I'm picking up my daughter, she's finishing up a 6 week summer camp. But there's lots of summer left, and the girl next to her is lamenting what she'll do. I tell her that her parents will probably find another camp for her and then take a vacation to Greece or someplace without her.
"Why Greece" she asks, and I explain it's because they serve free ice cream there, playing, as it were, for a reaction.
Now the little girls parents are there and they're talking to me about where they'll go for the rest of the summer vacation. Her mother, she's a frumpy middle aged woman in a floral dress, her father is covered head to toe in fur. And to make matters worse he's got a plastic flesh-colored mask on to try and make him look normal, but it's not succeeding, you can see the hair popping out the eye holes and he explains to me that it's a genetic condition. And they continue discussing where they'll go and decide upon the Outer Hebrides.
"AH, Scotland" I say, and he looks at me oddly and explains to me that the Outer Hebrides are in Peru, he was stationed there once for a time he should know. And I'm certain they're off the coast of Scotland, or maybe Iceland or Denmark but I'm betting they've got to be islands someplace but I'm loathe to argue with someone already so disadvantaged, and he explains to me the purpose of his research there and my mind is filled with graphic images.
Apparently every 12, 000 years there's a great salt flood over the entire Amazon Basin, and then a fresh water flood, and then life there starts anew, and as he's explaining I'm seeing a giant map of a square South America flooding from the Equator down and then the flood-waters circle about the end and run up to the top, there's arrows and graphics and it's a bit elaborate, like something you might see on the Discovery Channel.
I'm still not buying it and after they've left I go to the University Library where I talk to the librarian and he begins to look for maps of the Outer Hebrides for me...."The Furry Guy" he's saying, "Yeah, he's my supervisor...I've got to have a talk with him on Monday" and from the tone I gather the Librarian's going to fire him for being furry or bad at geography...