YOUNGER (hanging on front door-knob): Doorknobs have been around for a long time. Were they around in the time of pirates?
D-R: [unable to think of specific incidents in history featuring pirates and doorknobs but deciding that this is because doorknobs are a landlubbery kind of thing, and not because doorknobs and pirates did not co-exist in the same historical moment]: Ummm … yes, I’d say so.
This turns out to not really be true, in the sense that I took “the time of pirates” to refer to their heyday, like the 17th and 18th centuries, and it turns out, to my shock, that doorknobs don’t seem to have been invented until the mid nineteenth century. I am honestly still in shock about this.
YOUNGER: Are there pirates now?
D-R: Yes, but they don’t say “Arrrgh” and have a parrot on their shoulder. They more just have a boat and steal stuff.
YOUNGER: So being a pirate is basically just having a boat?
D-R: No … not everyone who has a boat is a pirate.
She ponders.
YOUNGER: OK, so being a pirate is basically 3 things: if you’re missing an eye, you kill innocent people, and you have a boat, then you’re a pirate.
D-R: The missing an eye bit isn’t essential but …. sure, that’s close enough.