Fernando is crabby one evening because a man, a woman, and their shirtless, shoeless offspring, around age 8 or so, are in the store. The children are galumphing about and being generally loud and annoying pains while the parents do everything in their power to avoid controlling their brood. So, typical day at the Dominion.
One of the two children is being especially bothersome in that he pauses in his labors of rambunction to ask Fernando seemingly random questions. Now, Fernando has nothing against ingraining his worldly knowledge upon the eager minds of inquisitive children, but the questions have to at least be good ones. In this case, Fernando's interactions with the chaos spawn are somewhat clipped by his displeasure.
At one juncture the boy looks up at a wall, where a framed Avatar poster looms, quite visible. He shrieks in glee and runs up to Fernando and points over his shoulder and shouts, “WHAT'S THAT?”
“That...is a poster.”
“WHY?”
The kid probably intended the question to be of the “Why is it there?” sort. But Fernando was already vexed and so he took the child's query at face value. “Well, there are actually a number of schools of thought on that one. The most old-school holds that there is some metaphysical ideal, some 'posterness,' that is possessed by all posters which is somehow transferred to our physical world and allows us to recognize posters for what they are. But that old Platonic ideal chestnut requires, as I said, a metaphysical construct of 'posterness' and applying Occam's razor suggests that there is some other--”
By this point the child had wandered off with a rather dazed look on his face. Fernando's droning monologue actually seemed to quell the boy's miscreant leanings for the time being, though his sibling continued to cavort about the store. But Fernando shall take what small wins he can, as they are few and far between.
Plus it was good to get practical use out of those college courses.
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