head?"
And Billy Bob would say, "It's the official hat of the Shriner's you stupid
imbecile jerk. I am a member of an elite club which you can never hope to
join."
And this was how life was for poor Dwight, everytime he tried to learn about
Billy Bob's world, he would get pounded with insults and emotional injury,
and even Dwight, a slow thinker, had feelings and could feel the pain of
degradation and rejection.
One day Dwight went out to the barn to feed the animals, and Roman Soldier,
the old pull gelding they'd had since boyhood was motionless and down on the
floor his stall, fat and dead. Suddenly Dwight saw a way to communicate to
Billy Bob how painful his insults were.
Billy Bob came home that night, barely nodded to Dwight, took a beer out of
the refrigerator, popped the top with his teeth and chugged it down. Then he
walked towards the bathroom. Dwight watched calmly as his brother opened the
bathroom door and muddled in. A few seconds later Billy Bob shrieked: "What
the hell is this in the bathtub?"
Dwight sauntered over to the bathroom, looked his brother smugly in the eye
and said, "It's a dead horse you ignorant sonofabitch."
