Book Deal, Here We Come!

The other night Jonathan came up with an idea for a children's book. After you read it, you have three tries to guess the circumstances contributing to this idea.

There is an anglerfish in the ocean. Whenever other fish see his dangly lure, they want to come close. He warns them, "If you come near me, I'll kill you and eat you." (Good line for a children's book, no?) But all the fish that hear him think he must just be joking. So they come close and he eats them all.

But one day, one fish starts to come close. The anglerfish says, "If you come near me, I'm going to eat you." The fish says, "No, you're trying to use reverse psychology. I see through you!" So the anglerfish says, "You're right. That was really smart." And the two fish become friends.

From that point on, the anglerfish and the friend-fish work together. The angler-fish tells all the other fish that he will eat them if they come close. The friend-fish tells them not to trust the angler-fish. So, all the other fish get eaten. The end.

I asked Jonathan what the point of the story was. He said the point was that you should trust people who say they're going to hurt you, and you shouldn't trust people who say the first group of people won't hurt you. Good moral.

Have you figured out the circumstances yet?