ANOTHER GENIUS TALE

While I was in Florida, the genius had lunch with his sister and her husband. She reminded him about an experience he had with his first BB gun when he was a child. I knew that he had always been a stickler for doing the right thing, and this story proves it.

He was about eight years old when he got his first BB gun, an event that occurred to many boys his age growing up in the South in the forties and fifties. His father told him he could shoot at starlings and sparrows, but killing any other kind of bird was illegal. So he set out to bag his first bird.

The problem was that sparrows were too small to hit and the feathers on a starling deflected any BB so effectively that it was almost impossible to bring one down. The only way to do it was to hit it right between the eyes.

One day he was trying yet again, and he got so discouraged he just turned his gun on a bright red cardinal and shot. You guessed it -- he hit it right between the eyes and he fell over instantly dead.

Before that bird even hit the ground the genius was crying hysterically. He knew he had done a terrible thing. When his father came home that night, of course he confessed his sin right away.

The genius suspects that his father was getting ready to tell him that he had done wrong, but had learned a good lesson when his son broke in with, "Daddy, I broke the law, and we have to report it!"

So the wise father took his son by the hand down the street to a neighbor who just happened to be a game warden. The man told him he would let him off this time, but not to do it again.

Then they went back home and buried the cardinal.

This little story shows the side of the genius's personality that is still very prevelant today: wrong behavior has consequences.

Just ask any student he has ever had!!