Firetrucks are available
Today, as we were waiting for the light so that we could cross the street, an old man waiting alongside started chatting up Ben. I should mention that Ben is sick right now and can’t hear very well. (Ben adds, “Some sort of ear, nose and throat deal. Can’t hear out of his right ear.”) So the old man asked about where Ben went to school, found out it was MIT, said something about his high school and then asked if Ben knew the MIT student who did this. Ben said that he didn’t, so the old man started telling him about the invention, saying something about how “he figured out a way to climb mountains”. Then he said something like, “so firemen don’t have to use ladders to climb up, they can just self-propel.”
To which Ben casually responds, “Firetrucks, hmm. Interesting.”
To which the old man responds, “Not trucks! People! People!”
(Ben says, “You have to explain: I can’t hear well, he’s an old man who starts randomly talking to me, I thought he said ‘firetrucks’ and I thought he had said something utterly ridiculous about firetrucks being able to propel themselves up mountains. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I just said, ‘Firetrucks, hmm. Interesting.’”)
Hmm. Interesting.