A True Story...and It's Related, Indirectly...

Three grown men out camping, enjoying the cool night air lounging in camp chairs staring up at the night sky. The following conversation took place, one a numismatist with years of experience studying the night sky as a hobby, another a physics professor who teaches astronomy in college, and another, an attorney who knows everything. Respectively, I'll use Chuck, John, and Dave as the names in the conversation, although only one of them is the actual person's name (mine).

Chuck: Hey guys, look right there...a satellite.
John: Yep, see more of those now than back when we were kids.
Dave: How can you tell it's not an airplane?
Chuck: No strobes...it's not blinking.
Dave: And that means what, exactly?
John: Planes have blinking lights, this doesn't.
Dave: Maybe they have the lights turned off.
Chuck: Flying planes don't have solid red lights. This does.
Dave: Well then maybe it's a UFO.
John: Or a satellite.
Dave: I don't know how you could prove that.
Chuck: I'm not sure it could be proven otherwise, either.
John: Hey Dave...I guess when you see a burning flash zip across the sky, you think it's a star falling out of the heavens, eh?
(moment of silence)
Dave: Well...sure. What else could it be?
John: A meteor?
Dave: What's that?
Chuck: Space dirt burning up in the atmosphere.
Dave: They look like stars burning up to me.
John: (smiling)...or maybe crashing satellites.
(silence again)
Dave: Nope..stars. Satellites don't glow like that.

The conversation about what the things in the sky were ended soon after that last comment. Later in the weekend John came to me wondering how Dave made it through 8 years of school being so thick about everything. My response...

Just hope he doesn't have to defend you in a case concerning astronomy.


Point is...no matter how much education goes into a conversation, the value of what comes out depends on how much the pupil is willing to listen and learn. Dave was so thick he argued every valid point put in front of him. The obvious was pointed out to him by people who knew the truth, but he fought against the truth just because he could. He might have learned something that night, but I somehow doubt it.