(My wife and I are on our honeymoon and have just finished a tour of the Vatican. We are making our way through people trying to join the entry queue. I try to speak — bad — Italian, complete with accent, and weave through the crowds, wife in tow. I am over six feet tall and from London, and I have my arm out to part the crowd.)

Me: “Scusi… Scusi… Prego… Scusi.”

(I spot some British tourists up ahead trying to join the back of the line by climbing over the barrier, rather unsuccessfully. I keep an eye out, prepared for the inevitable.)

Me: “Scusi… Prego…”

(I drop into a thick London accent with no time to deal with idiots.)

Me: “COMING THROUGH, MATE!”

(The family parted faster than the Red Sea as we came through, my wife laughing her head off!)

(I am in the sixth grade, around age twelve. The teacher enters the room to find one of his students standing on a table.)

Teacher: “[Student], what are you doing on the table? Get down!”

Student: “I’m escaping a fart!”

Teacher: “Well, don’t you know that hot air rises?”

Student: *without missing a beat* “Well, that’s what I come to school for! To learn!”

(The student hopped down and class went on after everyone stopped laughing.)

(This happened several years ago at the call center for a local pizza chain. We stop taking orders at 11:00 pm but most activity dies down at 10:00, so most of the employees have gone home. I’m alone, aside from the manager, and bored at 10:55 pm when I get a call.)

Me: “Thank you for calling [Pizza Chain]. My name is [My Name]. What can I get for you today?”

Customer: “Hi, [My Name]. So, we have a bet going.”

Me: “Um, okay.”

Customer: “Can you spell ‘pterodactyl’?”

Me: “Yes? P-T-E-R-O—“

Customer: “Thanks.” *yelling* “She got it! I knew [Pizza Chain] could spell.” *to me* “Thanks again.”

Me: *laughing* “You’re welcome. Have a great night.”

Back a decade or so ago, I was home from college between semesters, lounging with my brother, when I got a call from my mother. She sounded worked up, which isn’t usual, and asked me rather insistently if I knew how to count change. My confused response must not have inspired confidence because she said she was going to come home and make sure.

Sure enough, when she got home she started grabbing change to put on the table, asking us again if we knew how. My brother and I were able to talk her down a bit with several assurances that we did, in fact, have a basic understanding of currency, and we finally got the reason for all this. Mom had been out shopping and the cashier had given her the wrong change, and had apparently been entirely clueless about how to count it out. This had worked my mother up to the point where she apparently felt the need to make sure her sons weren’t in the same boat.

I can certainly understand why that would be a frustrating experience. But I can’t help but be amused that she feared that a student who had run As in the advanced math track, tested out of every math requirement in college, and was routinely referred to by friends and family as a “human calculator” would be incapable of counting change!

(I’m a substitute teacher. For some reason, students frequently ask me for money and/or to break larger bills for them. Today, I’m working in a middle school. It’s the last class of the day, and half the kids have left to go to a party for getting good grades. It’s already clear that no work is going to get done by the remaining students.)

Student #1: “Do you have a dollar?”

Me: *thinking: I don’t have any money with me right now, but I wouldn’t give any to a student even if I did* “No.”

Student #1: “You don’t have a dollar?”

Me: “No, I’m a substitute. Why would I have money?”

Student #2: “You’re an adult. Adults have money.”

Me: “Well, substitutes don’t.”

Student #1: “What if it was the apocalypse and you needed a dollar?”

Me: “If the apocalypse came, a dollar wouldn’t do anything for me.”

Student #2: “But what if you needed one?”

Me: “I mean, by that point, money wouldn’t mean anything anymore.”

Student #1: “What if you had to have a dollar or you’d die?”

Me: “Then I’d die!”

(The conversation ends there. When the kids who left for the party start to come back for dismissal at the end of the day, [Student #2] gets into a fight with one of them. Both of them are taken to the office, but I’m still pretty shaken by the time I get home. I tell my boyfriend about the fight as I unpack my lunchbox, having forgotten completely about the earlier conversation. Forgotten, that is, until I notice something in one of the lunchbox’s pockets.)

Me: “Oh, my God. I’m going to live!

Boyfriend: “Huh?”

Me: “Look! I have two dollars! I’m not going to die in the apocalypse!”

(One way or another, I felt a whole lot better after that!)