CONTENT WARNING: Gross

One summer during college, I worked at a gym teaching kids from ages four to ten how to swim. During my classes at the shallow end of the pool, there was also a Mommy And Me swimming class for infants, getting them used to the water while still being in a parent’s arms.

This was an exchange between me and the coworker teaching the infant class in between classes.

Me: “There’s something floating in the pool. Actually, there’s a lot of it.”

Coworker: *Offhandedly* “Oh, I think one of the infants in the Mommy And Me class pooped their pants and it spilled out into the water.”

Me: “Don’t we need to clear the pool and clean it since that’s biohazardous material?”

Coworker: “No, there’s so much chlorine in here that it was dead on contact.”

Now, this I would believe; the chlorine levels at this pool were enough that I ended each day with less leg hair than the day before, and it gave my eyes the look of someone who spent their summer at Woodstock.

My coworker then proceeded to jump into the pool and scoop the poop out by hand before welcoming the next class in.

Safe to say, those reasons are why that was my last summer teaching swim lessons.

I’ve been a professional computer programmer since 1978. I did programs for the first IBM PCs when they came out.

Around 1986, my wife got a job as a Gal Friday for a chiropractor. He was quite proud of his office computer for managing his practice. Since he knew I was a computer professional, he asked for my help with something.

When I sat at the computer to help, I noticed that there was a numbered menu on the screen and a standard DOS prompt to enter a command. I realized immediately that his “fantastic” office management program was just a collection of hastily-written little batch files, each of which would do its thing and then clear the screen and show a new list of numbered commands to use.

I typed “DIR” to see what was on his computer first. The doctor suddenly freaked out.

Doctor: “What did you do?! It’s all messed up now! You’d better get that back to normal.”

I patiently ran the initial batch file and the screen cleared up.

Doctor: *Suddenly quiet* “Oh.”

Me: “Just let me do my job, okay?”

My husband is a VERY large man. He gets compared to a variety of large predators fairly often, but probably the most consistent comparison is to a gorilla — to the point that in one of the facilities he used to work in, the kids called him “Silverback”.

Part of this is not just because of the size of him, but also because he is shockingly alert and can go from 0 to 100 the moment anything goes wrong. I learned this firsthand once when someone walked into our apartment uninvited, and my husband was out of a dead sleep — in just boxers — and at the guy’s throat before I could even register what was going on. Poor kid was just extremely intoxicated and thought he was in his own apartment.

We still joke about this event, and today, I saw something online that reminded me of it.

Me: “So, this person put up a tweet about people sleeping naked and was saying, ‘What are you people going to do if someone breaks in?’”

[Husband] laughed.

Me: “Yeah, I couldn’t help but comment. I was like, ‘So, funny story. Turns out—’”

Husband: *Completely deadpan* “Gorillas are always naked.”

Years back, I got into a kick of making taffy. I wound up with bags of the candies. At the time, I was also contracting with a mid-sized firm and creating a point-of-sale system for them. I kept a bowl of taffy on my desk for whoever wanted some.

The chief financial officer dropped by my office one day.

CFO: “Oh! Taffy! May I?”

Me: “Are you a licensed taffy user?”

I need to mention at this point that the CFO is my best friend. In the manner of male best friends the world over, it’s obligatory to tease one another. He laughed and took a taffy.

About two minutes later, I got a text on my phone. It was from the CFO. 

CFO: “I guess I’m not licensed.”

Accompanying the message was an image of a tooth crown… on his desk… with taffy stuck to it. He had pulled off his crown with my taffy.

Years back, I sold my larger home when the kids had all moved out. I had a riding lawn mower at the time, but I wasn’t going to need it. I put it up for sale. Unsurprisingly — for reasons that will be obvious in a moment — I got an immediate reply. I told the prospective buyer to come get it. Shortly after, he arrived, looked it over, and said he’d take it.

Buyer: “You wouldn’t consider a little less for it, would you?”

Me: “It’s 105 degrees (40C), the middle of August, and it’s a decent riding mower for only $300. You realize that I can get a lot more for it?”

Buyer: *Visibly blushing despite the heat* “Um, well, I thought it was worth a try.”

Me: “It wasn’t.”

He got his mower, but his chutzpah was amazing.