A PAPER SHREDDER that once lived in a household never had his fill out of destroying paperwork that was no longer needed. “You have a very special mission”, the house lord told him the day he bought him, “to destroy everything that needs to remain a secret”.

So, the shredder devoured tons of paper which his owner fed him. After digesting them, he would turn them into tiny pieces that one would have a very hard time pulling together and read, and then throw them in the dustbin. Cunning as he was, however, every time the owner entrusted him with a new secret to destroy, he read it very carefully and made a mental note out of everything that was of interest. The other electrical appliances couldn’t help but wonder what all those important things the owner kept destroying were all about. Discreet as he was, however, the destroyer never told them a thing.

“Will you tell us what is written in all those papers you keep shredding?”, the telephone and the television, who had the fame of great gossipers, curiously asked him one day.

“It’s so important that if I tell you, the house lord will get angry”, the shredder replied as he kept devouring papers will all sorts of numbers, calculations and names written on them.

The telephone and the TV thought of challenging him to see if the information he had access to was indeed of any value, or if he was simply fooling them. They thought of the following trick: the night that the shredder was asleep, they prepared a stack of newspapers, filled with news, fresh gossip and other useless information, which they placed right beside his bed. As soon as the shredder woke up, he would devour them, and then they would ask him to tell them what secrets they contained. They even made sure each and every appliance in the house was kept up to date.

So it happened. The next day, the shredder woke up and ate the newspapers for breakfast. As soon as he had taken the last bite, the telephone and the TV asked him in front of the other appliances to tell them what secrets the papers he had just eaten held.

“I can’t tell you because it’s all secret”, the shredder answered. The telephone and the TV then revealed him their plan, admitting that they had placed the newspapers on purpose next to his bed so that they would prove his secrets were all nonsense and the papers he kept devouring were useless notes that nobody cared about.

“Alright then… I will tell you”, the shredder replied as he went red with shame, then started listing each and every piece of useless information and gossip he had read on the newspapers right before destroying them. He even went into specific details, referring to names, dates and events, as his memory was so trained in reading information that he remembered everything by heart. At one point, he ran out of breath.

“All this gossip made me feel like I’ve become a TV… or should I say, like a telephone instead?”, he said, catching his breath as the other appliances burst into laughter. All, except the telephone and the TV, who had spent so much time and effort in delivering useless information and gossip all these years that they thought they had been ridiculed.

So, they all took their lesson.