I’m a high school teacher. Throughout distance learning, one of my students became infamous for “being on mute” when he started talking. It started as simple forgetfulness, but the kid realized he could make a game out of it, so as time went on, it turned into an annoyance as he pressed his luck longer and longer before “realizing” that he was still on mute and “apologizing for his forgetfulness”.

When we finally get back to in-person learning, I spend the first day on a simple discussion on classroom expectations now that we’re all in the same room again. As I go over each expectation, I give the kids a chance to ask questions and discuss why that expectation is in place. Eventually, the “forgetful” student raises his hand for a question.

Me: “Yes, [Student]?”

[Student] moves his lips but doesn’t make a sound.

Me: “[Student]… I’m going to give you one chance to answer. Did you actually lose your voice, or are you just playing games again by pretending you’re on mute?”

[Student] thinks for a few seconds, and then responds in a perfectly clear voice.

Student: “Well… you caught me. I just wanted to see what would happen.”

After allowing the class to giggle for a moment, I got their attention back and told everyone that while it was funny this time, those kinds of antics would not be tolerated in the future.

So far, nobody has tried it again, and with distance learning moving farther and farther into the past, I’m hoping it’ll stay that way.

I was on a guided tour of a cave system that was used as a bomb shelter in the War, and it still had some of the old furniture and fittings. The caves were long and twisting, and the entire tour was lit by oil lanterns that we carried.

At one point, the guide wanted to show us how sound carried and just how dark it was, so he showed us a large metal oil tank and told us to remember it. Later, at a very deep part of the cave, he had us leave our lanterns in an alcove. Then, with just his one small lantern to light our way, he led us to a cavern and left us there, in the dark.

It seemed like we were there for an eternity, standing in the pitch black with no sound, just the odd drip of water. In reality, it was a few minutes later that there was a resounding BOOM that made us all jump, and the echoes trailed on forever… until it was silent again. And it stayed silent and dark until, in the distance, we saw the guide’s single lantern slowly approaching. We all fixated on this one point of light, waiting for it to get closer, when suddenly, right next to us, the guide loudly announced:

Guide: “So! Dark, isn’t it?” 

Cue much screaming and laughter. He’d left his lantern on the floor and crept up to us.  

Well played, sir.

I decided to play a prank on my wife. I had my daughter bury me under a huge pile of leaves and then popped up out of it as she strolled up the driveway, making her jump ten feet in the air.

It was a good laugh until a man who had been walking past and witnessed it objected.

Man: “Dude, that was f****** stupid! What if she’d pulled out a gun that she’d bought unbeknownst to you and shot you dead on reflex?”

Me: *Pauses* “Why in the h*** would my wife of twenty-three years be secretly buying firearms behind my back and carrying them on her person — which is illegal, if you know anything about guns and the law?”

Wife: “Not to mention shooting someone for startling them?!”

Man: “Lots of women out there have guns their spouses don’t know about. This is America, in case you forgot.”

Me: “Yeah, and it’s morons like you that make it embarrassing rather than something to be proud of!”

Several years ago, I was getting a lot of those “I’ve smuggled money from [Country] and need help moving it”-type emails. Spam filtering was not as good as it is now.

I finally got them to stop by replying with something like the following:

Me: “I am an official with [Country] government. We have set up email accounts to track down citizens who have illegally transferred funds and/or left the country. We are tracking the IP address of your email and agents will visit to return you and the funds. You will be sent to a re-education camp to ensure you will become a happy and productive member of our wonderful country.”

That was the end of annoying emails — for a while, anyway.

I work with a team of programmers that has a good sense of humor and is regularly joking with each other. We had a government lead who was partially responsible for setting priorities as to what needed to be added to the software we were prototyping, which meant that he was important enough we had to talk to him, or about him, a number of times each day. He had always gone by a certain nickname during that time, and we were used to calling him that.

Then, we got a new developer who had the same name, except our developer’s legal name was the nickname, so he jokingly argued he had dibs on it. Our government lead admitted he used to hate the nickname as a kid and insist on his real name, so he didn’t mind being called by it now. Thus, we all sort of agreed each person would go by their legal name to avoid confusion in the future. The only problem is that we all kept calling the government guy by his nickname out of habit, to the regular confusion of our new developer.

One day, the new developer came in with a Nerf gun, which is honestly not that uncommon to see in an office like this. His explanation for it?

New Developer: “I’m sick of you calling [Government Guy] my name. It keeps confusing me and driving me postal. So the solution is obvious: from now on, when someone drives me postal by using the wrong name, I will simply have to shoot them!”

He was true to his word. Any time someone called the government guy by the developer’s name, he would turn around and shoot the offending party with a Nerf dart before going back to work. There were even a few times when it was clear we were about to mention the government lead and the developer would grab his gun and jokingly shake it menacingly at us to remind us to use the right name.

This was all done in good fun and we all had a laugh at it. We even kept a running tally on a whiteboard of who got shot the most. The funny thing, though, is that it worked; we all very quickly got used to using the new name under the threat of being shot!

A little while later, someone much higher up in the government, who we rarely saw, came down to speak with us and she called our government lead by his nickname. She didn’t notice that we all immediately glanced at the new guy as soon as she said it. For his part, he clearly looked down at the gun as if debating it, but he wasn’t brave enough to shoot her. As soon as she left, we all jokingly teased him about not shooting her.

New Guy: “I have this silly policy about not shooting people that have the ability to decide whether or not I get a paycheck, you see.”