This age-of-specialization story was told to Ted Gordon by his son-in-law, William I. Thompson, an instructor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A student with a loaded grocery cart came to the check stand designated "Ten Items or Under in a Boston supermarket. The clerk glanced at the over-the-limit contents of the cart and remarked, "I don't know whether you're from MIT and can't read or from Harvard and can't count."
