Nina G.
(Alias “Not-Knot”)

By way of introducing the very gifted philosopher, Dr. Nina G., whose fame has spread like molasses throughout the world, let us consider the riddle that started it all for this mentally insightful young lady.

Here is the riddle: "What is weightless, can be seen with the naked eye, but if put in something, will make it lighter?"                                                                           

Now this rather intriguing riddle surfaced one day in a middle school class the young Nina had been placed into pretty much by chance. What a kind stroke of fate it was, for that class just happened to be the Creative Expressions class taught by the Legend­ary Mr. Christopherson, the sort of class that could change a student's life forever!

No one will admit to writing that curious riddle on a tiny slip of paper and then sticking it with a small drop of glue to the table top where Nina would be sure to see it. However, the Legendary Mr. Christopherson, who is known to have an uncanny sense about the hidden abilities of all his students, gets a sly gleam in his eye when he talks about the incident.

Whether we ever know from whence came the riddle or not, we do know that it plopped into young Nina's mind during that class period and stuck there, festering like a sliver that won't go away. "If there was something that you can see, how could it be weightless? What did weightless mean anyway?" she wondered. "Now, if this thing were weightless, then how could it make something else weigh less when you put it in it?" It just didn't make sense.

And then one day, just as mysteriously as the riddle had appeared, its answer showed up, stuck to the very same little lump of glue left over from the first message (the custodians had sweated mightily to clean that spot of super glue off the table top but were unsuccessful).

On the paper were but these few words, "HOLE is the opposite of WHOLE." The young girl read this second message again and again before she felt she finally understood it. And once she did, her quick mind was off and running, formulating newer and yet more fantastic ideas, all centering around the opposing concepts of "hole" and "whole." She realized that "hole" was the actual answer to the riddle, but that the word "whole" added a whole new dimension to her thoughts. She decided to explore "hole" first, as it applied to the riddle.

Was a hole weightless? She spent many a difficult hour in an unsuccessful attempt to weigh holes. She just couldn't get a grip on one of the pesky little things in order to place them on the scales.

Next came the question about seeing a hole. Well, sure, you could see them, and even photograph them. But they still didn't seem to have the usual characteristics of things we can see. While you could see a hole's size and shape, you couldn't determine a hole's color or texture.

Finally she wondered just how much lighter an object could be made to be by putting holes in it, so she began drilling holes of various sizes in everything around her. And sure enough, those things all weighed‑in lighter. She did find there was a limit to the number of holes, or the size of the holes, beyond which you couldn't go because there wouldn't be enough of the object left to weigh. One thing for certain, this whole hole business of attempting to weight a hole whole, had her thinking about holes in a whole new way.

About this time yet another message appeared, glued to the stump on her desk left by the other two. This message read, "A KNOT is NOT a NAUGHT!" Again the young Nina's mind was thrown for a loop, knotting itself around this new naughty, knotty problem. And, as before with the whole hole thing, all her thinking about these new subjects was not for naught since she soon knew new knot things about the world. "A WHOLE KNOT is NOT a NAUGHT HOLE!" she soon concluded, which, in her mind formed a kind of balance, allowing her to progress into even deeper levels of obscure and useless thinking.

Thus, she became a philosopher, propounding what has become known as the "Naught Hole" theory of life, which she insists proves that our existence adds up to a sum total of empty nothingness. Were it not for those three mysterious messages, we would all still be in the dark about this whole subject, with the possible exception of the Legendary Mr. Christopherson, who enjoys sitting in the dark, thinking dark thoughts about darkness.