Overheard


during a lunchbreak in the hallways of Tech
A: My heart's a hand grenade, you know?
B: Mine's a proximity mine. So... a little bit different there.
A: Your heart will explode only if someone gets too close, but mine is guaranteed to go off at some point in the future.
B: Is your pin even pulled?
A: Yeah
B: Well, you didn't say so.
A: It's assumed. What would the metaphor be? How could a heart be like a hand grenade with the pin still in? What would that mean?
B: You were the one who said it. Also, just to be clear, proximity mines explode way bigger than hand grenades. So, I would say you were getting off easy, just having a hand grenade for a heart.
A: Proxies aren't even real! They only exist in videogames! They're just landmines adapted to work better in a videogame context.
B: Wait, really?
A: Yeah, I think so. I assume Goldeneye had landmines originally, but they were too difficult to use, or they couldn't get the bounce-off-the-walls physics to work correctly, or something, so they just invented "proximity mines."
B: Huh. I always assumed they were real. My "heart is a proximity mine" metaphor works even better now.