Katlina and the Silly 10 Men

Katrina was a really smart girl. She was so smart. She was only 11 years old, but she was always trying to figure out new business ideas. She always wanted to do her own business.

One day she wanted to buy a toy, and her mummy said, "If you want to buy a toy, you have to sell some of your old things for money."

So she got a cycle which she had stopped using because she had become quite big for that cycle. It was dirty and rusty. She cleaned up the cycle nicely, took out all the rust from the pedals, took some pictures, put it on Facebook, and sold it for $60. Wow! Her parents were very impressed.

But you know what? She needed $200 for this lovely dollhouse she wanted to buy. So she kept doing small things.

Daddy said, "See, we live in such a nice place. There's a nice river right next to where we live, and people come there for a run. In the morning they go for a run, and what you can do is simply sell water. Fill the water from the tap here, keep glasses, and when they come, you can fill the glasses with water and sell it for one dollar a glass. People will pay you one dollar for a glass of water."

She said, "No, Daddy, nobody's going to pay money for water. They all carry their own bottle."

He said, "Please, you try. A lot of people don't carry."

So the first day she went and kept this big jug of water and glasses and said, "One dollar, one dollar." Nobody wanted to give her money. Everybody said, "Do you have lemonade? Do you have soda?" And then she went away.

So the next day she bought lemons. With the $60 she had, she spent $10 and made nice lemonade. A few people bought, but she was still waiting. She tried this for three days.

On the last day she said, "Today is the last day I'm going to try. Otherwise, I'll try something else."

So she made a lot of lemonade, and then suddenly she saw something. From the other side of the river, there were these ten people—ten men, all short people. They looked fairly silly. They were just fighting with each other all the time. They were wearing orange clothes. All of them were wearing the same clothes, and they had a silly little hat on their head. They were just talking with each other.

She was very curious about them. They had to cross the river. The river was a shallow river, not a very deep river. So they decided they would hold each other's hands and cross the river.

Katrina was very, very curiously looking at them. She found it very amusing the way they were talking with each other. They just looked very silly.

So all ten of them held each other's hands and started walking across the river. They were shouting and screaming, "Oh, be careful, be careful! Don't drown, don't drown!"

She was like, "These people are so silly. This river is so shallow—they can just walk across. They don't even need to hold hands."

And so they finally crossed after a lot of ruckus, shouting, screaming, and unnecessary noise. Then they came out and went, "Ha ha ha!"

Then the leader of the group said, "Okay, okay, okay, let's make a circle and count if all of us have come across the river. Who—how many of us were there when we started, before we crossed the river?"

One of them said, "Leader, we were ten."

"Okay. Okay, now you must count how many of us are there now."

He said, "Okay. Everybody raise your hands."

Everybody raised their hands. The guy who was counting didn't raise his hand because he was counting. He counted, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine."

He said, "Leader, one person is missing."

But this fellow himself did not count himself.

Katrina was very, very amused. She started smiling and said, "Oh, you silly fellow. You don't know how to count."

Another one said, "Let me count." He said, "Okay, everybody raise your hands again."

So everybody raised their hands again. He said, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine."

He said, "Yes, yes. One person is missing—must have flown away in the river. Let's go back into the river."

Then one more person said, "No, no, no, both of you are really silly. You don't know how to count. I will count."

And he did the same thing. So all ten of them actually did the same thing. They counted and did not include themselves in the counting.

By this time, Katrina was laughing and saying, "Oh my God, how silly!"

And then she had a brilliant idea. She said, "You know what? I'm going to really, really make something out of these silly people."

So she said, "Hello, gentlemen, come here. I see you're trying to—there is a problem there."

They said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the problem?"

So they told her the problem: "We were ten when we crossed. Now we can only count nine people. I think one has flown away. But we can't see who has flown away. Everybody we know, we can recognize. So we don't know who's flown away."

Katrina said, "Don't worry, gentlemen, I can help you. I have this really nice lemonade with which I can help you."

They said, "How can lemonade help?"

She said, "Okay, everybody have one glass of lemonade. Each glass of lemonade is five dollars. And after that, we'll count the number of glasses. Okay?"

They said, "Very good idea." And they were thirsty anyway.

So she put out ten glasses and filled them with lemonade. She said, "If I can find all your ten people, then you give me the $50. Otherwise, don't give me the money."

They said, "Agreed."

So she put out the ten glasses and filled them with lemonade. They all drank the lemonade, and she put the glasses back.

She said, "Okay, who's going to count the glasses?"

The first person came and counted the glasses: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten."

He said, "Whoa, we found the tenth person! We found the tenth person!"

Then another person counted, and they realized that there were ten glasses. They thanked Katrina and said, "Katrina, thank you so much. You found the tenth person."

But Katrina was saying, "Oh my God, such silly people. First, they didn't count themselves. Now they're telling me that I have found the tenth person."

She said, "Okay, give me the $50."

She got the $50, and then she went home and was able to buy her dollhouse.

And this is how—this is the story of the silly ten men.