RIP Annette Funicello

Annette Funicello passed away today due presumably  to complications of multiple sclerosis, a neurological illness she had battled for decades.  From virtually every account, she was a genuinely good person. and the world will miss her.

That being said, I must share with you an account of a very slightly relevant incident that happened today in one of my classes.  Before class began, someone in class read from his IPhone that Annette Funicello had died and said it aloud to the ten or so of us who were sitting in the classroom.  One girl, who is named Mikayla, said, "Oh, I was named after her! That's terrible."

The few of us who knew the girl's name sort of stared at her.  Finally someone asked, "Was Annette Fincello's real name  'Mikayla' ?".

Michaela replied, "No. My middle name is Annette."

That seemed to explain the situation sufficiently, but Mikayla felt the need to offer further clarification. "My mother really liked the Beach  Boys."

By this point, probably eighteen people were in the classroom waiting for the arrival of the professor.
We were staring at her, wondering what Mikayla's mother's fondness of the Beach Boys had to do with Annette Funicello. Our puzzled expressions must have given us away.

"Duh! Annette Funicello was one of the Beach Boys," Mikayla explained to the apparent morons seated around her.

One guys started to bring up something on his Internet, but another guy said, "Don't bother. She's beyond help."

Then the professor entered and the discussion was over, or at least it was until the professor mentioned something about Annette Funicello and Margaret Thatcher both having died.  Some random guy from the back of the room muttered, "Annette Funicello was one of the Beach Boys, you know."

The eighteen or so people who had heard enough of the earlier conversation to get the joke burst into spontaneous laughter. The professor thought we were all hard-hearted or psychotic or both.

I think the guy should have gone to a Beach Boys website and to an Annette Funciello website to show Mikayla that the Internet had no information that Ms. Funicello had ever been a Beach Boy (it's such an obscure reference that it's unlikely one could ever find a site saying specifically that she had not been a Beach Boy) because the girl is the sort who would believe that if something were stated on the Internet, it inherently had to be true.

The good news is that the professor grades on a modified curved. Having Mikayla in the class with me can only be to my advantage.