(I am a student teacher at an elementary school. It is the end of the school year, and as a reward for turning in their homework every week, my partner teacher has me take a group of students out for an extra recess. We get outside and I notice two of the students, a pair of boys who are best friends, standing by the fence, crossing their arms, and bopping to some unheard tune.)

Me: “What are you guys doing?”

Boy #1: “We’re the Swag Bros!”

Boy #2: “We just dropped an album on YouTube and it already has seventy million likes.”

Me: “And this is… your swag dance?”

Boy #2: “Exactly.”

(I continue patrolling the playground. A few minutes later, I see that the boys aren’t playing together.)

Me: “What happened to the Swag Bros?”

Boy #2: “We broke up. The Swag Bros are no more.”

Me: “Oh, no, that’s so sad!”

(Not long after, I see the boys back together, along with a third boy. All three are doing the weird crossed-arms dance in unison.)

Me: “What’s going on here?”

Boy #1: “The Swag Bros are back together, and now we have [Boy #3]!”

Boy #3: “We just dropped our new mixtape and it already has a million gajillion hits!”

(Long live the Swag Bros.)

(I am a summer camp counselor. I am waiting for the next activity with my campers on a bench when we spot a spider on the bench next to us. The campers are around ages seven to nine.)

Me: “Oh, hey, there’s a little spider here. Watch out for it!”

Camper #1: “That’s a jumping spider!”

Me: “Really? Do you like spiders?”

Camper #1: “Yeah! I study spiders a lot!”

Camper #2: “I like to study cars!”

Camper #3: “I study human weakness.”

(I am working at a summer camp. As you can expect, the campers regularly freak out over insects and spiders.)

Me: “Calm down! It probably won’t hurt you!”

Camper: “I love how you say, ‘Probably.’”

As a child, I was fairly quiet, a bit of a dreamer, and fairly easy to upset. Thus, when my first-grade teacher asked to speak to my mum one day after school, Mum figured I’d probably just had a run-in with a more brash child, or skinned a knee, or something like that.

Not quite.

In class, we’d been discussing what we wanted to be when we “grew up.” The usual occupations were brought up and discussed — teacher, firefighter, policeman, ambulance driver — and then my teacher made the mistake of asking me.

I said I wanted to be a dolphin.

“Oh, you mean a dolphin trainer?” my teacher asked.

Nope. I wanted to be a dolphin. 

When I was informed that I couldn’t actually be a dolphin, I started crying. Attempts to persuade me that I could work with dolphins or by dolphins were to no avail; I was determined to be a dolphin and only a dolphin, and nothing else would suffice.

While mum admitted — years later — that neither she nor the teacher could keep a straight face when discussing “the dolphin incident,” she — and the rest of my family — still take great delight in bringing up my early career choices at every opportunity.

(I am 22, working in a school office. Everyone agrees that the principal is the biggest a**hole alive. She makes countless rude, b****y, and discriminatory remarks and passes them off as jokes. One afternoon while out for lunch, I trip and sprain my knee. I’ve been limping around with a brace for a few weeks.)

Principal: “You’re still limping? What happened to you?”

(She’s seen me before; I’ve explained it to her a few times.)

Me: “I sprained my knee.”

Principal: *disgusted* “Really! You’re so young and already you’re crippled. How are you going to get married?!”