Friend: “Hey, Water Farmer, are you making a food run? Can you get me something?”

Me: “Sure, but out of curiosity, you’ve all been calling me “Water Farmer” for a couple of weeks now. Why is that?”

Friend: “Because you’re Luke.”

Me: “Yeah but where do you go from Luke to Wat— This a Star Wars thing, isn’t it?”

Friend: “Luke’s aunt and uncle are moisture farmers.”

Me: “Right. Moisture farmers, water farmer. Congratulations, that’s the first original Luke Skywalker joke I’ve heard since Empire came out.”

Friend: “We try our best.”

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(I’m making small-talk with another businessman at a bus stop in front of a petroleum engineering building.)

Man: “I used to work across the street at [Multinational Oil Company]. We had an odd policy of sending documents to the petroleum engineers.”

Me: “Odd? How so?”

Man: “We would FedEx important documents from that side of the street to theirs.”

Me: “Seriously? The documents would travel all the way to Memphis and back again just to cross the street?”

Man: “Yes. FedEx eventually figured it out and never put the stuff on a plane but just took it across the street.”

(My mother and I are at the mall, but since my mother is in her 60s and deals with various health problems she has to sit while I continue shopping. A man comes out of one store and proceeds to stare at my mom. It should be noted my mother is overweight and always has been despite living a healthy lifestyle.)

Man: *walking up to my mother* “You know, if you walked around a little, you could lose some of that weight.”

My Mother: “That is true, but you could walk until you were blue in the face and it wouldn’t help you with your rudeness.”

Man: *shocked at her response*

My Mother: *pleasantly* “Have a nice day, sir!”

(He left her alone after that.)

(I am running my third and final gaming event at the con. It is a superhero game where all the characters have powers based on mythological creatures. One of the players is new to role playing.)

Me: “It’s sort of like when we were kids and played cops and robbers or whatever. You each have a character and we say what your character does while playing the bad guys, the helpless citizens and the person sending you on these adventures.”

New Player: “So what are the dice and the rules for? You didn’t need rules as kids.”

Me: “Remember when you would get into those situations where someone would say ‘Bang, you’re dead,’ and the immediate response was ‘Nuh uh, I have a bullet proof vest,’ followed by ‘Well, I shot you in the head,’ then ‘You were aiming too low’? At which point it devolves into ‘Yes, you are!’ ‘No, I’m not!’ The rules keep that from happening at least as much as possible. Plus there’s the other thing.”

New Player: “What other thing?”

Me: “Eventually, you’re going to be playing one of these games and roll what that game considers to be a really high number. After all the other rolls you’ve seen it’ll make you feel like ‘Oooo, look how awesome I am.’  I mean it’s just an arbitrary number rolled on one or more dice in a make-believe game, but when it happens you’ll feel like the most awesome person in the room.”

(Later in the game the character she chose, a female marine with dragon based powers, decides to make a strafing run on the banshee-like aliens they’re fighting. She rolls to hit and gets the absolute best possible result.)

New Player: *without thinking about it* “Ooooooh!”

Rest Of The Table: “One of us. One of us. One of us.”

(I am a half-bystander in this exchange. There’s a little diner where I live that’s moderately famous amongst the locals for staying virtually the same as when it opened fifty years before. Literally the only thing that’s changed in the place is a single window that got broken by kids throwing rocks. Of the things that haven’t changed, security cameras still remain the same: non-existent. On this day, I’ve beaten the lunch rush and am sitting in a booth with my brother reading the paper when I hear the following.)

Cashier: “Ack! Sir, you can’t do that!”

Guy: “Shut up and get my order in!”

Cashier: “I told you, sir: we just finished breakfast. Lunch items won’t be ready for another twenty minutes. Please get back outside the counter.”

(I sit up and turn around to see one of the boys from the high school standing halfway behind the counter and bearing down on the tiny waitress, who is doing a pretty good job of glaring defiantly at him. Realizing the problem, I pull out my phone and immediately start recording.)

Guy: “I can do whatever the h*** I want, b****. Tell that fat chef to make me my f****** burger or I’ll come back there and rearrange your face! You wanna be holding your own f****** teeth?”

Cashier: “Sir, you realize you’re on camera right now, don’t you?”

Guy: *grabs her arm* “Ain’t no f****** cameras in this s***-hole! GET ME MY F****** BURGER!”

Me: “Smile!”

(The guy whirls around and freezes when he sees my camera phone pointed in his direction. He immediately starts over to grab it, but my brother gets up out of his seat, revealing all 6’1” of himself to the kid. He backs down, swears and takes off out of the restaurant. We later turned the footage over to the authorities who quickly caught the kid. A few weeks later, I saw the diner had installed security cameras. Gee, I wonder what made them change their minds?)

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