Gilded castles

[beccaelizabeth]

There's a story I remember from school assemblies and tried to google just now to get an attribution for, but I don't really know how, without a title, author, or quote. But it goes something like:



A man dies and arrives in the afterlife, and the guy who comes to greet him asks exactly how he wants to spend eternity. And he says he wants a gold castle, a full roast dinner daily, and deliveries of the Times. Which he duly gets.

Every day.

For years, and years, and years.

And after a while he's sick of roast dinners, and he doesn't recognise anyone in the Times, and why should he even care when it's nothing to do with him any more?

And he gets progressively more fed up.

Until he sees the greeter outside his castle and flags him down and yells at him, "What kind of heaven do you call this?"

And the guy is just like "Who said this was heaven?"




Which is your basic be careful what you wish for as suitable for making an impression on twelve year olds, unless it was elevens or tens or under eights.

But it makes a good point.

And it just idly crossed my mind to see who wrote it, or a thing like it, but it turns out that if you mention roast dinners and the times you don't google stories, so. Heck if I know.




But it's right up there with the one about heaven and hell both involving very long spoons. Like, someone has to have written it, but I haven't heard it in a context that would tell me who. And it still seems like a good idea.

Comments

[ex_peasant441]

That is a cool one, I haven't heard that before.

I believe the long spoons one is a traditional Jewish one.

There is one about drinking cups of tea in hell which I think was written by a comedian (possibly Dave Allen) and it has a similar tone to your golden castle, so you might try googling for that.

[beccaelizabeth]

wiki reckons long spoons "is attributed to Rabbi Haim of Romshishok, as well as other sources." Also that it has gone into folklore for many religions on many continents, so that's a good one.

Is the cups of tea one "alright, breaks over, back on your heads"?

[ex_peasant441]

Is the cups of tea one "alright, breaks over, back on your heads"?

Yes! :)

[jesuswasbatman]

There's a very similar episode of the original Twilight Zone called "A Nice Place to Visit", but I think the concept is older.

[beccaelizabeth]

I looked that up. It sounds like a good one.
But then apparently Trump likes it???

I suspect he has a different idea than I do of what the moral is...