David Isenberg’s Underwear

On Tuesday at the Connectivity 2002 Conference, David Isenberg opened his talk by waving his underwear around and listing the metaphorical similarities between jockey shorts and telecommunications. So, on Wednesday morning during my session, I waved David Isenberg’s underwear around as the prize for coming up with the best way of explaining the telco mess in the fewest words. Yes, I was blatantly trading on the laughs Isenberg earned.

It was only on the way home that I realized that about 20% of the audience on Wednesday hadn’t been there on Tuesday and thus must have their own theories about why I would give Isenberg’s underwear away as a prize.

It reminds me of the time my sister-in-law Sue, a serious and seriously published novelist, was teaching an English course to college freshman. They were reluctant to speak up, so over the course of weeks, Sue used every technique she could think of to get them to open up. Finally, one woman – call her Mary – actually contested something Sue said, and Sue replied: “Mary, you ignorant slut!” There was a shocked silence for, of course, the students were too young to understand that this was a reference to an old Saturday Night Live skit. They sat there wondering why their professor was calling them sluts.

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