My Grandma, Bill Gates, and Me

I seem to be posting a lot about Microsoft recently, so here's an interesting story on the same topic. My grandma, who lives in Iowa and is reminiscent of Dave Letterman's mother (only sweeter and considerably more pleasant), is now unfortunately in the hospital and is starting to become senile. The members of my extended family will regularly call her and tell her what is going on, and she will then relay these stories to the other family members who call her. This makes her kind of a central hub of communication for my family, which introduces the usual message degradation that comes with relaying stories, multiplied by the fact that she is suffering from dementia. Every once in a while a story will begin to spread which is entirely fictitious. During a family reunion a few days ago my extended family began discussing a story they had all heard about me. It goes like this: I decided that I wanted to work for Microsoft, so (instead of contacting a recruiter) I flew to Seattle and drove to Bill Gates' house. After talking to several people at Bill's house, I was eventually let in and got a chance to meet directly with Bill Gates. He decided to hire me, I now work for Microsoft, and Bill Gates and I are good friends. Now there are a couple strange things about this story. The first strange thing is that when my grandmother told it to people, everyone in my extended family (which includes several college professors) thought the story was true. The second strange thing is trying to figure out what true story led to this entirely fictitious one. It's possible that my grandmother confused me with my brother, who met Bill Gates at his house several years ago when he was a Microsoft intern. It's not uncommon for my grandma to confuse us, the last time I visited her in the hospital she asked me how I was enjoying Harvard (Kevin went to Harvard, I'm at MIT, so she was only off by a couple stops on the red line). It's also possible that the story emerged from her hearing that I flew out to Seattle to give a talk at Microsoft Research. Anyway, for any family members reading this, I am not good friends with Bill Gates, and I'm sorry I missed the reunion.