Oarsman Bob

Captain Sam and his crew of oarsmen where pulling through the ocean when the Captain noticed something strange going on in the boat. One of the oarsman, a fellow named Bob, had taken out a small hand auger and was making ready to drill a hole under his seat of the boat.

“What the hell are you doing, Oarsman Bob?” Captain Sam shouted.

Bob looked up to see if the commotion had something to do with him. “Me?” he asked innocently. “I’m drilling a hole under my seat in the boat,” he replied matter-of-

factly, and returned to work.

“You can’t do that!” Captain Sam hollered back.

Oarsman Bob looked surprised, not really understanding the gist of the question. “Of course, I can. It’s my seat and I get to drill a hole under it if I want to,” he said, stating the obvious. “It’s my right as an oarsman.”

“No, it’s not,” Captain Bob said.

“Well, yes it is,” Oarsman Bob replied, surprised he had to explain himself. “It’s my seat. And my drill, I might add. I have a right to a drill, don’t I?”

Captain Sam was incredulous. “Oarsman Bob, why would you drill a hole under your seat in the boat?”

“Because my feet are hot and very uncomfortable,” Oarsman Bob replied. “Some nice, cool water would be very refreshing. I find the absence of a hole under my seat hot and confining.”

“Oarsman Bob,” the Captain said sternly, “If you drill a hole under your seat in the boat, the boat will sink,” Captain Sam said, stating the obvious.

Oarsman Bob scoffed. “Oh, here we go – the boat will sink,” he said, a mocking sing-song. “There are people who disagree, you know. Some say not drilling a hole in the boat is just something Captains say to keep their oarsmen under their control. I say, give the information to the oarsmen and trust them to make an individual decision.”

Captain Sam maintained his calm. “Captains know boats will sink if people drill holes under their seats. We don’t need oarsmen to make a judgment about that. We have plenty of experience with boats sinking.”

“Who has all this experience?” Oarsman Bob countered. “A bunch of Captains? How good can a Captain be if he’s an expert on boats sinking? In fact, a boat can sink for any number of reasons – there could be a typhoon, or some unseen navigational hazard, or even because of demon sea monsters!”

The mention of demon sea monsters led to a wave of consternation among the other oarsmen.

“In fact,” Oarsman Bob continued, “I’ve heard far many more boats are lost to demon sea monsters than to oarsmen drilling holes under their seats. But you never hear about boats being sunk by demon sea monsters. Why is that? Who’s covering it all up? In fact, I was at the tavern before we left shore and a fellow there told me not many boats sink at all for whatever reason, and many of those that sink with very minor inconvenience and no loss of life, and that if I was worried about my boat sinking, not drilling a hole under my seat was in no way proven to be a foolproof way of avoiding it. As I see it, you can’t let your boat sinking dominate your thinking.”

Captain Sam was incredulous. “Some fellow in a tavern told you what to do?”

“Now just hold on there, Captain Sam. Nobody tells me what to do! But all those supposed experts telling us not to drill a hole under our seat in the boat – what do they really know?” Oarsman Bob turned to his mates. “I say we have rights, my fellow oarsmen, and one of those rights is the right to drill a hole under our seat in the boat.”

“No, you don’t,” Captain Sam said. “I expressly prohibit any of you from drilling a hole under your seat the boat.”

Oarsman Bob became quite cross. “You see! Exactly what I told you!” he shouted to his fellow oarsmen as the Captain watched. “That’s what Captain Sam wants – to take away our rights as oarsmen. Pretty soon, they’ll be telling we oarsmen we can’t have drills! Well, you may not believe oarsmen such as ourselves have rights, but I do. And I wager were we to ask the other oarsmen on this boat whether they had rights they would agree with me.”

Captain Sam withered. “The question isn’t whether you have rights, Oarsman Bob. The question is whether one of those rights is drilling a hole under your seat in the boat at the expense of the well-being of everybody else around you.”

“Well, let’s see what the other fellows think, then,” Oarsman Bob proposed. “Who thinks oarsmen have rights, and if they want to drill a hole under their seat in the boat then that’s their prerogative?”

A commotion arose among the oarsmen. “Hell, yes, I have rights,” one of the oarsmen said.

“I’m with Oarsman Bob,” said another.

“They keep telling us ‘Oh, the boat will sink,’ but there are sinking boats just about everywhere. Who knows why?” said a third.

"And what about the demon sea monsters?” another oarsman yelled. “Why aren’t you protecting us from the demon sea monsters?”

“There are no demon sea monsters!” Captain Sam sputtered, gesticulating towards the monsterless sea.

“It’s the principle of the thing!” yet another oarsman shouted. “Of, sure, it’s easy to give up your rights because your boat might sink, but once you lose your rights, good luck trying to get them back. First it’s don’t drill a hole in your boat, then it’ll be not drinking the salt water, then we’ll have to pull our oars at the same time, and then, who knows what? – maybe we’ll lose the right to piss in the boat!”

The Captain began to argue there was no right to piss in the boat, but by now the oarsmen had rallied around Oarsman Bob’s cause and asserted their right to have cool and comfortable feet, and attacked the Captain’s indifference to the threat posed by demon sea monsters. In short time, the auger had been passed around and almost every man had exercised his right as an oarsman to drill a hole under his seat in the boat.

“Well, are you satisfied?” Captain Sam finally said. “Now we’re sinking.” And, sure enough, water was quickly filling the boat to the gunnels.

“Well, we may be sinking,” Oarsman Bob replied. “But I think we made our point!”

And the other oarsmen shouted triumphantly as they sank into the sea.