The Village of Village Idiots

A hopefully true story

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Once upon a time there was a small village, and in that small village, as in every small village across this great nation and around the world, there lived a village idiot.

The way in which the idiot was an idiot was this: he thought he knew everything.

Everything he thought, he thought was right, and everything everyone else thought, he thought was wrong. He was an idiot.

And so every day, from morning to night (and oftentimes through the night as well!), the idiot stood on the corner in the center of the village, next door to the grocer, across the way from the butcher and just down the road from the church, and he shouted. He shouted and he shook his fist and he stamped his feet.

The villagers, for their part, didn’t pay the village idiot much attention. Having a village idiot was part of having a village, after all, and they had their own lives to worry about – children, spouses, lunches for school and meetings at work. And so they had little time for the village idiot, standing alone in the village square, shouting through the night at the yawning moon and shaking his fist all day at the smiling sun.

Despite the village idiot, life in the village was good. There was a shouting idiot, yes, but there was also a baker of wonderful breads, and a cobbler who fixed their shoes and a teacher who taught the children and all the other dozens of people who made the village the wonderful village the villagers loved.

Then, one afternoon, a man arrived in town, aman no one had seen before. And he was a village idiot, too.

Now there were two village idiots, and it wasn’t long before the second village idiot joined the first village idiot. And now the shouting grew worse.