Funny Flashback

I am in a most-of-the-day meeting today, off campus. So, this is the best I can do:

The recent (maybe ongoing is a better word) conflict in Georgia reminds me of a brief conversation I had with another student in a fourth year history seminar, during my undergraduate days. At some point, Joseph Stalin's nationality was raised as it related to a discussion about Hitler's nationality. Hitler was Austrian, not German; Stalin was Georgian, not Russian. It's an interesting thing to ponder, at least for a few moments.

At that point, the woman sitting to the right of me (she was also an upstairs neighbour in my residence) turned to me and quietly said: "Stalin was American?" She hailed from Vancouver, but that is probably not important.

I did wonder how in hell she got into a fourth year seminar. How did she pass all of the prerequisites? Can one really be that ignorant of geography in University? It made me think that there ought to have been entrance exams.

I thought this was very funny, until a colleague informed me that a student recently posed this question at the reference desk: "Who is this Hitler guy?"