Asking a drunk

Two drunks are walking along. One drunk says to the other, "Lovely night. Look at the moon." The other drunk stops and look at his drunk friend, "Bollocks! That's not the moon. That's the sun."

Both started arguing for a while when they come upon another drunk walking so they stopped him. "Sir, could you please help settle our argument? Tell us what that thing is up in the sky that's shining. Is it the moon or the sun?"

The third drunk looked at the sky and then looked at them and said, "Sorry, I don't live around here."

-- Aimless (aimless@national_raffle_association.org), October 19, 2001

Answers

Can we look at this story a little more carefully?

According to you, “two drunks” are walking along, and suddenly, quite fortuitously, without any previous planning, they just happen to encounter a “third drunk”. You don’t seem to know much about this “third drunk”. Some people might expect you to know what his name was, for example, or what he looked like, possibly. As far as you’re concerned he’s just a “third drunk”.

But then, you didn’t tell us anything about the first two drunks, did you?

Now I’m sure you can see why I feel a little unhappy about your version of the story. You want us to believe in your uncorroborated account of how two totally unidentified people, one of whom may not even have been male (because you didn’t actually spell out that these “two drunks” were both male, did you?) – how these two nameless individuals, who apparently did not have any kind of physical appearance, were “walking along” –

And is that not a little implausible in itself? Those of us who have some experience of being drunk have often found it remarkably difficult to “walk along”. But these “two drunks” that we hear so much about, they don’t seem to be having much of a problem, do they?

So as these two nameless, bodiless, and in one case possibly androgynous “drunks” – if that is what you think we should call them – as they do their highly implausible “walking along”, what happens? Do they fall in the gutter? Do they topple, senseless, into a pool of their own vomit? No – they engage in a sustained astronomical discussion, latterly involving a third party. The sort of discussion that you might hear every night of the year on Skid Row – I don’t think.

But this third party is, of course, the famous “third drunk”. And I’d like us to take a look at this “third drunk”, who materialises, apparently out of nowhere, just at the point which is most convenient for your story, and who looks at the sky, and then looks at the two drunks, so you seem to know one or two things about his physical movements, which is very striking since you don’t seem to know what he looks like. And what does this supposed “drunk” supposedly say? He says “Sorry, I don’t live around here.”

The only significant piece of information which you are willing to give us about this “third drunk” is entirely negative. You don’t tell us where he lives. You are only prepared to tell us where he doesn’t live.

But, on reflection, have you even told us that? I’d like to suggest to you that you haven’t said anything more geographically exact than “around here”. For all we know, that could be anywhere in the world, could it not? These three so-called “drunks” could be doing their totally improbable “walking along” in the middle of the Gobi Desert, for all you seem to know about it.

Not everyone is going to take your story with complete seriousness – your story of three anonymous, undescribed people doing vastly unlikely things in a completely unspecified place.

And there is one question that is powerfully begged by the entire narrative: “Sez who?”

Who heard this? Who saw it?

You don’t pretend that you witnessed it yourself. Then again, you don’t indicate that there were any witnesses present at all. But if there were no witnesses, how could you know about this episode (assuming it ever took place) unless it was reported by one of the three people involved in it? The three people whom you describe – and I’m not putting words into your mouth here – as “drunks”? “Drunks” who are so mentally confused that they cannot even tell the difference between the moon and the sun! And are we really expected to give one shred of belief to a tale reported by such a person?

Frankly, I feel sorry for you today, Aimless. You came to this forum with your big, important story that you didn’t expect anyone to challenge. You thought it would make us respect you – look up to you. Perhaps you assumed we would give you all our money and possessions. Possibly you imagined Soren Bailey might change sex and fall irrevocably in love with you.

But that isn’t what’s happened, is it? All that has happened is that your story has fallen to pieces the moment anyone bothered to examine it.

You are free to go. But I should warn you that the streets will be very cold tonight, and very lonely.

-- Rex (rex@waitrose.com), October 31, 2001.