What's her face

There was a great This American Life on misconceptions. In it, they interview otherwise normal adults who thought unicorns were real, that "XING" on streets signs was a word pronounced "zing", or that "misled" was the past tense of a verb, "to misle", meaning to mislead. Some time, ask Dad to pronounce the word "debris".

Alan had quite a few of these little misconceptions. One day he made fun of me because I suggested he use his laptop on his lap, as the name suggests. He said, "You think it's LAP TOP? Don't you know it's LAB top?"

But my favorite? When the song I'm a Believer was used in Shrek, Alan started to listen to it, but for years he was convinced the words were, "And I saw her face. Now I'm a bit evil." He was actually disappointed that those weren't the words.

Sorry, Monkees and Neil Diamond fans. Alan's version was sung by Smash Mouth.

This kind of thing exemplified Alan's dopey charm. He was so much smarter than his delayed slow responses would make you believe, but then sometimes, he really just didn't know.