It seems that a young man who came from a wealthy family was going off
to college. Now Dad, who was no slouch, knew that the young rascal
would probably just use all his money to booze it up and go after the
girls (since this is what he himself had done). In order to prevent
this, he presented his son with a fur coat which contained nine
million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine
hairs. And he said to his son, he said, "Son, I want you to have this
coat, and to take very good care of it, because it contains 9,999,999
hairs. If there are still 9,999,999 hairs when you graduate from
school in 4 years, I'll give you a million dollars and set you up in a
job for life." Well, the son thought this sounded pretty good, so he
took his Dad up on it. While he was a freshman, he counted the hairs
twice a semester: 9,999,999 hairs each time. Over the summer he
counted them again: 9,999,999 hairs. Sophomore year he counted those
9,999,999 hairs every month, and every month there were 9,999,999
hairs. Junior year, he was at it every week: 9,999,999 hairs. Week
after week after week: 9,999,999 hairs. By senior year he was
counting them every day: 9,999,999 hairs. Skipping classes for those
9,999,999 hairs. Well, by the time graduation rolled around, he felt
like he'd counted those 9,999,999 hairs about 9,999,999 times, but he
kept right on counting. As soon as he finished with those 9,999,999
hairs, he'd count them again: 9,999,999 hairs. On the night before
graduation, he stayed up all night counting: 9,999,999 hairs. Finally
the big day arrived, and Dad came to see Junior. "Well, son, have you
got those 9,999,999 hairs still intact?" asked the old man. "Yes,
Dad, all 9,999,999 hairs are there!" So they started to count them
together. And there were 9,999,998 hairs! The son couldn't believe
it. They counted again: 9,999,998 hairs. And the son sat down and
cried, his whole future shot (since he'd gotten straight D's from all
the classes he'd skipped). And as the son was sitting there, a little
moth flew out of the coat, the same moth who'd eaten that 9,999,999th
hair. And the moth felt so bad about what he'd done that he started
to cry too.
