Walk Idiot Walk

I haven't read 'The DaVinci Code' yet. I'll get that out of the way first.

A guy I know has read it and decided to come to me, "History Boy with the mighty power of book-learnin," for answers to his questions.

I haven't read the book. So, a wee bit difficult to answer some of those questions.

Now this guy is a little... off. Now, I know he's got some smarts, but I think they've vanished since his kids came along. I liked him back in the '90s, but he's seriously gone downill since. 3 kids'll do that to you. I almost throttled him at a meeting once when he went on this rant for nearly 40 minutes before concluding that there were 3 steps everyone could do for this idea he had: 1 - Do nothing. And he forgot the other 2 and couldn't find them on his PalmPilot. See? Wee bit of idiocy going on in there.

His first question: Were the Templars real?

So, after about half an hour of glazed over eyes (my eyes... couldn't believe the question), I started in on a lesson about the Knights Templar. How they'd been a Crusader army not really beholden to any monarchy, save the Pope. How they were powerful and rich enough to establish the first international banking system. How that power got them into trouble in the 14th century and pretty much cost them their lives and reputation. Most have since viewed them as Satanic or worse because both the French monarchy and the papacy wanted their richesto themselves. There's more to the story. Rumours that fleets of Templar ships went north into Scotland in time for Bannockburn (as I described it to this guy: the end credits of 'Braveheart' --which I then found out he'd never seen) have been written into other books...

I tihnk I just confused him more. I better get reading, eh?