I was at the spring fair at my kid’s school today, standing around trying not to talk to any of the parents I didn’t recognize, and nonetheless found myself in the awkward situation of having to converse with someone whose first question was what kind of work I do. Why is that always the first question they ask?

I started to answer as vaguely as possible, but I realized there was no way to explain it without dropping the dreaded b-word. Once I said it out loud, I could see his entire expression change, and he sort of nervously chuckled.

There was another parent next to him who, with a puzzled look, asked me, “Does anyone still use that?” I replied that a lot of people all over the world do, in fact. That the demand keeps growing every cycle, and there are less than a million left that will ever be mined.

This probably broke their brains, because they both basically stopped talking to me after that and completely changed the subject.

So I’d call it a win.