God save us from 14-year-old boys. You know, this reminds me of a story. In my college town, there was a great charitable organization that helped those who were mentally ill or handicapped but at a level where they could function on a day-to-day basis if they had help with some of the more abstract concepts in life. In one of these cases, they were helping a gentleman get set up living on his own in an apartment, and after a few months got a call from his landlord that the rent check had bounced. So they got with him, balanced the book, found his account was indeed empty, and explained this to him. He was bewildered, and answered "I can't be out of money; I still have checks left." This has since been bandied about as a joke, but it makes sense if you understand the background. He could understand money physically, as in I give you a special piece of paper and you give me what I want, but the abstraction of a checking account was beyond him. His mind wasn't capable of understanding that the checks represented money he had in the bank and weren't worth anything by himself. Since then, I've looked at trolls, and wondered if they have similar problems. After all, although they know it factually, they just can't seem to grasp that on the other end of the screen name and the typed messages is another human being, just like them, with feelings and emotions that can be hurt. I wonder, do other abstractions mess with their heads? Are credit cards a mystery to them. Are logical chains like "Swedes are from Sweden, John is a Swede, therefore John is from Sweden" a labyrinthian riddle to them? Or maybe they're just jerks. ^_~