Thursday, June 6, 2013

Reference Works

(Warning: the references contained in this story will make no sense whatsoever if you have never seen the 1987 movie The Princess Bride.  If this is the case, you really are missing out, and you should take immediate steps to rectify this. This is so surprising to me I have to assume you found your way to this blog by accident.)

We relate to the people we work with in various ways, some professional and some personal, and it can be delightful when these two things overlap.

Yesterday I was talking with a co-worker about a superfluous document that our forms committee is diligently trying to remove from the packages we send to members.  In fact, this person thought this removal might already have occurred, but when I spoke to a person in the know, he explained it would still take some doing before we saw the last of it.

This morning, I told this authority that I had described the document’s status as ‘clinging tenaciously to the side of a cliff’, to which he quickly replied, “That’s right, and let me tell you, it sure isn’t Ingo Montoya at the top waiting to help him up, either!”

The Princess Bride is one of my favourite films, and the reference so well executed I had to exchange a high-five with him while I laughed, before adding, “You know, given the difficulty in executing these kinds of technical changes, the ‘Cliffs of Insanity’ are as good a description as any…”

He chuckled in agreement.  “Sometimes it feels like, ‘Simplicity? You keep on using that word… I do not think it means what you think it means.’”

“Inconceivable!” I replied.

I’m sure many of the people around us simply thought we were displaying signs of sudden onset mental illness (which is ridiculous; it has been obvious to my family for years), but some passersby familiar with the source material nodded in agreement, and walked away smiling.

No comments:

Post a Comment