Friday, April 15, 2011

A Failure To Communicate

On the news this morning, I saw that the world's oldest man had died yesterday. He was 114. I kind of listened with one ear as I was getting ready for work.

This afternoon, one of my students brought up the topic.

"Hey, did you hear the the world's oldest man died?"

"Uh huh. I heard it on the news this morning. He was 114."

"No he wasn't. It says here he was 122."

"I don't think that's right. He was 114. Some guy in Montana or South Dakota."

"It says right here 122. His name was Charlie Chaplin."

Sweet Gummi Mary! The kid was looking at the Google home page dealybobber about how today was the 122 anniversary of Charlie Chaplin's birth. It took me until 3:30 to figure that out, when I was trying to google something after school. It finally made sense. I knew that Charlie Chaplin didn't die at 122. I couldn't understand how the kid was coming up with Charlie Chaplin as the world's oldest man.

Mystery solved. Shaggy and Scooby can go make a sandwich and scarf down some snacks.

2 comments:

knancy said...

People can be so stupid on so many levels! Reminds me of the 20 something year olds I have had to work with that have no sense of history, geography or spelling. Is that handbasket factory up and running yet?

Hillbilly Mom said...

knancy,
So far...I have the land. I'm sure Carpenter H can raise me a factory out of discarded lumber. He's built two outhouses and a cabin and an A-frame and a freaky deer-spying structure that looks like an overgrown outhouse.