"Hey Henry" Eliza called as she walked into his office, perching on the corner of his desk as she usually did. "You feel like some lunch? I'm craving some sushi. Or a burrito. But sushi would totally instagram better, don't you think? Burritos look so gross. Impossible to look good eating one too. Ew."
Henry barely glanced up from his work to acknowledge her rambling. He had grown to enjoy her company, but he had also learned that he could ignore nearly 75% of what she said as it wasn't actually directed and him, but was just her talking out loud.
"Hey. Earth to Henry" she called to him, waving her hand in front of his face. Looks like this was one of those times he was supposed to be listening.
"What? Sorry, I was trying to get this email sent out before that meeting we have this afternoon."
"Huh?"
Henry looked up to see that glazed over expression on her face that told him she was lost in whatever was happening on her phone.
"You said something about lunch?"
"Oh, yeah. Food? Let's go" she said, hopping down and hooking her purse over her arm. "We decided sushi, right?"
"Did we?"
"Yeah, duh. You should really pay more attention, you know" she said, laughing at him.
As they sat waiting for the check, Eliza couldn't resist anymore and grabbed her phone from where it lay face down in the middle of the table. Henry wanted to protest, but honestly he was pretty impressed that she had left it alone for the last half hour. She immediately started scrolling through Twitter, switching to Facebook when she apparently didn't see anything interesting.
"OMG!" she exclaimed, startling him and the waitress he was handing the check to.
"What's wrong?" he asked, worried.
"Did you know that you walk past a murderer 36 times in your life?"
"What?"
"It's true, look!" she said, shoving the phone in his face.
"That cannot possibly be true" Henry said.
"But it is! It says right here" she protested.
"You know, just because the internet says something is true, that doesn't mean it is. I'm pretty sure we've talked about this before."
Eliza just rolled her eyes. "Duh, I know that. I don't believe everything I hear, you know. I'm not an idiot. But I'm pretty sure this is true. I wonder how many I've walked past already?" she mused.
"And what does that even mean? Are you walking past 36 different murderers? Or are you walking past the same one 36 times? I'm not even sure which of those is more disturbing?" Henry heard himself asking, while instantly regretting even entering the debate.
"Well" Eliza started, "I assumed it was 36 different people, but I guess if, like, the guy down the street is a serial killer, you'd probably just walk past him 36 times. But then wouldn't you probably walk past him way more times than that?"
"Well that would average out with someone who never walks past a murderer in their life, I guess."
"That's true. I think I'd rather just walk past different murderers once though. How weird would it be to find out you were around a murderer all the time and didn't even know? You could be a murderer for all I know!" Eliza gasped, giving Henry a suspicious look.
Henry just looked at her in exasperation. "Well then I guess you'd be one of those people skewing the statistics, since you've been near me more than 36 times. Can we be done with this? Some bored person probably just made that up, slapped it on an image, and now it's circulating the internet convincing people that everyone they pass on the street is a murderer."
They got up from the table and started the walk back to the office.
"Well, there's your fun fact for the day" Eliza said.
"First of all, not a fact" Henry said. "Second of all, how could that possible be considered fun?"
"It's fun because they didn't kill you, of course."