I am not for one moment trying to suggest that aviating is not a serious business or that the consequences of screwing it up cannot be very severe but bear in mind....
n.dave is not a professional. Like it or not, different standards apply to non-professional flying - and that is why there are portions of airspace that are available only to professionally qualified pilots.
And we all had to learn sometime. For HD to have reached the level of knowledge that is expected of professional controllers I feel sure that there were a whole bunch of kindly and wiser folk who took the trouble to explain things to him regardless of how incredible the lack of knowledge may have seemed. I know I have benefited (and continue to do so) from such people.
I fully respect HD's credentials, and maybe it was just a bad day, but just reading the rulebook doesn't always explain how to do things - particularly if we're talking about the Rules of the Air!