Benjamin Franklin
“Ask that guy over there!”
“Erm?”
“Who’s Ben Franklin?
“Um. Hm.” (Tricky one, not so much that I don’t know who he is, but I don’t know what from Franklin I’m supposed to latch onto. I’m so tempted to say “Poor Richard’s Almanak”, but somehow that seems… emptyish.) “A founder of this country.” (Feel a bit annoyed because that’s a bit vague.)
As it turned out the answer they were looking for was “Free Mason”.
“Wasn’t he president?”
“NO. No he wasn’t.”
“But he’s on money!”
“He’s the exception to the rule that they place presidents on US money. Well… he and Susan B Anthony, but that doesn’t really count.”
“Wasn’t he that guy with the kite?”
“Yes. Yes he was.”
“Also a Free Mason.”
“Probably.”
“[Name of friend of his] sent me some copies of a book on the Illuminati. She asked ‘Do you believe in the Illuminati’ and I was, like, f’ yeah!”
From there the conversational cross-currents got weird. He knows everything about the Illuminati, and the Free Masons’s place in it. Just not a lot about Benjamin Franklin.