[Darwin]

I ran across one today that I really need to pass on.




Back in the middle ages, there was a young man who wished to become a monk, and therefore attended a seminary to gain the required theological knowledge required to enter a monastery. He did well and upon his graduation his instructor wrote him a letter of recommendation for the abbot where he would be assigned. The abbot read the letter, which in effect said the young man was an excellent student, and had proven to be highly motivated and very attentive to detail,,,,perhaps too much so, as he was absolutely anal. The abbot pondered how to best use the young man, and decided that the best match would be to have him make new copies of the rules and laws for their order. The young man was taken to the room where the books of rules and laws were kept, given parchment, pen, and ink, and was then left to his labors.




About an hour later, there was a knock at the abbot's door. It was the young man who explained that he had encountered some discrepancies in the laws, and asked if there were perhaps older versions of the book that he could make the transcriptions from. The abbot took the novice to an older section of the library, where previous editions of the rules and laws were stored.




A few more hours passed, and again there was a knock on the abbot's door. The young man was back, stating that he was still finding discrepancies, were there possibly even older versions he could use. The abbot then led the young man through a labyrinth of dusty passages under the monastery to the very oldest part of the structure. There, under a layer of dust were the very oldest books the order owned.




Another hour passed, and there was again a knocking at the door....not just one, but seventeen different knockings. All the other monks of the order were there, imploring the abbot to please come quickly and attend to the novice, who was suddenly behaving very erratically. The novice was "screaming 'they left off the R" over and over, and violently banging his forehead on the desk. When the abbot finally managed to get him calmed down enough to ask the novice what the problem was, the shouted reply was "IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE 'CELEBRATE'!!!!!"