Word of mouth
On the way to my parish’s fish fry (every Lenten Friday from 5–8PM), my brother accused me of bragging about getting admitted into Stanford. He then related to me that everyone he knows at St. Columban knows about it.
But I didn’t tell them. I don’t even know most of them.
So here’s how I worked it out. (And I’m not revealing names, because they’re minors, and I don’t want to break the law.)
- I tell one of my former classmates at St. Columban.
- She tells her brother, who’s in the 5th grade with my brother.
- He tells everyone else.
- Someone comes to my brother to (ironically) break the news to him that I got into Stanford.
But according to my brother, that’s not how it went. Because another friend of his is the one who broke the news. So here’s my other theory:
- This friend of his heard it from his brother, Hendrik, who’s a junior at St. X.
- Hendrik heard it from Danny, one of his classmates (presumably).
- Danny heard it from Drew, a good friend of his.
- Drew heard it from his brother, Steven, who’s in my homeroom.
- Steven heard it from his friend Luke.
- Luke heard it when Kyle yelled it out in AP Spanish Language class.
- Kyle heard it when he was in the Guidance Complex computer lab one day, and my counselor screamed out the news…
- …which she heard directly from me.
So am I guilty of bragging? This is some kind of Butterfly Effect gone horribly awry.
Please note that this is pure, unfounded conjecture, and that no attempts have been made to verify this information. You can view this as a “conspiracy” if you wish; that’d be ludicrous, though. The aforementioned people may not have even heard of aforementioned information. The people and/or places mentioned in this account are purely fictional, and any resemblance whatsoever to any person, place, thing, quality, or idea, dead or alive, is purely coincidental – even if I just linked to their webpages.
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Comments
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You got into Stanford. You have every right to brag, even if you didn't (now I know too, huh)! Who cares about what little brothers say! lol
5/ 5/2005 @ 8:35 PM
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