tomim tihye, your post reminded me of when my then-6-year-old son told me that he had a substitute because his rebbe was absent. I asked him if he knew whether his rebbe would be back the next day, & he said, “I don’t know, maybe he’s dead.” When I asked him why he’d think that, he told me that when the students asked the rebbe how old he was, the rebbe said he was 105. Knowing that this is very old, and not realizing that the rebbe (who’s probably in his 50’s or 60’s) was joking, my son figured it would happen sometime soon.
