An ASS Out of U and ME
Every once in awhile, it's good to be reminded just how much trust can be placed in information flows. For me, this usually happens when a cable talking head show or a magazine article relays a "fact" concerning some topic in which I am fairly well versed: the doctrine of the Catholic Church, an obscure event in Scottish history, the cultural habits of Hoosiers, the content of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, or some such. This makes me less credulous when the topic is unfamiliar. When I've just heard Newsweek's lead religion reporter completely mangle the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, it makes me a lot less inclined to swallow some idiocy about Islam or Mormonism.
But sometimes, you overhear stuff about yourself that's just as funny, if not nearly as consequential.
(1) At the 11:00 AM Globe set on Sunday, pyratelady appears in the shiny and cunning hat. Someone yells out, "Where'd you get the hat -- YOUR MOM??" She replies, "No -- but it was somebody's Mom."
(2) At the 4:00 PM White Hart set, several patrons beside and behind me are running a commentary about the hat: "Hey, Darcy, didja get that hat from Jayne Cobb?" "No, she said she got it from her mom." "No, it was somebody else's mom." More to obtain some quiet than to grab credit, I muttered, "I made the hat." And then added, "And I am somebody's mom."
(3) At around 5:30, waiting around for Pub Sing, a patron I have never met or I believe even seen before sits down beside me and says, "So....I understand you're Darcy's mother-in-law??"
I'd like to report I had some witty comeback, but in fact I just choked on my cider. I can only surmise that some group of patrons at the Globe over-interpreted "somebody's mom," some other group of patrons overheard my proprietary claim of hatsmanship, the information was filtered through a couple of layers of inebriated White Hart squatters, and thus was hatched this stunning QED. There's a lovely little technical note on information theory waiting to be written here, but first I have to mentally recover from the emotional blow that some significant proportion of the White Hart population thinks I look old enough to have given birth to ironbeagle.