Thursday, May 04, 2006
the girl who did not believe in rain
I once knew a girl who did not believe in rain.
She never wore a rain coat or carried an umbrella. If you were walking with her in the rain and asked her "Aren't you getting wet?" or "Is water falling on your head?", she would answer "no".
She acknowledged that plants needed water to thrive, but claimed to be as ignorant of where that water came from as she was of the details of photosynthesis.
"Yes," she might say "Plants need water, but I'm only vaguely aware of how plants work, so I'm not going to pretend otherwise."
She was however smart enough that if someone started a longish rant about chlorophyll, she'd be able to trip them up, though I never saw her talk to a botanist. She thought that meteorologists were all too insane to talk to, so trying to explain weather patterns to her was about as useful as explaining the details of the global alien conspiracy to me.
The person I really knew would acknowledge the rain whenever it made her feel as if she were in a Jane Austen novel. The stance was a game, an affectation, albeit one that often required becoming uncomfortably wet. Though it was really quite charming, it would be more interesting to consider the character of the Girl Who Does Not Believe in Rain.
Can she ever be caught on the horns of a dilemma?
Is there a way to play the game against her? (and let's be clear this is a game and GWNBR, ok call her Gwen, is playing.)
Postscript:
My meditations on Gwen are inspired both by conversations in my Introduction to Philosophy class, as well as my recent discovery of the online comic strip 1/0.
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She never wore a rain coat or carried an umbrella. If you were walking with her in the rain and asked her "Aren't you getting wet?" or "Is water falling on your head?", she would answer "no".
She acknowledged that plants needed water to thrive, but claimed to be as ignorant of where that water came from as she was of the details of photosynthesis.
"Yes," she might say "Plants need water, but I'm only vaguely aware of how plants work, so I'm not going to pretend otherwise."
She was however smart enough that if someone started a longish rant about chlorophyll, she'd be able to trip them up, though I never saw her talk to a botanist. She thought that meteorologists were all too insane to talk to, so trying to explain weather patterns to her was about as useful as explaining the details of the global alien conspiracy to me.
The person I really knew would acknowledge the rain whenever it made her feel as if she were in a Jane Austen novel. The stance was a game, an affectation, albeit one that often required becoming uncomfortably wet. Though it was really quite charming, it would be more interesting to consider the character of the Girl Who Does Not Believe in Rain.
Can she ever be caught on the horns of a dilemma?
Is there a way to play the game against her? (and let's be clear this is a game and GWNBR, ok call her Gwen, is playing.)
Postscript:
My meditations on Gwen are inspired both by conversations in my Introduction to Philosophy class, as well as my recent discovery of the online comic strip 1/0.
1 Comments
What about a flood of Biblical proportions? Would that convince Gwen?
By 
, at
11:04 PM
