(A customer comes in to buy a key for a car. I make the key, and the total comes to $5.01, and he gives me $6.00. I ask him if he has a penny or nickel so that I do not have to dump a lot of change on him. He says no, so I give him 99 cents in change. Less than five minutes later, he returns.)

Customer: “That key worked really well. When I went elsewhere they could not get one to work, so I want another one.”

(I make another key, and of course it is the same price.)

Customer: “Here is six dollars.”

Me: “Can you give me a penny?”

Customer: “I have no change.”

Me: “Didn’t I just give you 99 cents in change?”

Customer: “Oh, right.” *hands me a penny*

(I have no idea what he was thinking.)

(My state requires all highschoolers to take a class about money management, getting insurance policies, etc. It’s basic life stuff that most of us know already. We used to be able to opt out of it, but we can’t anymore, and the teachers hate it almost as much as the students. The teacher I have it with is a language and literature teacher I’ve had before, so she’s used to me reading and doodling through class and still getting the right answers, and she’s too annoyed by the class itself to bother demanding I pay attention.)

Classmate: “The book report on a businessperson is due next week! I’m doing mine on Steve Jobs! Who are you doing yours on?”

Me: *still drawing* “Emperor Joshua Norton the First.”

Classmate: “Who’s that? I never heard of him.”

Me: “He lived in San Francisco in the 1850s, and when he went bankrupt, he went kind of nuts and declared himself the Emperor of the United States, and the rest of the city totally went along with it, and treated him like the emperor.”

Classmate: “That doesn’t count! He went bankrupt; he wasn’t a good businessman!”

Me: “Show me where in the assignment it said they had to be good at business.”

(My classmate immediately appeals it to the teacher, who smirks and takes my side, on the basis that the guy WAS a businessman, and that would be more entertaining to read that than the endless reports on Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett. Our next assignment is to fill out a fake insurance claim.)

Classmate: “I’m claiming a branch fell on my car. What are you doing?”

Me: “I’m a rancher, and a herd of zombies ate my cattle.”

Classmate: “You can’t do that! Zombies aren’t real!”

Me: “Yeah, I’m not sure whether to file it as an act of god, or animal damage. Good thing I got comprehensive coverage on my cows, so they’re covered either way.”

(Yet again, my classmate complains to the teacher, and yet again, she takes my side, since I am doing the assignment. This goes on until the end of the year, when our final assignment is to give ourselves an entry-level job, find an apartment listing we could afford on that salary, and write a budget for the month, with things like electricity and taxes.)

Classmate: “There’s no way you can screw this one up! What’s your job?”

Me: “Assassin. Or hitwoman, if you want to be technical.”

Classmate: “You can’t f****** do that!”

Me: “Sure I can. It’s an entry-level job that I have the skillset for, and I can’t find a median salary for American hitmen, but I found it for Canadian and Australian hitmen, so I can extrapolate a rough US salary from that, and round down for a beginner. I found a great apartment that’s well within my budget, and since it’s an under-the-table job, I’m paid in cash and I don’t have to worry about taxes or a checking account. I’m burning the building down and faking my own death at the end of the month to avoid prosecution and improve my career prospects.”

Classmate: “THAT’S NOT F****** FAIR!”

(Surprise, surprise, the teacher sided with me again, and told me later that my assignments were at least entertaining to read, in a lowest-common-denominator class. Ridiculous answers for ridiculous questions.)

(My anatomy and physiology class has started cadaver dissections, and although the professor is on hand to help or answer questions, he tries to let us do as much of it as possible. When a student accidentally nicks his palm with the scalpel, the professor ducks out of the lab to help him disinfect and bandage it, and since I have to change my gloves anyway, I take the opportunity to text my boyfriend.)

Me: “Warning: unsupervised undergrads with scalpels.”

Boyfriend: “It’s important to stab someone first to establish superiority.”

Me: “Nah, [Classmate] managed to stab himself with no help from me, which is why we’re currently unsupervised. My superiority is already established by my ability to properly wield the tools of dissection. I rule as Queen.”

Boyfriend: “Enjoy your reign of the land of corpses, and for any potential mutineers, threaten that they shall share the fate of the unwilling subjects of evisceration!”

