Obvious

A number of years ago I was attending an international conference. At a small dinner one evening, all four of us happened to be men. One of our colleagues threw out the following hypothetical question:

“If you were on a sinking ship with your mother, your wife and your daughter, and you could save only one, which of them would you choose?”

One colleague — my recollection is that he was from India — said that he would save his mother. When someone asked why, he told us that in the region where he came from, one’s mother is sacred, and should be kept from harm at all cost.

Another colleague — I can’t remember where he was from, but I seem to recall it was somewhere in northern Europe — appeared to treat the question as a kind of intellectual puzzle. He said he would save his wife. “If my wife survives,” he reasoned, “We could always have more children — perhaps several.”

From my cultural perspective — a New Yorker from a Jewish family — the answer was obvious. “My daughter, of course,” I said without hesitation.

When asked why, I explained: “If I did anything else, my wife and my mother would kill me.”