In the early 1990s, I bought my first house. Not long after moving in, I noticed that our local community college had a non-credit evening course called “Residential Wiring For Homeowners”. It was, as the title suggested, catering to homeowners who wanted to learn the basics of electrical wiring in the home as it pertained to anything from replacing lights fixtures and switches to minor electrical changes — renovations, etc.

The instructor was a licensed journeyman electrician with a wry sense of humour and more than a few stories to tell of the many wiring nightmares he had come across in his career. He was a great instructor, and I learned a LOT from him in the course.

Each week, he would give a short lecture on the work we would practice. For the course, each of us bought a list of electrical supplies (wire, switches, junction boxes, etc.), and we used a two-foot-by-two-foot square of plywood to attach the various pieces. After each lecture, we would then practice building the circuits and mount the necessary pieces on the board. During this time, our instructor would move about checking our work, offering advice and/or corrections, and answering questions.

On the first night, [Instructor] outlined the course and expectations. He also made it clear there was one rule that had to be followed:

“NOBODY plugs their board in to live power without me checking your work first. No exceptions!”

You may guess where this story is going.

There was one guy in the class — let’s call him “Ralph”. After a few nights, it was clear that Ralph was struggling a bit with the concepts. He never seemed to get it right the first time, kept asking for more explanations, etc. He was a nice guy but clearly not cut out to do this stuff on his own.

One evening, in particular, stands out all these years later. We were working on a more complicated wiring example using four-way switches and light fixtures. Everyone was working away and completing the task when, all of a sudden, there was a loud “FOOP” and the lights went out in the class and in the hallway so we were in the pitch black.

After a few moments:

Instructor: “Who did that?!”

Ralph: “Uhhhh, sorry…”

Instructor: “Okay, everyone unplug your boards, and do not touch them until I’m back. I’m going to find and reset the breaker.”

When the lights came on and [Instructor] returned, he reviewed all the work in progress and gave the okay to proceed… for everyone but poor Ralph. He took Ralph to one corner of the room and sat down with him for a few minutes to have a “quiet conversation”. We proceeded with finishing our work, and Ralph eventually returned to finish his project board under the watchful eye of [Instructor].

A few classes later, we were done with the course. On the final night, [Instructor] began passing out certificates to all of us… except for poor Ralph. They were largely symbolic certificates, just an acknowledgment that we had taken the course.

Instructor: “Ralph, I know you tried your best in this course, but it is abundantly clear that you really have trouble grasping the basics I tried to teach this class. I would invite you to register for and take the course again to get the concepts down. If not, I implore you to never, ever touch the electrical wiring in your home and always call a qualified electrician for any work.”

I have no idea if Ralph tried to take the course again, and I certainly hope he never burned his house down trying to replace a light switch on his own.

I was studying biology at university and we were in the laboratory, working with bacteria samples. It was mostly for practice before the more serious lab work later on in the year.

It was clear that some of the students had little experience working in a lab. My lab partner was one of these, and since I already had some experience, I let him do the actual work while I assisted.

My partner was getting ready to place a sample onto a petri dish with growth medium on it. Before the sample could be placed, the equipment needed to be sterilized in order to ensure that the samples weren’t contaminated.

He started out by dipping an inoculation loop in ethanol, and then he was going to move it through a blue flame to make it completely sterile. As he was moving it through the flame, the spirit on it caught fire as planned and started burning off. The beaker of ethanol was still placed on the desk.

Me: “Okay, now, just hold still, and take care not to spill the—”

[Lab Partner] knocked the beaker over, spilling ethanol all over the bench.

Me: “Whoa! Okay, don’t panic. Just make sure you don’t move the flame too close to—”

Then, [Lab Partner] clumsily lowered the burning instrument too close to the pool of ethanol, causing it to catch fire and spread across the desk.

The teaching assistant rushed over and threw a fire blanket over the desk. The fire had reached an expensive microscope and started to melt part of the plastic on its base, but thankfully, it wasn’t properly ruined.

I took care of the sterilization protocol myself after that.

I’m at a high school club meeting. I’m casually talking to [Friend] and a freshman, and the topic of dietary restrictions comes up. Both [Friend] and I are vegetarian.

Freshman: “Oh, that’s bad. You’ll die if you don’t eat meat for more than ten years, you know.”

Me: “I’ve been a vegetarian since I was three.”

Freshman: “How old are you?”

Me: “I’m seventeen.”

Freshman: “You’ll die if you don’t eat meat for longer than fourteen years, then.”

[Friend] is Indian.

Friend: “My dad has been a vegetarian for his entire life. You do realize that there are entire cultures that are vegetarian, right?”

Freshman: “No, that’s not true. My dad said that humans are meant to eat meat, and you’ll die if you don’t.”

Sounds like someone’s parents are either very ill-informed or really don’t want vegetarian kids.

In one of my classes in high school, there was a guy who sat a row over and a desk behind me. Whenever we had a test — almost always twenty multiple-choice questions — he would whisper loudly at me to show him my paper, since I was getting As.

I decided I’d had enough after three tests and was going to end it in a simple way. As usual, on the next test, [Cheater] asked to see my paper. I held it in such a way that the teacher wouldn’t see. In our school, we had three half-hour lunch periods.

In this class, third hour, we had the first lunch period after class was over. For this particular test, the teacher said that as soon as we finished the test we could go on down to lunch.

As soon as [Cheater] copied all of my answers, he handed in his test and took off for lunch. After he was gone from class, I went back and redid my test answers. You see, I had answered question number one on line two, question number two on line three, and so on. That’s the paper he saw. All I had to do was move each answer up one line.

We got our graded tests back the next day.

Cheater: “How’d you get an A and I got an F? Didn’t we have the same answers?”

Me: “Yes, we had the same answers. The first time.”

He never asked to see my tests again.

He flunked the class. I got an A.

In my Spanish class, we’re discussing holidays and traditions. Often, we’ll try to apply the things we’re learning to our personal lives.

Teacher: “How about here? What would you say is the traditional cuisine of the Midwest?”

Student: “Culver’s!”