Me: “The dissection cadavers donated their bodies to science, though; they’re not unwilling.”

Boyfriend: “Oh. Well, enjoy your stint as the queen of the dead things, then! Stir-fry tonight?”

(This counts as normal for us. He may be The One.)

(My genetics biology class has a brief discussion about the double-helix structure of DNA, and of course Watson and Crick come up, along with a quick discussion of how Rosalind Franklin deserved more credit for her work. The girl behind me takes that as her cue. Every time we discuss a scientist, she sarcastically asks what his wife discovered, and loudly talks about how much men suck. I’m a woman and a feminist, but this girl is just annoying, and ignorant to boot. Finally, I’ve had enough.)

Girl: “Oh, suuure, he discovered heredity! Are you sure he wasn’t just taking credit for a woman’s work, like all those other misogynistic pigs?!”

Me: “You do realize we’re talking about Mendel, right? Gregor Mendel? Ringing any frickin’ bells?”

Girl: “Another pretentious jerk, taking credit for his wife’s work!”

Me: “Dude… Mendel was a monk.”

Girl: “So?”

Me: “As in, living in an abbey, no women around, never married! Pretty d*** sure his work was his own.”

(She went pink, and thankfully stayed quiet for the rest of the semester. The professor, also a woman, told me later that she gave me a few extra credit points for finally shutting her up.)

(Chicago is having a particularly nasty cold snap, with temperatures routinely hitting negative ten Fahrenheit, or even lower. One evening, around eight pm, I am heading out of the physics classroom when another student catches up to me.)

Girl: “Hey, you work for the biology department, right?”

Me: “Yeah, I’m a student employee. What’s up?”

Girl: “Do you know if either of the lab managers are still around?”

Me: “No, they usually leave around five. Why? Does your research lab need to borrow equipment?”

Girl: “Oh, crap! No, I accidentally left my coat and mittens in one of the classrooms, and now the door’s locked, and I’m walking home tonight.”

Me: “Which classroom? I might have the key to it. If not, I’m giving you a ride; I drove today.”

(She tells me, and sure enough, it’s a room I have access to. Thirty seconds later, I have the door open and she’s pulling her coat out of the closet at the back of the room.)

Girl: “Oh, my God, thank you so much!”

Me: “No worries, chica. It’s way, way too cold to be without a coat. You sure you don’t want a ride?”

Girl: “Nah, it’s only a ten-minute walk; it’s just too far to go without a coat in this weather. Thanks, though!”

Me: “Fair enough. Have a good rest of the night!”

(We wish each other well, and I think no more about it. Because the lab is smaller than the lecture hall, our physics class will have one early lab section, then the lecture for everyone, then one late lab section. I’m usually in the late lab section, because I’m at work earlier in the afternoon. For lab-based exams, we’re allowed one sheet of notes and formulas. The day of our final lab exam, I take off work, and spend nearly four hours typing up my notes. Two sentences from the end, the computer starts glitching and shuts off, and when I finally get it up and started again, my carefully saved document is nowhere to be seen. It’s only twenty minutes until class, and I’m fighting an anxiety attack and trying not to cry in the middle of the computer lab, when the girl from before comes over.)

Girl: “Hey, you okay?”

Me: “The computer, it ate my note sheet! And I saved the document, but it’s not on the drive, and I don’t have time to copy it out again, and oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

Girl: “Here. Do you want mine?”

Me: “What? Don’t you need it?”

Girl: “No, I take the earlier lab section. I just finished up; I was coming over to print the lecture notes.”

Me: “Oh, my God, thank you! I’ll get it back to you in class Wednesday, as soon as I see you!”

Girl: “No need. You can keep it. Feel free to add any notes you need; I don’t need it back.”

Me: “Oh, man. Thank you so much!”

Girl: “No worries! Fair trade for making sure I wasn’t walking home in January without a coat.”

(I spent the next twenty minutes adding a few of my own notes and shortcuts, and managed to get a high B on the lab exam. That entire physics class was one of the friendliest I’ve ever been in, but the girl who gave me her note sheet when I was on the brink of having a breakdown totally takes the cake!)

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