Information Literacy Librarians on the Loose

Today, I was forced to overhear a long conversation wherein one man described how he was once on a plane and exchanged pleasantries with the man next to him. The man whose voice carried a bit too far asked the man on the plane "So, what do you do?" and the man on the plane said, "well, I invented Velcro." "No way!" said the loud man, "I wear Velcro everyday!" "Indeed," said the man on the plane. "Hmm," thought I. So, tonight I was reading this amazing book _Mauve_ and I stumbled upon a paragraph describing how, in 1956, George de Mestral invented VELCRO (a combination of velour--French for velvet--and crochet-- French for hook). "Hmm," I thought once more.
I resisted but found myself googling "inventor of velcro." Here's what I learned. Velcro came about when George de Mestral went on a walk with his dog and found that his dog's coat and his pants (M de Mestral's pants, not the dog's) were covered with cockleburrs. A microscope revealed the hook like structure which inspired Velcro. Voila and zut alors! Moreover, "Did you know," Velcro.com asks, that "Velcro is the name of our companies and is a registered trademark for our products. It is not the generic name of the product that fastens shoes, pockets, and hundreds of other things. That product is generically known as "hook and loop" or "touch fasteners."" Or that "you can't buy a piece of "velcro." But you can purchase all of the VELCRO® brand hook and loop fasteners you need. In fact, we encourage it!
All very interesting. My research also revealed that M. de Mestral was born June 19, 1907 and died February 8, 1990. So, if a 40 year old man met him on a plane, M de Mestral would have to have been pretty old or the man pretty young. I'm still iffy about the whole "I met the inventor of Velcro on the plane' line. Still, it raises some interesting things to think about: was he really sitting next to the inventor of Velcro? Or, is there someone somewhere telling a story about how once he was on a flight and wanted to see if he could convince his neighbour that he was the inventor of Velcro? Finally, does the loud man really wear Velcro everyday? These are mysteries we'll never solve. It does remind me of another time when I was at this same place and a very very drunk man was trying to woo a group of teachers. His story was that he was both a millionaire and the mayor of a small Michigan town (that he named). When the man stumbled away, all three of the teachers said "We are SO going to google that when we get home." I have to admit I did google it too when I got home. He might have been a millionaire but mayor of that small Michigan town, he was not. This is what happens when Information Literacy librarians are at large. Be careful out there. Google might not be your friend after all.