I’m right … dammit!

This riddle appeared on Facebook last night:

“It’s 7:00 AM. You are asleep and there is a sudden knock on the door. Behind the door are your parents who came to have breakfast. In your fridge are bread, milk, juice, and a jar of jam. To answer, what will you open first?”

Think about it, but if you keep reading, there will be talk of the answer.

It’s a riddle, so it’s meant to be a trick.

Your parents are banging on the door and there’s food in the fridge for breakfast, but you’re asleep, so the first thing to open is … your eyes.

Except the friend who shared this says that’s wrong, that according to the person who posted it, the answer is …

… Facebook. I assume the thinking is that the “to answer” refers to the question, not the door.

There are two massive holes in this logic. The first is that Facebook exists outside the scope of the riddle. It’s still a riddle regardless of how you share it.

But also, if you read the riddle on Facebook and try to answer it, you don’t have to open Facebook.

Because it’s already open.

So why do I care about a dopey Facebook riddle?

For one thing, its poor construction offends the pedant in me, but more importantly, this has stoked my urge to be right.

I have the right answer.

My friend knows I have the right answer — and I get the impression he and his wife had it, too — and I am not going to let someone tell me I’m wrong when I’m right.

It’s a weakness … except how can being right be a weakness?

Now you can imagine why I’m more than a little argumentative.

I know I’m right, even if I didn’t need to diagram it like the person in this photo by rawpixel on Pixabay.