Priscilla
(who now has to explain to her husband the embarrassing bald spot in her
garden) and another coworker, Fannie, were in Priscilla's cubicle, diagonal
from mine, talking about something. Usually I shut my ears to ongoing
conversations – the appropriately padded walls of our cubicles don't shut them
out completely. But sometimes, exchanges just lodge in my ears… and with no
context to frame them, either:
Priscilla: I
don't mean to be an ingrate, but ―
Fannie: No, be
an ingrate; I like that about you!
And just to
prove that Ben doesn't restrict his comments to puns, he's good with rhetorical
questions. In fact, the other day I foolishly asked him, "What if there were
no rhetorical questions?"
He smiled
with interest and leaned his elbows on the chest-high shelf that marks the top
of my cubicle. "You know," he began, "since you ask that…",
stopping when he noticed I'd recognized I'd been stung again.
A while
back, Hugo and Ben literally had a loud, afternoon-long debate on whether
one's sense of honor toward other people should, and could, diminish over time.
At some point Ben mentioned to Hugo the concept of verbal conundra, though he
didn't take that concept much further. Later, I asked Ben: "Some time
you've got to tell Hugo the story of the Paradox of Zeno."
Ben looked
apologetic. "I know, but every time I try, I never get to finish
it."
Anyway, he
came up to my desk on Monday and asked me, "What is the German word for
'auditorium'?"
"Which
means?"
This was
obviously an etymological question. "It's a large room – Saal –
where you can, well, listen to stuff: hören. Just like in Latin"
(Ben's an attorney, so he does ow-knay ome-say Atin-lay); "audīre
means 'to hear' or 'to listen' – so you've got 'audio' in English."
"Right,"
said Ben in too-ready agreement. "So…" (uh-oh) "can you show a
silent movie in an auditorium?" He walked away.
My pupils
must have gotten tiny as I turned my gaze up to the ceiling, and began stroking
my chin contemplatively. I've yet to find a good answer.
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