(I’m talking to some of my students in a tutorial. The conversation goes from the topic of the course, Markov chains, to population genetics, an application of Markov chains, to experimental testing of population genetics, to a rather neat result where colonies of bacteria oscillate between being free-living and forming colony mats on the top of the nutrient solution. These colony mats are known as “wrinkly spreaders”.)

Me: “If you want to learn more about this, do a web search on ‘wrinkly spreader.’”

Student: *with disgust* “I am not Googling ‘wrinkly spreader’!”

Me: “Um, that interpretation had not occurred to me.”

(The student need not have worried; I’ve just tried the web search, and gerontological p*rn was completely absent.)

(My friend and I are just six years old at the time of this story. We’ve found five cents on the ground and go into a takeaway/corner shop to see if they had any lollies (sweets) for that amount.)

My Friend: “Excuse me, do you have anything for five cents here?”

Server: “Hmm, let me see. I think so. Oh, yes, you can have these…”

(He proceeds to give us a bag of four hot donuts.)

Server: “…and you can keep the change.”

(He hands the five cents back to us. Twenty years later and I still haven’t forgotten his generosity!)

(I am the shift supervisor at a well-known retail chain. A customer comes in looking for ‘101 Dalmatians’. I’d given the delivery boxes to our new hire to unpack, and I’d seen about four copies of this movie. Our movies are displayed alphabetically, movies with numbers leading the title in their own sections. I check in the numerical section, as well as O, D, H and even A, but still couldn’t locate it. Eventually, the new hire comes back from break.)

Me: “Hey [New Hire], have you put out the 101 Dalamatians movies yet? I can’t find them.”

New Hire: *withering stare* “Duh! They’re under W, for ‘one’.”