My husband and a classmate of his are in the living room preparing for a class presentation they will give tomorrow on Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age. Sarah just classified Ryan’s part of the discussion as the “So What, Chuck?” segment, in which after she recaps what the book says, he will ask Chuck, “so what?”

I am so amused by the banter that seems to work its way seamlessly into the otherwise serious conversations that happen here.  Yale Divinity students rock the world of puns and word play–they give our UChicago friends a run for the money in both quantity and quality of puns used each day.

Sometimes the un-funniness of the law leaves me feeling like I will never be a worthwhile contributor to this banter, but this past week we read a case that will make anyone laugh.  We refer to it as the ‘Batman case’.

Basically, a woman was sued after she ran her car into an oncoming truck.  Her explanation of the event? I quote, “The psychiatrist testified Mrs. Veith told him she was driving on a road when she believed that God was taking ahold of the steering wheel and was directing her car. She saw the truck coming and stepped on the gas in order to become airborne because she knew she could fly because Batman does it. To her surprise she was not airborne before striking the truck but after the impact she was flying.”

My teacher found this particulary funny because, in fact, Batman cannot fly.