Swiftly Making Buds
By ice rivers
- 422 reads
One day at a seminar on Aerospace, Krell was listening to a windbag whose lack of empathy manifested itself by confusing the incomprehensible with the rigorous.
In other words this windbag was counting on the fact that he would not be understood and therefore misunderstood as a genius rather than a fraud.
Another example of the power of misinterpretation.
Also in the audience that day was a guy named Tom. Tom and Krell were soon too become friends. Tom was an authentic Aerospace engineer. As usual, Krell was an imposter looking for coffee. Krell snuck into the seminar because sneaking into seminars was one of his hobbies. He knew how to give the impression that he belonged wherever he was simply because his appearance was so inappropriate that nobody ever wanted to call him on it. As a result, Krell was often misinterpreted as an expert in whatever seminar he was trespassing.
Krell even fooled Tom for awhile.
The speaker, Dr. Dennis Clippard, didn't fool Tom one bit.
As Clippard tried to confuse everybody by making the trivial seem gigantic, Tom had enough of the attempted linguistic mesmerization.
He raised his hand.
Clippard didn't appreciate the hand raising but he HAD told all the attendees to ask a question at any time as he figured that no one would comprehend him enough to formulate a question about the wind he was bagging.
Tom did have a question that was masked as a clarification,
Tom said this: ""To clarify, doesn't that seem just a bit Brobdingnagian?"
Tom and Krell and perhaps no one else in the audience knew that Clippard's response would reveal a lot. "Not THAT big!" would be impressive. "Gulliver, I'm NOT!" would be insightful. "What?" would be refreshingly-honest. "Ahhh... Ummm... possibly?" would be revealing!
"Well," answered Clippard "Professor Brobdingnagian is an expert of thrust."
The audience seemed satisfied.
Tom looked around to see if anybody connected with the revelation.
That was the first moment that Tom and Krell made eye contact. Simultaneously, they pointed at each other and snapped their fingers.
A friendship began.
Tom proved to be an honest man.
After the drudgery concluded, they met in the hallway near the horrendous coffee.
"I liked your question." Krell said extending his hand. "I'm Thornton Krell".
Tom accepted the handshake and added; "You're Thornton Krell? I've heard of you."
Krell was flattered but resisted the urge to ask Tom about what dark corners Tom must have visited to even hear of Krell.
Instead Krell made this testy observation.
"That Clippard was trying to come off as houyhnhnmic by making us all feel like yahoos.
Tom said what's "houyhnhnmic"
This was the reply of an honest man and just what Krell hoped to hear although "he's about as "houyhnhnmnic" as a pile of horse manure would have been accurate as well.
When Krell took a minute to explain houyhnhnmic in context with Brobdingnagian, the two new friends had a good Swift laugh.
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