In 1990 I opened a collection of quotes called ‘The Wisdom of the Ages’, and in the ‘Women’ section I found the following phrase:

‘Woman is dangerous, not when she attacks, but when she falls.’

V.O.Kluchevsky

My very first thought was that this book could be read by a teenager who could believe what was written and get hurt.
‘Woman is dangerous, not when she attacks...’ What does this phrase mean? Maybe Kluchevsky had the amazing ability to tame wild tigresses and, led by this rare ability, decided to come up with a general principle. Woman, he claims, isn’t dangerous when she attacks. This means that we men can provoke her, irritate her and generally annoy her. She isn’t going to attack us because she respects us too much.

Such an example is obviously hypothetical and potentially very dangerous if believed by men.

If the first part of the above quote causes serious concern then the second part leads to pure outrage. ‘Woman is dangerous when she falls’ says Kluchevsky.

Imagine a gentle, tender and defenceless creature falling in the street. Is there a man in the world who wouldn’t rush to help her up in such a situation, and to help her to the nearest bench where she could sort herself out? But which man wouldn’t hesitate if they had read Kluchevsky’s warning? Which man wouldn’t wait to see how she fell first and then how she got up? Only when he was sure that the danger had passed would he then come to her aid with the words, ’Did you hurt yourself?’ I’m not sure that such help would be very useful.

Therefore I suggest that Kluchevsky’s thought should be revised and publicised in the following way:

‘Woman is dangerous when she attacks, not when she falls.’

In 1991 my book ‘Golden Sofia’ was published by Viva. The above lines are taken from that book. I hope, in this way, I’ve protected lots of young men from mistakes in their relationships with women. I continued flicking through the pages of ‘The Wisdom of the Ages’ in the following years just to find more and more new absurdities. The tension in me increased from the understanding that lots of people had been misled by these so-called ‘wise words’, and I felt responsible for thousands of lives. I started producing counter-arguments and the tension became completely unbearable when I discovered that there wasn’t a single true statement in the whole collection. That was when I decided to produce a series of short stories in order to expose all the nonsense written by the ‘Great minds’ of mankind. I called the series ‘Wise men are always wrong’, and I duly got on with my challenging, yet creative, work. I’ve written 35 short stories so far, most of which have been broadcast on Bulgarian National Radio. I’d like to thank all the humourists, actors, directors, editors and secretaries in the Department of Humour, Satire and Entertainment at BNR, who showed such exceptional lack of wisdom in their enthusiasm to support me. I retain extremely fond memories of my visits to that temple of humour. Every time I went to the 4th floor of BNR I heard ‘What pure texts he produces!’, ‘He’s such a talent!’, and ‘At last, we have a young, talented humourist!’ What a touching lack of wisdom it was to see colleagues praise their colleague, creators praise another creator, and Bulgarians praise a fellow Bulgarian.

To all those friends at BNR; I bow before you. I respect, value and love you all.

The Author