Things Can Always Get Worse
Once there was a poor man who thought it was too bad that he had to go about begging for bread, and he complained about it to God. With that, a hump grew on his back, and in addition to the hump, a man grew there too, and the man had a mouth as well, and each time the beggar tried to eat a morsel of bread, the man on his back snatched it from him.
Then the beggar prayed, “Neither erase, O Lord, nor write. Let things be the way they were.”
And this is why one must never say that things are bad. They can always get worse.
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Glossary
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Annotations
TELLER: Rive, the daughter of Leye (no surname recorded), (no place recorded)COLLECTOR: Anon., Tshernyak, ca. 1927.
SOURCE: V.A. 167:8.
