Debunking The Full-Of-Bunk Man

Here's a little tale about Mr. S, the S-Man, the S-inator, SSSSSSS. He's know to the students as the tall-tales teacher. The one who can tell you a story about any subject you mention. The kids have a fable about S walking through the jungle as a caveman, and a sabertooth tiger jumps out of a tree to rip him to shreds, and S tears the tiger apart with his bare hands. Without doing a little research, I don't know off the top of my head if man and sabertooth co-existed, or if saberteeth crouched in trees to ambush their prey. Or Mr. S. But I do know one thing: that little lack of knowledge would never prevent Mr. S from telling a story and representing it as fact.

Last year, I told the kids that I could take any random subject, and Mr. S would tell me (1) a personal story about himself and that random subject, and (2) a little-known historical fact about that random subject. Now, I didn't necessarily say that the information would be true and provable, but only that Mr. S would have a story. They agreed. Unanimously. So I picked up the current edition of Science World magazine (a Scholastic product, not some fly-by-night Weekly World News kind of tabloid) and we chose two articles for me to casually bring up to Mr. S after school. One story was the gross-out department at the back of the magazine, which happened to be a dude with a Pamplona bull's horn sticking through his thigh. The other was about the traveling King Tut exhibit.

I've told this story before, but let it suffice to say that with only me as his enraptured audience, Mr. S responded to my flaunting of the dude taking the horn of the bull with: "I was gored by a milk cow with a horn one time. She really didn't like me." And the King Tut memorabilia was regarded with: "You know, they had to treat Tut with some chemicals, because he was growing moss on his face from being on exhibit." Again, I don't know if any of this was true, but Mr. S didn't let us down. He proved that he is versed in any subject you care to toss at him.

Yesterday, Mr. S told the #1 son's class that after the Super Bowl, the city of New Orleans distributed Mardi Gras beads and 10,000 mini-footballs. And all of those 10,000 mini-footballs were personally thrown by Drew Brees. In a parade. The #1 son said, "I knew that couldn't be true. But it wasn't even worth saying anything." So we got to thinking about how long that might take, if Drew Brees was wont to toss 10,000 footballs to the crowd while riding on a float in a parade. Never mind whether a float could hold 10,000 mini-footballs and Drew Brees.

If you assume that Drew could pick up and toss a mini-football every five seconds, that would be 12 mini-footballs per minute. Which is 833 (and a third) minutes of mini-football tossing. Which is 13.9 hours of mini-football tossing. So Drew would have been strapped to a float, firing those mini-footballs from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 a.m. Oh, sure. Maybe Drew could have tossed a handful at a time. But it's hard to hold a handful of mini-footballs, even if you're Drew Brees's hand. And what about taking time to sip a beverage and go to the bathroom and scratch his butt and, well, I just don't think that scenario is feasible.

The Bacchus parade in which Drew Brees performed this amazing stunt usually takes three-and-a-half hours. ( Normally Bacchus takes about three-and-a-half hours to complete its route. “But if Tuesday night was any indication, this may be more like six,” Brennan said. “I hope we get in before midnight.”) That would mean Drew had to chuck 2857 mini-footballs per hour. That's 46 mini-footballs per minute. Which is about one mini-football per second. Technically, it's .8 mini-footballs per second. I'm not buyin' it. That's too many minis for Drew's arm to endure. Even if those 10,000 mini-footballs were flung over six hours, that's still a mini-football tossed into the crowd every two seconds. Which is a lot of wear and tear on an elbow. An elbow with no rest for six hours. I think reports of Drew's gladiatorness are greatly exaggerated.

Even Mr. S himself could not accomplish such a feat.