An Enigma Riddled with Wrapping

circa
Riddles. I'm okay with them (not that you asked,) a lot of people love them, but they're a plea for attention, for sure. Winston Churchill's phrase 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery' is thrown around like sweaty change in a tip jar. It's become a replacement for the truth, which is 'an answer you didn't ask for, wrapped in semantics.'

It's like the first person who came up with a riddle realized, "Wow, I don't actually know anything that's interesting. But, I still desperately want to impress people," then it hit them, "Aha! I'll talk about the boring stuff I know without talking about it."

Store clerk: What's that sweaty thing in your hand?

Father Riddle: Let me answer that by asking you this: what has a face that people say can talk, but has no voice or head?

Store clerk: I don't know what you're talking about, but I don't have change for a twenty in the register.

Someone in line must have heard them and thought, "Hey, I don't actually know anything that's interesting, so I think I'll be confusing like this person when I talk to people. That'll get me some buzz around the break room."

Riddles are valuable puzzles for those who need to preoccupy their minds, definitely. I mean, it may sound like I'm complaining about them, which I am, but I'm mostly pointing out the people who hold them in such  high regard.

There's something inherently insecure about people who love to either speak in riddles or constantly share riddles. It's like they're so desperate for human intimacy that they needlessly foist upon people a type of communication that traps the listener and holds them ransom for an answer. It's cognitive abduction.

Beyond the riddlers of the world, though, there is real merit in how entertaining riddles are. To end, therefore, I'll leave you with this: what uses language that everyone speaks, but no one understands? 

That's right: Kindergartners.

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