An Elevator Story

One of the best stories I have been in :) -

I go to the library to get some books, step out at the wrong floor so have to take the elevator again. A couple of minutes' wait and the elevator door opens, only to show me it is packed with 5 other people(and it is supposed to hold something like 4 if they are real close and don't have problems with intruders in their private space). I am of half a mind to desist and take another ride up but the people inside gesture for me to come on in and share the little space there is(Oh I love thee Notre Dame already!). The girl next to me politely asks where I have to go and we find that someone else is getting off on the 9th floor. So we settle in for the all-so-short ride and the old man with the collar(to the uninitiated, this means he is one of the initiated - a priest) to my left, who seems eerily familiar, starts talking across me to the couple to my right about how someone in the Vatican stole his work and how, to this day, one can compare the thesis this Vatican guy wrote with what our man had published earlier, obviously the latter half of a conversation that I had interrupted with my rude, discomfiting entrance. The couple are like "Oh really.. So the world goes" and all those cliched clucks of the tongue that express both sympathy and disapproval. Then, as the 9th floor comes up(or should it be down) and I start walking out, I hear the last 2 classic exchanges - "So are you a professor or something here? Do you have any position here?" ask the couple, and the cleric answers "Oh I was President of this University once. I am Theodore Hesburgh. This library is named after me."

No wonder he looked familiar!!!