There was once a billionaire who lived in Texas. The man owned around 400,000 acres of prime land on which he had several thousand head of cattle, dozens of producing oil wells and a beautiful 29 roomed mansion complete with an Olympic sized swimming pool. He also had a very beautiful young daughter who was 20 years of age.
Well, the father decided that the time had come for his daughter and only heir to be married and so he set about finding a suitable candidate for her husband. He decided to have a coming-out party and sent out hundreds of invitations to likely candidates, inviting them to his mansion for the party.
Well, the day of the party arrived and almost all of the young men within a 50 mile radius turned up for the big event. There was much feasting, music and dancing. Then, later in the evening the father led everyone out to the swimming pool, which he had previously stocked up with alligators. And he said to the young men, “Now the first one of you who will jump in this pool and swim the length of it, I will give him one of three choices. You can either have 10,000 acres of my best land, or you can have 2 million dollars in cash, or you can have the hand of my beautiful daughter in marriage. Now I don’t need to tell you that she is my only heir and the man who gets her will also, one day, get my whole estate.”
Well, no sooner were the words out of his mouth, there was a big splash down at one end of the swimming pool, followed almost immediately by the emergence of a dripping wet young man at the other end of the pool. He had just set a world record for the fastest swim ever. As he was regaining his breath the host approached him and congratulated him.
The host said, “Son, that was fantastic, well done. Now you get your choice. Do you want the 10,000 acres of land?”
The young man said,” No sir.”
He said, “Well then, do you want the 2 million dollars in cash?”
The young man said, “No sir.”
He said, “Well in that case, I must assume that you want the hand of my beautiful daughter in marriage?”
And the young man said, “No sir.”
So the host said, “Well son, for crying out loud, what do you want?”
The young man replied, “I want to know the name of that dude who pushed me in the pool!”
Source: Zig Ziglar off one of his audio programmes? Also quoted in The Sowers’s Seeds, Vol. 1 p.55