One morning, a blind boy sat beside a building with a hat by his feet. He held a sign which said, "I am blind. Please help me. "
There were only a few coins in the hat. A man was walking by. He took out a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words on it. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by could see the new words.
After that, the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized (认出)his footsteps(脚步声)and asked, "Are you the one who changed my sign in the morning? What did you write?"
The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said, but in a different way. " What he wrote was, "Today is a beautiful day, but I can't see it. "
Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing? Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply told people to help by putting some money in the hat. The second sign told people that they were able to enjoy the beautiful day, but the boy could not enjoy it because he was blind.
The first sign simply said the boy was blind, while the second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind.