My mother is italian. This story was told in her town by the end of the 19th century. In our small Italian town, hundreds of years ago, a small business owner owed a large sum of money to a loan-shark. The loan-shark was a very old, unattractive looking guy that just so happened to fancy the business owner\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He decided to offer the businessman a deal that would completely wipe out the debt he owed him. However, the catch was that we would only wipe out the debt if he could marry the businessman\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Needless to say, this proposal was met with a look of disgust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The loan-shark said that he would place two pebbles into a bag, one white and one black.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The daughter would then have to reach into the bag and pick out a pebble. If it was black, the debt would be wiped, but the loan-shark would then marry her. If it was white, the debt would also be wiped, but the daughter wouldn\u2019t have to marry the loan-shark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Standing on a pebble-strewn path in the businessman\u2019s garden, the loan-shark bent over and picked up two pebbles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whilst he was picking them up, the daughter noticed that he\u2019d picked up two black pebbles and placed them both into the bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The daughter naturally had three choices as to what she could have done:<\/p>\n\n\n\n She drew out a pebble from the bag, and before looking at it \u2018accidentally\u2019 dropped it into the midst of the other pebbles. She said to the loan-shark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOh, how clumsy of me. Never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The pebble left in the bag is obviously black, and seeing as the loan-shark didn\u2019t want to be exposed, he had to play along as if the pebble the daughter dropped was white, and clear her father\u2019s debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s always possible to overcome a tough situation throughout of the box thinking, and not give in to the only options you think you have to pick from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My mother is italian. This story was told in her town by the end of the 19th century. In our small Italian town, hundreds of years ago, a small business owner owed a large sum of money to a loan-shark. The loan-shark was a very old, unattractive looking guy that just so happened to fancy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-italy","category-life-lessons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280,"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions\/280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-wiseguy.com\/Readzzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Moral of the story:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n