Actually, you are wrong, but don't let me keep you from your ignorance...

One of the many things that drives me crazy is when people use quotes out of context. I mean, really! If you try hard enough you can use other people's word to prove just about any point. I see this done with the Bible all the time. Lately, though, I have heard several people use the same quote and each time they used it to mean the same thing - not what the author meant however. The quote I am referring to is "Ship's passing in the night," from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Solitude. People seem to use the phrase to talk about failing to connect with someone (e.g. an older woman comes into the office looking for one of my co-workers... I tell her "oh, you just missed her, she stepped out for a minute." The woman replies, "we are like ships passing in the night."). I was sorely tempted to correct her mistake, but I just smiled and bit my tongue. Longfellow was not talking about missed connections (as it is listed on Craigslist.com), but rather how our relationships on earth are fleeting - there for a moment, and gone just as quickly as they came. Read the whole verse for yourself:

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.