I'm a sucker for those books that are collections of pithy quotes. I have never read such a book cover to cover, but whenever I encounter them I never fail to open them up, plunk my finger down, and see what pearls of wisdom I can glean from the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and the like. The appeal of a good quote is undeniable. They are bite-size but also expansive. The sum of my own literary ambitions are limited to this; Someday I want a quote of mine to be published in such a collection. I better start generating some worthy quotes. This new BFZ feature, YOU CAN QUOTE ME, is where I'll collect them as they come to me.
"Lifeguarding
a crowded pool is like a high-stakes game of Where's Waldo." J. Bowden Tate
(Thanks to my friend, Steve Maxon, for the above revision. He commented that dropping "a crowded pool" and "like" would make it a stronger quote and I agreed with the former but not the latter. Thanks, Steve. I wish I could link your name so that BFZ readers could click over to your blog to witness your brilliance for themselves, but, alas, said blog is non-existent for now. Allow me to suggest the following title for your, as yet, non-existent blog- "Maxi's Pad." C'mon Steve, it's getting lonely out here.)
13 comments:
I think it's even stronger without "a crowded pool."
Also without "like."
What I don't like about lifeguards is that they are capable of saving me in the unlikely event of a riptide developing in the shallow end, but powerless to save me when I emerge pink, soft, and over ample from the resulting ridicule, or, worse, sympathy. Why doesn't he blow his whistle then?
Ya it may seem stronger, but what if there is only one child in the pool.....It is necessary to have the crowded pool.
If there's only one child in the pool, then it's nothing like "Where's Waldo" anyway, and you're effectively a chaperone, not a lifeguard.
A good quote breathes brevity, not exhaustion.
I will be sure to stop by the local pool and tell the lifegaurds that their title should be changed according to the number of children present.
I see you're intent on missing the point. Very well then.
i think you are missing the point as well. Brevity is good, but not to the point where the quote doesn't make a correct metaphorical analogy.
"Lifeguarding is a high-stakes game of Where's Waldo".
I think it is too big of a jump to imply by this quote that there are a lot of people in the pool, thus ruining the analogy/metaphor.
Okay. I would agree with you if the quote concerned an activity with such variation that readers might not be trusted to summon the same mental picture.
But the reason why the quote doesn't need "a crowded pool" is because that's the very scene the word "lifeguarding" evokes in the mind. Yes, a lifeguard can oversee an empty pool, but that's not the norm, and we all know it. An aphorism can't waste its precious time explaining the obvious.
"Yes, a lifeguard can oversee an empty pool, but that's not the norm, and we all know it".
In logic, an argumentum ad populum is a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true because many or all people believe it; it alleges: "If many believe so, it is so."
I understand what you were trying to say much better now, though I still cannot help but think about the pool with only a few people in it, and how that would ruin the statement. Lifegaurding has evoked different images in our minds, and that is where the mental picture and disagreement originated and stands. I think that is all there is to it.
This is not a formal argument, it's a discussion of a one-liner, so an appeal to popularity is particularly apt in this area. If your goal is to write a catchy quote, it doesn't matter whether it's universally true -- it matters whether most people can relate to it. And most people do not exhaustively ponder counterfactuals to, for instance, advertising slogans, proverbs, or knock-knock jokes.
You're unique, Anonymous. Revel in it!
This is not a formal argument, it's a discussion of a one-liner, so an appeal to popularity is particularly apt in this area. If your goal is to write a catchy quote, it doesn't matter whether it's universally true -- it matters whether most people can relate to it. And most people do not exhaustively ponder counterfactuals to, for instance, advertising slogans, proverbs, or knock-knock jokes.
You're unique, Anonymous. Revel in it!
I do not consider my initial pondering exhaustive, but it surely has become that. Thank you for your patience and your time Steve.
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