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The Bored Man
There's a man named Ralph that goes into a bar,
looking very depressed. A friend approaches him
and asks, "Why the long face, Ralph?"
"Oh, I'm just bored. I know every person in
the entire world now, and there's just nothing left
to challenge me."
His friend says, "No, you can't know everyone.
Do you know Paul McCartney?"
He says, "Sure, Paul's an old friend of mine.
Here, I'll show you." He goes over to a phone,
dials a number. His friend overhears a British accent,
"Hey Ralph, how ya doing?"
He talks for a while, but when Ralph hangs up,
his friend is not really sure that it was Paul McCartney
on the other end of the line, so he asks him if
he knows the president.Ralph says, "Sure, we
go way back." This time he lets him listen
in as he calls a private number. It sounds like
the president on the other end of the line, and
they go into a big discussion of the current economic
scene, and Ralph offers a few suggestions. Drawing
the conversation to a close, Ralph wishes him well
and hangs up.
His friend is a little dumbfounded at this point.
"Well, there must be someone that you don't
know." He goes over a few more people in his
mind, and thinks, 'He can't possibly know the Pope.
After all, he's a Protestant.'
But Ralph claims to know him, so to convince himself
otherwise, his friend desides to fly both himself
and Ralph to the Vatican to get positive proof of
Ralph's conviction.
So they arrive at the Vatican, and Ralph suggests
that his friend wait out in the Papal square until
Ralph has cleared things with the Pope. He's standing
in the courtyard, when who walks out onto the balcony
of the private residence, arm in arm with the Pope,
but Ralph.
Ralph looks down, sees that his friend has apparently
passed out, and runs down to see what can be done
for him. "What happened to you? Couldn't you
accept the fact that I really do know the Pope?"
"No, I'd begun to accept that possibility.
But what really took my breath away was some stranger
standing next to me who said, 'Who's that guy standing
there with Ralph?'"
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