The Parable of the Thief and the Three Shelves

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, how is it that we romanticize jewel thieves and almost elect corporate pirates to the White House?”

Josh spoke thus:

A thief was paralyzed.

In front of the thief were three shelves.

On the top shelf were jewels.  There were diamond necklaces, the least valuable of which was worth tens of thousands of dollars.  There were Swiss watches, each worth more than the thief would have earned in a month were the thief a worker instead of a thief.  There were rings fit for duchesses and dukes, bracelets for princesses and queens and earrings for heiresses and movie stars.

The thief was dazzled by emeralds and rubies.  The thief was mesmerized by agate and topaz.  Coquettish amber twinkled,  turquoise and silver shimmered, gold shone.  There were settings as intricate as lace and cuttings of stone as exact as pure trigonometry.  The thief stared at the top shelf and hyperventilated.

On the second shelf were coins.  Currencies as diverse as as the cultures of the world crowded together in circular congregation.  If Ellis Island were heaped with copper, nickel, silver, gold and bronze, then this was what Ellis Island would have looked like.  Portraits of monarchs, emperors and usurpers, living and dead, gazed blindly in bas relief.  Eagles spread their brazen wings.  Loons coasted on silvery lakes.

There were circular coins, there were serrated coins, there were coins with holes in the middle.  Some coins were small enough to rest on a thumb nail.  Some coins would have split a trouser pocket.  Some coins were newly minted, some coins were as old as Hammurabi.  Some coins counted seven sides, and some coins counted more dimensions than coins aught.  There was platinum and there was clay.  There were teeth, there were bones, there tusks, there were stones.  The thief stared at the second shelf and shook.

The third and final shelf was paper money.  This shelf was less diverse than the other two, but it was immense.  Stack upon stack upon stack of printed bills, of euros, dollars, yen and pounds, rested undramatically next to stack upon stack upon stack of printed bills.  Each bill was a work of art, each as detailed in composition as a Bruegel, each as precise in its brevity as a Japanese ink haiku.  The thief stared at the third shelf and sweated.

The thief stood before the three shelves in an existential panic.

“This is a nightmare,” the thief self-reasoned, “What am I doing here?  I’m a car thief.”