Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Overheard

I was at a local Radio Shack yesterday and heard the following exchange between three employees.

First Guy: ... I think it was like 1985.

Second Guy: It was 1985. Nineteen eighty-five was a good year: the invention of the transistor and the fall of communism.

First: Are you sure communism collapsed then?

Second: Positive.

First: I don't know about that. I think it was 1981.

Second: You weren't alive back then, how could you know?

First: Yeah well you were like 5.

Second: Dude, I remember watching it on TV.

Third Guy [not me]: Two people arguing about a historical event when neither one of them was alive for it.

(Second guy goes to a computer to look it up)

Second: Oh, it was 1989.

First: See I told you you were wrong!

Second: Yeah well I was closer at least.

Third: So that makes you smarter or something? You did't even know who Mother Teresa was. (to First) You know who she was, right?

First: Yeah.

Incidentally, by most accounts, the transistor was invented in 1947.