My Dad spent much of his life involved in politics in some manner or other. Consequently, most of my life has had me indirectly involved in politics. I recall being a kid and being dragged to all sorts of functions and speeches and mostly just hating it (not a kid’s idea of fun). But for some reason, there was one speech that was memorable to me.

Dad knew a good speech sometimes starts out with a joke relevant to the topic. I don’t remember the body of the speech nor who he was delivering the speech to, but I do remember the joke. It went something like this:

There were these two boys: one was an optimist and one was a pessimist.

A team of scientists wanted to study their behavior, so they put each of the two boys in a room. They put the pessimist in a room filled with all the latest toys and fun things — anything that a young boy would want to have and then some. They put the optimist in a room knee-deep in manure. The scientists left the boys alone in their rooms, then after some time had passed, came back to see what the boys were doing.

The pessimist was sitting in the middle of the room, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. He hadn’t touched any of the toys, just sat there.

When the scientists looked into the optimist’s room, they saw him picking up a piece of manure and flinging it over his shoulder. Then he picked up another one, flung it, another and flung it, and kept repeating this action. The scientists wondered what he was doing so they stopped the boy and asked him.

The boy replied, “With all this manure, there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere.”

and laughter followed.

I admit, at the time I didn’t fully understand the depth of the joke. Yeah I understood it at some level, and for whatever reason the joke stuck with me — probably the mental caricature I conjured of some boy flinging pieces of poop over his shoulder. 🙂

As I’ve progressed through my life, the joke has never left my mind. It’s always been a reminder of how to look at life. When you have good things and all you do is bitch and complain, life’s going to be pretty unhappy for you. But even if life hands you a mountain of shit, if you can smile at it and find some sort of good in it, life works out a lot better.