“If there is a skunk in a room and a man walks in, and they both come out, who would come out smelling like who?”

Subject’s Analysis:

“It’s a riddle that I learned from my grandfather. He repeated it a lot during childhood. The riddle goes, ‘If there is a skunk in a room and a man walks in, and they both come out, who would come out smelling like whom?’ The obvious answer is that the man would smell like the skunk. It correlates to a verse in second Corinthians in the Bible. It means that associations ruin useful habits. What he was trying to get at was that if you are associating with people who don’t have good habits, or who believe in something that is different from your beliefs, then it can undo your understanding of right and wrong.”

Collector’s Analysis:

I’m not sure about the correlation to Corinthians in the bible, as the subject was unable to locate the exact verse. However, in essence the proverb is essentially about the company that you keep can have a strong influence. This says that if you are in bad company then bad company will have a poor  affect on you. While I understand that because she has heard the story firsthand it has special meaning to her, I don’t see where she extracted some of the meaning from. I feel that the meaning may be more general than she is making it.