The+Boatman

The SailorGeorge A.

There once was a man who was a scholar and one day wished to cross a river. A sailor, who had been at sea his whole life, was very experienced and agreed to sail him across. On the trip across the water, the scholar became bored and started talking to the sailor. The scholar was very smug and questioned the sailor as to why he hadn’t ever studied things like grammar and phonetics, since those were the type of things that he had learned. The sailor explained that he would never have a use for those things since his job never required any other skill than sailing. But the Scholar was still shocked as to why he had wasted half of his life not leaning any useful tools. Suddenly, a loud crack rang out, and water rushed in to the cabin of the sailboat. The sailor was now the one to ask questions and said to Scholar, “Since you are so much smarter than me, I suspect that in your lifetime you have learned to swim haven’t you?” Scholar had never learned how to swim because he thought that the skill would never be of any use to him. The Sailor then said, “Then you have wasted all of your life! Alas, the boat is sinking.”

The Boatman and the Student By Leo Tamburro

There once was a student needed to cross a wide river in the middle of his town so he asked a skilled boatman to row him across. The trip across the river was long and boring with not much to do, so the student decided to make conversation with the boatman. “Have you ever studied grammar and history?” the student asked the boatman. “No,” replied the boatman. “I have no use for those subjects”. “What a pity, you have half of your life wasted, by doing nothing but sailing, when you could have been studying useful subjects,” said the student. Suddenly, the boat hit a large, sharp rock and the boat immediately filled with water. The boatman turned to the student. “Have you ever learned to swim?” asked the boatman. “Definitely not!” exclaimed the student. “I have engaged myself in thinking. I have no use for swimming as you have no use for grammar and history”. “Well, in that case, //all// of your life has been wasted,” said the boatman. “Why, may I ask?” questioned the student. “The boat is sinking!”