"I knew his brother"

Today in my Critical Theory class the professor was speaking of a critic, von Humboldt, and mentioned that he had never taught this particular critic's theory in a class before. In fact, he said that he wasn't even very familiar with the critic himself, but was more familiar with the critic's older brother, who was a scientist.

"Although I wasn't familiar with von Humboldt's theories," he said, "I knew his brother."

I glanced down at the page and saw that von Humboldt had died in 1835. Now, my professor might think he is old, but not that old. I shrugged it off and figured that professors live so much in their minds that knowing someone in his mind must have meant the same thing to this professor as actually knowing him in person.

But then a girl raised her hand and asked, "I'm sorry, but how could you have known his brother if he died in 1835?" And the professor looked startled for a minute and then realized what he said.

And started laughing.

The rest of the class was laughing, too. Hysterically. In fact, he couldn't even speak for a couple of minutes because he and we were all laughing so hard. And then he tried to start talking about the critic again but couldn't keep the laughter inside.

"I've been doing this for too long," he said. "I have been teaching for way too long."

I just laughed because it did prove my point that professors do live inside their heads...