Once upon a time there was a man named Jacob. Jacob lived in a small town: the type of town where everyone knew everyone. If a lost dog wandered into someone’s yard, the homeowner would know exactly to whom to return it; if someone forgot their wallet at home, the storeowner would just get payment at church on Sunday (because everyone went to the same church); when the two softball teams played against each other, folks would cheer for both teams because they knew everyone on each side. Well, everyone cheered except for Jacob.
Jacob didn’t cheer for either team. He’d attend the games (there wasn’t much else to do after all) but he’d sit at the top corner bleacher by himself, scowl, and mutter about how poorly everyone on the team played. At the end of the game, when people were milling about, patting the players on the back and doling out accolades, Jacob would often tell a kid that this play or that play sucked, or that the kid was generally a terrible player.
Jacob looked for any opportunity to be mean to others. He recently told the minister’s wife, pregnant with her first child, that the only thing that he was praying for was that the child would not inherit her big nose or the minister’s dumb brain. But no one ever confronted Jacob about his mean behavior. First, he owned much of the land in the town thanks to his father’s investment in silver mines in the 1930’s; more significantly, everyone had known Jacob forever and accepted that being mean was simply the way that he was (town legend had it that upon his birth he slapped the doctor back and then peed on him).
At some point, however, Jacob’s sight began to fade; and he got a guide dog to help him get around town. The dog’s name was Freddy. He was a mild-mannered 3 year-old German Shepard, whom everyone loved and on whom Jacob became extremely dependent. Jacob couldn’t go and yell at his “worthless tenants” when he went and collected his rent; or go have a few beers at the one bar in town and complain to Sid, the bartender, that his beer was over-priced, too warm and tasted like urine; if Freddy wasn’t there to guide him.
Freddy loyally guided Jacob everywhere he needed to go until Jacob died of a heart attack while cursing out his mailman for delivering the mail too early one Saturday. Everyone in-town attended Jacob’s funeral—not because they liked him—but because that’s what folks in that town did. While dirt was being thrown on Jacob’s coffin, Jacob was in purgatory negotiating with Peter to get into heaven.
Peter: “Jacob, I don’t think we can let you into heaven. Our records show that you were not a nice man. You were a bully and a tyrant, of sorts.”
Jacob: “That’s not true. I’m very offended that you would say that. I am a nice person. Look at the way I treated Freddy. Just before you guys pulled the plug, I told him that he was a good boy.”
Peter: “Boy bye.”
Jacob was zapped into hell, where he immediately told the devil that he’d seen hotter days down south during the summer. Meanwhile, the town folks had Jacob’s repast at the church where the choir sang songs, the local ladies served their best dishes, and everyone took turns playing with and petting Freddy (whose new home was with the minister, his wife, and their gorgeous newborn baby boy).
The minister and his wife would tell their little boy the bedtime fable of the mean man named Jacob, who was never nice to anyone except the dog whom he needed. The moral of the story, they stressed, was that your character is shown in how you act every day and most of the time; and cannot be refuted by one outlier example. The little boy would grow up into a fine man who would tell his kids the same story, who then told their kids, and so on and so on; ensuring that each of them were of solid character and never needed to desperately search for that lone person or example to negate who their lives had undeniably shown them to be. And they all lived happily ever after. The End.
