Romantic comedies. You know what I’m talking about, right?

A man and a woman meet—at least in the Hollywood version, it’s typically a man and a woman. They don’t really like each other right away. She’s a buttoned-up professional, and he’s a careless slob. They eventually wind up parting ways—usually because of some argument, like his failure to take life seriously and because she’s way too uptight. Something like that.

It’s clear to everybody that they like each other, that at their core, they were made for each other. And even though everybody else on the planet can see the attraction, they’re just too blind to recognize it.

Then something happens while they’re apart. One of them experiences an epiphany. “We are so meant to be together. How did I not see this?”

This epiphany is shared with a witty/quirky best friend who gives a knowing look as if to say, “Are you really just now seeing this? Everybody else, even that emotional vampire down in accounting who wears brown suits and white socks, knows you’re perfect for each other.”

Unfortunately, the love interest who hasn’t yet seen the light gives up on love as a pointless pursuit of elusive romance, quits her job, and goes to find the meaning of life at that exciting advertising job in New York, which has been waiting for her all this time.

The one who’s just figured out the meaning of love and life, finally works up the courage and goes to see her at her apartment, which is now empty. He makes a grand gesture by dropping everything to chase the still-too-thick-to-see-love-staring-her-right-in-the-face-advertising-wannabe in a cab driven by a suitably sarcastic foreigner in an attempt to catch the plane before it leaves LA on its flight to the Big Apple. (There are other variations, like if he’s given up on love and is going to Algeria to join the French Foreign Legion, she’ll follow on the back of a cranky camel, led, of course, by a suitably sarcastic camel driver.)

Just as the chase looks to be futile, she walks out of the restroom at LAX when her flight starts boarding. She trips over a mislaid suitcase and falls right into his arms—which are filled with an airport hot dog and a beer in a huge plastic cup that he spills all over the both of them. Fed up with life, she starts complaining that he should watch where he’s going as he tries to pull a stray french fry from her hair.

The star-crossed couple finally recognizes one another, and she vaguely realizes what’s happening but resists by saying that she “just can’t do this anymore” and that she “needs to be true to herself and quit chasing rainbows.”

Ok, I’ve told you all that to ask you this: What happens next?

He grabs her face in his ketchup-smeared hands, looks longingly into her questioning eyes … and kisses her.

We know, don’t we? We’ve seen this movie or some variation of it—complete with stock characters and comic subplots—literally hundreds of times. We know what’s going to happen in the end; our only real suspense is how they’ll overcome the obstacles that keep them apart.

Romantic comedies employ a series of tropes, which is to say common literary devices, in the service of plots that are so well-worn we know almost immediately what kind of story we’re seeing, and how it will inevitably end.

But romantic comedies aren’t the only storylines we recognize, are they? Westerns with white hats and black hats. Action adventure movies with bare-chested heroes who escape fireballs/advancing hoards/enemy spies/invading aliens/cunning mob bosses just in the nick of time. Sports movies where the beleaguered and overmatched underdog finally finds the strength and motivation to defeat the odds and a superior opponent.

We know. We’ve seen them all so many times.

But recognizable plot lines aren’t unique to our culture. Other cultures throughout history have had their own recognizable plot lines, complete with stock characters.

In the ancient Near East, for example, there was common morality tale that parents told their children. Instead of beginning with “Once upon a time … ” or “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away … ” this popular ancient Near Eastern story began, “There was a man who had two sons … ”

Not unlike the way generations have used fairy tales to teach children right from wrong, this story of the man with two sons was a popular fable meant to teach children the virtues of responsibility.

And, if you’re going to show kids how to be good grownups, you can see how this story is supposed to go:

There once was a man who had two sons. The younger son was brash and unpredictable, while the older son was measured and reliable. The younger son asked for his inheritance, which he wound up squandering on fast cars, good liquor, and bad women. The older son, on the other hand, did everything right. He stayed home, took care of the family business, and always remembered to put clean the litter box.