Y2K -- Wietookay -- A Story

A friend sent me this e-mail. -- Diane THE STORY OF WIETOOKAY--ANON

Wietookay was a mischievous spirit. He was sent by God as a challenge to the people to end their erring ways.

The people recently had been misbehaving. They were supposed to look after each other and look after their lands and animals and all the birds and beasts of the forests and the plains and the sea. But they had not been doing this. Some had grown rich and greedy at the same time that the sick and the old and the poor and the children were suffering. The land too was suffering. And the leaders were not leading but were hiding behind something they called the "system."

The Lord asked Wietookay to challenge the people, to try to make them see the error of their ways before something so terrible happened that even God wouldn't be able to prevent it. So Wietookay put on his thinking cap. What kind of mischief would be necessary to frighten and challenge the people sufficiently that they would get back on the right track?

He decided first of all that his mischief would have to take many different forms, unpredictably affecting different people in different ways at different times and in different places around the world. Then he decided that he would keep himself invisible: only the results of his mischief would be visible. Finally he decided that it would be a great joke if he could get people to blame themselves for the mischief by making it seems as though it were something they had done to themselves.

Now this was really very clever of Wietookay. His strategy would leave the people very much on edge but they would have nobody to blame but themselves and no visible enemy to shoot at. At the same time it would please God. If the people responded to the mischief in the same way that they had been behaving, with everybody looking out for himself -- the rich trying to protect themselves at the expense of the poor and everyone trying to protect themselves at the expense of the animals and the land -- then they could all see very clearly where that would lead. On the other hand, if the people responded to the mischief in the way the Lord wanted, then the mischief itself could do less and less to frighten or harm them.

So Wietookay went back to the Lord and asked for his blessing on Wietookay's strategy. Now both the Lord and Wietookay knew that the strategy involved a big risk: suppose people didn't pull together in the face of the mischief but everybody just looked out for himself? Suppose the result was confusion and breakdown, as much from the fear of the way other people were going to act as from the mischief itself?

The Lord though was used to taking the long view so he assured Wietookay that, in the larger scheme of things, if the people went on as they were they only had a few years before they came to grief anyway. And what were a few years in the eyes of the Lord? Also the Lord had some confidence in the people's wisdom even though they hadn't been using much of it lately. So he gave his permission for Wietookay to pursue his strategy.

Then a funny thing happened. There had been a fly on the wall when Wietookay and the Lord were talking and even the Lord hadn't noticed it. And this fly had tape-recorded their conversation. And he took the tape, put it in a plain brown sac, and mailed it via spiderpost to the people's media.

So the people were warned that Wietookay and his mischief were coming. But then a strange thing happened. Very much to their own surprise they were able quickly to decide that they would be the ones to have the laugh on Wietookay. So they made their plans. Even the leaders came out from behind the system and joined in. And every time Wietookay's mischief popped up it was countered by people acting together to protect themselves and the animals and the land from its effects. And they did this very successfully.

In the end, when they had learned how to do this as a matter of course, Wietookay's mischief ended. And when it seemed to have gone for good, the people planned a party and they invited Wietookay and the Lord to celebrate with them. Because really they had all won. And the people later unveiled a statue to the mischievous Wietookay to help them remember that time and to thank him for his clever strategy. And Wietookay's strategy took its place alongside another famous strategy called "the art of war." Wietookay's strategy was called "the art of Wietookay" but of course by that time people were calling him by his nickname so they just called it "the art of Y2K."

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 08, 1998

Answers

Well, I think my one -Eye Tookay- has a slightly better plot, but yours is definitely more optimistic ;)

--Leo

-- Leo (leo_champion@hotmail.com), December 08, 1998.