Setelah membaca buku “The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of The Window and Disappered” ada satu kisah yang menurut saya cukup berkesan. Kisah tentang seorang karakter bernama Benny.
Let’s enjoy the story:
It all began when Benny and his one-year older brother, Bosse, spent several summers with their uncle Frank in Dalarna. Uncle Frank was a successful entrepreneur who owned and run a number of different local businesses. Uncle Frank sold everything from campers to gravel and most things in between. Besides eating and sleeping, work was his great passion.
Anyway, Benny and Bosse had been sent to Dalarna by their father, on the grounds that the children needed some fresh air. It is doubtful whether they got much of that, because Benny and Bosse were quickly trained to look after the big stone crushing machine at Uncle Frank’s gravel pit. The boys liked working there, and for two months they had to breathe in stone dust rather than fresh air. In the evenings, uncle Frank delivered moral sermons, regularly exhortings:
“You boys make sure you get a proper education; otherwise you’ll end up like me”
Now neither Benny nor Bosse thought it would be such a bad thing to end up like Uncle Frank – at least until he fell into the stone crusher and came to gravelly end – but Uncle Frank had always been bothered by his own limited schooling. The only thing Uncle Frank knew was how to do business. And he end up rolling in money.
Exactly just how much money Uncle Frank had at the time of his departure, was hard to say. It happened when Bosse was nineteen and Benny almost eighteen. One day, a lawyer contacted Bosse and Benny, and informed them that they were both mentioned in Uncle Frank’s will. Benny and Bosse met the lawyer at his office and discovered that a considerable amount – unspecified – of money awaited the brother the day they both completed their university education.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the lawyer would supply the brothers with a generous monthly allowance while they were studying. But the monthly allowance would stop f they abandoned their studies. There was more to the will, but on the whole what it meant was that the brothers would only be rich once they had both finished their studies.
Bosse and Benny immediately started on a seven-weeks course in welding skills. Two things happened halfway through the course. One, Benny finally had enough of his brother’s bossiness. That’s the way he had always been but it was time to make it clear to big brother that they were both grown and he needed to find someone else to order around. Two, Benny realized that he didn’t want to become a welder and that in any case he had no talent for it. The two brothers argued with this for a while until Benny managed to talk his way into a course on botany at Stockholm University. According to the lawyer, the will allowed for a change of subject.
Bosse finished his welder’s training. But he didn’t get a penny of Uncle frank money because his brother Benny was still studying. In addition, the lawyer immediately ended the Bosse’s monthly allowance, in accordance with the will.
This, of course, meant that the brothers became enemies. Bosse started to do business in the spirit of Uncle Frank, yet perhaps without his uncle’s talent. Benny, on the other hand, stayed in the academic world, year after year. The monthly allowance was generous and by changing his subject just before taking final exams and starting on something new, Benny could live well, while his brother had to wait for his money.
And Benny continued like this for thirty years, until the extremely aged lawyer one day contacted him and announced that the money in the will was now used up, that there wouldn’t be any more monthly allowance, an of course there was no other money available for anything else.
Benny had almost finished at least ten academic degrees. Benny was an almost-vet, almost-doctor, almost-architect, almost -engineer, almost-botanist, almost-language-teacher, almost-sports-coach, almost-historian and almost quite a few other things. And for a bit of variety he had taken some shorter courses of varying quality and importance. Sometimes he had even taken two courses at the same time.
Unikkan. Hehehehh.