After my recent post, a reader alerted me to the true story of a man in India who was born with a 13-inch tail. People think he’s a reincarnation of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman. The man claims that people are cured of severe ailments when they touch his tail.
According to the press, he also likes climbing trees and eating bananas. Seriously. See for yourself.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1886208.html?menu=news.quirkies [no longer available]
Doctors have offered to remove the tail. They don’t think he is a monkey god at all. The tail seems like more of a congenital defect to them. This raises an interesting question: How can you tell the difference between a reincarnated monkey god and an ordinary tree-climbing, banana-eating guy with a disease-healing tail?
For that matter, how do we know for sure he isn’t just an extraordinarily well-endowed guy who realized that if he tucked his unit behind him, diseased people would want to touch it? I’m assuming he gets lots of free bananas in this arrangement too, so it’s a sweet deal.
And this brings me to one of my little rules in life. I have many rules that apply to many different situations. Some of the rules are used more often than others. Here’s one I rarely use, but it seems relevant:
RULE 472: Before you touch a monkey god’s tail to cure your leprosy, make sure the tail doesn’t have a little hole in the end.