The old farmer’s story begins with dust on a country road and the smell of manure hanging in the air. A state trooper pulls him over, full of authority and irritation, swatting at the flies buzzing around his face. The farmer, calm and weathered by years of sun and work, calls them “circle flies,” the kind that usually hover around a horse’s backside. When the trooper, bristling with pride, demands to know if he’s being insulted, the farmer never says yes. He just quietly trusts the flies to deliver the verdict the trooper doesn’t want to hear.
In Jacob’s classroom, the battlefield is different but the lesson is the same. His teacher keeps reaching for clever answers, only to be trapped by her own assumptions. Each riddle rewrites the last one, and Jacob never lets her forget it. By the end, the animals, the fridge, and the river all prove one thing: sometimes the simplest logic can make the smartest people look very, very foolish.
