Hey Baby

Tonight, I listened to an NPR Science Friday podcast entitled, "How Much Is A Trillion". They discussed large numbers such as million, billion, and trillion in such a way to help people visualize the quantities involved.

At one point, they started talking about a BBs in a pool to illustrate one part per million. The problem was I heard them incorrectly. I thought they were talking about sticking a BABY in a pool. First I visualized it, and thought it was no where near one part per million as stated. Then I thought of a baby being dunked in a pool and thought it was some kind of off humor.

They next spoke of stacking a bunch of BBs (again I thought they said baby) together. I suddenly realized that I heard then wrong and that they were saying BBs not babies. A great big belly laugh came out of me, and I didn't stop laughing for a couple minutes after the humor of how silly the envisioned illustration was struck me.

It felt like I was laughing an awful long time during that two minutes, as if I just couldn't stop. I wonder how many people would find humor in laughing at one's own mistakes like that. Perhaps one in a million?