The Big Question: Racquet or Ball?

Naturally, very stupid

There are essentially four questions over which mankind spends most of its time pondering over.

"What is the meaning of life?"

"What is the meaning of death?"

"Which was made first: the tennis racquet or the tennis ball?"

"Why do people spend most of their intervening time between life and death pondering over the question of whether the racquet or the ball was invented first?"

I pondered these four questions for such a large amount of time that I ran the risk of putting it up as the fifth question on the list—the question of why I was pondering over these questions.

I thought I would clear my mind once and for all by putting this question to you, my long suffering readers, along with the arguments for both.

The Tennis Ball

Obviously, man invented the wheel very early—too early for him to have invented anything else earlier. Well, the tennis ball, as are all other balls, is the three-dimensional version of a two-dimensional wheel.

Man was very smart to have invented the wheel—too smart not to have seen the connection between the wheel and the tennis ball. So if he did not invent the tennis ball, he did not invent the wheel either—which he did!

And since he made the wheel early—too early for anything else to have been invented earlier—he invented the tennis ball before the racquet.

The Racquet

The racquet seems to be a mere adaptation of the fly swatter.

There are reasons to believe that the invention of the fly swatter preceeded the invention of the wheel, since mankind's first concern was (at least should have been) a comfortable sleep and fresh food, though it remains a big puzzle as to how the pre-historic man could kill a mosquito when he himself was asleep with this gadget.

The proponents of this argument say that if these concerns were not on the top of his mind compared to just rolling a circular thing around, which is useless anyway, the prehistoric man would have been really foolish.

But since he invented the wheel not too late after the invention of the fly swatter, he should not have been foolish. They go on to add that if these arguments are wrong, then our reasoning is stupid, and since we do not want to be stupid, they are right.

When probed about the question of the killing-the-mosquito-in-your-sleep-with-a-fly-swatter, they always reply it is one of those foolish things that happen to you once in a while, but which turns out to be really smart.

The Net

The net symbolises the space-time continuum. The proponents of the argument say that time travel was invented before either racquet or ball.

The pre-historic man is called so because of his irreverence to history. If you can travel back in time and change history, it means you do not consider history to be respected.

Er...back to the topic—the argument is that time travel was possible at that time means that you cannot determine whether racquet was made first or the ball.

What if somebody invented the ball first, went back in time, and made the racquet?

What then, huh?

Or what if this question will remain unresolved only because time travel was invented first?

I shake my head in frustration.

I talked to a couple of guys the other day, and asked them, "Why are you confusing me?"

The reply was, "We are only seemingly confusing you. We are just giving you the impression that we are confusing you! You are just confused, that's why you are confused about your confusion!"

Tennis, anyone?

(Inspired by "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", an awesome book, whose name the author hopes he doesn't taint)