Plugged for a Reason | Mullah Nasruddin Books by Ron J. Suresha

Plugged for a Reason

Nasruddin was walking along a street when he came across a water hydrant with a large wooden stopper sticking out of it. As he was very thirsty, he thought it would be fine to take a drink of water.

He bent over the water pipe, brought his lips to the opening, and uncorked the stopper.

The water gushed out with such force that it knocked him on his backside.

“Oho, so that’s why they plugged your rear up tight,” Nasruddin scolded the gushing hydrant. “And still, you have not learned the least bit of restraint.”

Excerpted from The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin: Stories, Jests, and Donkey Tales of the Beloved Persian Folk Hero

Your Daily Nasruddin

This Nasruddin story is a more modern contrivance, since fireplugs were not conceived of until the 17th century and the modern hydrant with a plug was not invented until the late 19th century (Wikipedia entry).

Despite its anachronism, the story is one of the more popularly retold jokes among the collections I have indexed.

Part of the humor of this tale is that Nasruddin speaks quite earnestly to the fire hydrant as if it could understand. He chides the hydrant for being “unrestrained,” even though it is his own lack of self-restraint while thirsty that leads him to be knocked backward on his ass.

Presumably in the end Nasruddin does manage to slake his thirst, although none of the versions I’ve read explicitly say so.