[husted]

IC are like cats. They both have 9 lives and each time you handle it outside a protective environment it loses a life (the IC, not the cat :-) You may not see a failure right now but you will see it later when the life-counter reaches 0.

[illumin8]

You are probably more right than you know... I've always suspected something like this; although mainly that's just from my personal experience when I haven't used ESD, sometimes I've given a board a bad shock and it still miraculously worked afterwards. I've even seen people plug in power supplies backwards, smoke a component on a board, and have the computer still miraculously boot afterwards. No idea if the computer was stable long term, but it's surprising sometimes how much damage these components can take. Then again, on the other hand, sometimes they stop working when they are in a clean room where everyone wears Intel bunny suits and is grounded 24/7.