234 Quiz Answer

In the book of Genesis, Jacob lived in the land of Canaan.  When Jacob’s son Joseph was seventeen years old, he took care of the sheep with his brothers.  Jacob loved Joseph more than he did any of his other sons, because Joseph was born after Jacob was very old. Jacob had given Joseph a fancy coat to show that he was his favorite son, and so Joseph’s brothers hated him and would not be friendly to him.
(Also for Three Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "G" is for "Genesis")

I wrote the following scenelet, thinking it might remind you of a well-known story from the Bible.  Which story?

“So it seems you didn’t really get along well with your family, especially not with your brothers.”

“Right; there was a lot of squabbling going on.”

“Evidently one of the reasons was, you had some new clothes - a special jacket, a very colorful coat - and the rest of the family was jealous.”

“Hey, man, I was a teenager, I had to have some special threads!  Naturally the other kids were jealous; they knew the old man liked me better than any of ‘em.”

“So somehow they managed to get you sent off to work.”

“In a way I was glad to get away from them – all the jealousy and backbiting and whatever.  I was hired by an export-import outfit.  I thought it’d be something to have a job and some money and be able to do my own things.”

“But I gather the job wasn’t all that great.”

“No, it was god-awful.  It was a kind of death, a lot of boring stuff dealing with accounting and bills of lading and ten-hour days – and the salary!  That was a shock.  It was so little it was as though they thought I was a slave.”

“What did you do – quit?”

“No, I just put the old brain to work and came up with a plan.  I would perform my job real good and the boss would soon see he had hired somebody special.  I could then move right on up in the export-import business.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Actually, great.   I moved up to head of the department and before too long I was made the boss’s right-hand man.  And I began making some real dough.”

“Sounds like a good situation.  But it seems something bad happened?”

“Right.  And the something bad that happened was the boss’s wife.  I realize I’m not the one who’s supposed to say it, but fact is, there was this good-looking young dude around the place and she began to get ideas.”

“Oh, that could be trouble.”

“And it was.  I wanted to have nothing to do with her; she was the boss’s wife, for God’s sake.  I didn’t want any entanglement, nothing that would get me fired.”

“So what happened?”

“She was sore because I wasn’t interested in any of her reindeer games so she set out to get me.  She was heartless, accused me of doing all kinds of stuff – none of it true – and she managed to get me tossed into the slammer.”

“Incredible.  Yet obviously you managed to get out. “

“Yeah.  I just had to put the old brain to work again.  But that’s pretty well been the story of my life, one humongous problem after another.”

(The answer will be posted Saturday.)