O Tempora, O Mores #3

In this day and age of e-commerce and online shopping and trading, I feel it almost anachronistic to have to answer the doorbell and find someone trying to sell me an encyclopaedia. Yet, that happened to me in Chennai not too long ago.

Some young lady rang the doorbell one afternoon and attempted to sell me an encyclopaedia. She had only volume on hand with her, and I wasn't sure if that was one volume or the whole kit and kaboodle. She had hardly started her spiel when I interrupted her (I know; that wasn't very polite of me). "What are you -- nuts? Why would I waste money on an encyclopaedia? Haven't you heard of Wikipedia -- The Source Of All Knowledge -- which I have been known to abbreviate to TSOAK? There are over 2 million articles (to be said in a Dr. Evil accent) on that site. There is no way your puny mass of cut trees can compete.

"Why, only the other day, my mother was asking me if it would be possible to find out some details about a medicine that a patient of hers was taking, the name of which that she (my mother) had not come across before and so was delaying her diagnosis of the situation. In the time it took her to say that to me, I had spied the chemical name of the medicine on the information pamphlet, brought up the relevant entry in TSOAK and given her all the information she required.

"Tell me, can your miserable collection of words printed on dead oxygen-providers do that? I don't think so."

Actually, what I said to her was, "No, thank you", and gently closed the door. But the stuff before is what I thought of saying to her.