The Parable of the Two Friends and the Bulls

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, was the recent action of Congress myopic, hyperopic or dyslexic?”

Josh spoke thus:

Two friends were standing in a crowd in a narrow, cobblestoned village street.  The friends heard a distant rumbling and clattering of hooves.

The crowd began to edge away from the rumbling and clattering, but they did not run.  The two friends watched the street in the direction of the rumbling and clattering.  The two friends resisted the urge to run.

At the top of the street, a bull came sliding around the street corner, its hooves unable to gain traction on the slippery cobblestones.

The crowd simultaneously cheered and groaned.  The crowd surged away from the bull.

“It’s only one bull!” one of the friends said, “I’m not running from one bull!”

The crowd did not run from the one bull.  The crowd focused on the rumbling and clattering that was now less distant.

While the crowd waited for the other bulls that were to come around the corner, the first bull came running down the street.  The two friends, standing in the middle of the street, did not react to the approach of the bull.  The bull did not react to the two friends.

The rumbling and clattering were loud now, and soon a second and a third bull slid around the corner.  The first bull did not wait for the second and third bull.  The first bull continued to run down the middle of the street.

The second and third bull were followed around the corner by a fourth and a fifth bull.  Then more bulls followed.  When twenty bulls had rounded the corner, the crowd began to jog away from them, running from and leading the bulls down the street.  Some members of the crowd waved handkerchiefs, others held wineskins above their heads like beacons, others shouted encouragement at the bulls.

The two friends stood in the middle of the street as the crowd moved away.  The two friends did not waive handkerchiefs or hold wineskins aloft or shout.  They looked at the running crowd.  They looked at the approaching herd.  They listened to the yelling, to the running feet, to the clattering hooves, to the thunder of the herd’s approach.  They saw brightly colored banners.  They heard trumpets.  They tasted dust and sweat and bull musk and stale wine.

They saw the crowd run away.

They saw the herd approach.

They didn’t see the lead bull.

“This is amazing!” the second friend said, “This is absolutely...”

The second friend’s exclamation was cut short by the blow of the lead bull’s head in the second friend’s abdomen.  The first friend did not reply.  The first friend was under the bull, somehow unscathed by the bull but dazed by the force of the cobblestones that were struck by the first friend’s head when the first friend was run over by the bull.

“Tourists,” one onlooker said.

“Tourists,” a second onlooker said.