Sup, Aesop?

In one of my typical blunders, I left my parents' Winter Economic Stimulus present in my dorm room. I admitted this to my mom tonight, and I told her that I'd have to mail it to her soon since it's a 2009 calendar. When she asked me what kind of pictures were featured, I told her that my classmates had taken all of them over the summer and that it supported a good cause (medical Spanish classes).

"Oh," she said, "That figures."

And then followed a familiar lecture on how I am too focused on helping other people. After all, if someone was beating me up or was verbally haranguing me, who would protect me, she wondered. Today's iteration, however, was followed by a traditional fable. It goes a little something like this:

Once upon a time, there was a man with a very generous heart. He loved to help others.

On a winter day, he was walking home when he found a snake on the side of the road. It was a cold day, and the little guy didn't look like he was going to make it without help. (Life is hard when you're exothermic.) Without thinking twice, our hero took the snake and put it in his jacket in order to warm it. After some time, the snake regained consciousness.

"Kind sir," hissed the snake, "thank you so much for rescuing me."
"Oh, you betcha," replied our hero.
"I was wondering though," the snake continued, "if you could help me with one other thing."
"What is it?" inquired the man with a very generous heart.
"You see, I'm starving," replied the snake, "and I'm going to have to eat you."
"How you can you be so cold-hearted?!" exclaimed hero-man-with-karmic-cardiomegaly (momentarily forgetting that it's easy to be cold-hearted when you're cold-blooded and only recently reanimated).
"If I don't eat you, I will die," replied the snake.

And before our hero could respond or even react, the snake--which, by the way, was poisonous this whole time--bit the hero (perhaps only to realize later that it's hard to swallow a human whole). Regardless, our hero succumbed.

The moral of this story? Don't support medical Spanish!...