Oh, boy! Is the Earth Flat or Pear-shaped?

I was queuing at the gateway deeply immersed in a book about the Universe.

There was however something buzzing and almost interfering with my reading. I had to focus for twenty seconds to isolate that voice from the soft but persistent background noise of the airport.

Some words she said had triggered my attention: she was in fact randomly throwing into her sentences concepts like “Space”, “Earth” and “Sun”, but in a somehow strange and unusual context, which didn’t sound right.

In a slow tuning process I realized that she was arguing about the form of the Earth.
She kept reporting someone else’s thoughts, citing possible inaccuracies in scientific tests, but she was also trying to keep a formal distance, probably because she knew her point would have not been accepted by most people.
She was in fact subtly suggesting that the Earth might in fact be… flat.

After several minutes I had had enough.

I turned around, cut her off mid-sentence, and stated as assertively and seriously as I could:

“The Earth has the shape of a pear. Peariod.”

She stared at me like I came from Mars (well… probably the chocolate bar).

And at that point I realized I had to start an argumentation, passing myself for a true conspiracy fanatic.
As you can imagine the difficult part was trying not to snigger.