Juliette and Her Necklaces

Juliette twisted the string, attaching bead after bead. It was a relaxing hobby for her after a long day at work. She didn't have to think about it. She made a design she liked, and just kept going with it. While watching TV with her husband, Paul, she would add a short bead, a long bead, three short beads, a long bead, another short bead, another long bead, three more short beads, and so on. All the beads were brown. She would continue until she had an acceptable length for a necklace, then tie it off and set it aside.

Paul saw the pile of necklaces grow and grow. "Why do you keep making the same necklace over and over?" he inquired.

"I'm not!" Juliette shouted. "I told you, sometimes I do different lengths. Once in a while, I even use a different color. Remember the red ones and green ones I did for Christmas? I even did pale pink ones on Easter!"

"OK, OK, settle down. Alright, so they're different," Paul replied.

Juliette continued stacking her beads.

One evening, Paul was eating some walnuts while they were watching TV, and Juliette was working on one of her necklaces. He cracked a walnut shell, ate the walnut, then set the shell on the table next to Juliette's beads.

Juliette never looked when she grabbed a bead, because she always set each type of bead in the same place on the table. She put her hand down on the table to grab a long bead, and felt a foreign sensation in her hand. This wasn't a long bead! It was a walnut! She thought it must be a sign.

Juliette glued the walnut halves back together, then carved out a little hole at each end of the shell. She then added it to the necklace in place of one long bead. She now had a new design. It was the same as the old design, but with a single random long bead switched out for a walnut. With such an innovative new design, however, she could no longer create the necklaces in different colors. Red, green, and pale pink walnuts would be silly.

Juliette decided that her old designs were no good, so she threw out all of her old necklaces. Her new pile of necklaces would have walnuts.