Dad: “Hey, did you know it’s raining outside?”

Me: “Where else would it be raining, exactly?”

(At the very end of my English class, my teacher lets us get up to gather at the door a couple of minutes before the bell rings. I notice she has a few Easter-themed gel stickers on the door’s window.)

Me: “Why does that one rabbit have a bunch of little holes in it, but none of the others do?”

Friend: “I don’t know. Maybe it’s hunting season?”

Our library has a security system with motion detectors that we set every night as we lock up the building. Like most security systems, you always set it hoping it never goes off… but early one morning, the day after a large party was held in one of our big meeting rooms, my boss gets a phone call from the police, saying they got an alert that the security system has gone off and they need to search the building.

The boss goes and unlocks the building, and watches the officer do a walk-through of the building with his gun drawn, getting more and more nervous the whole time. When the walk-through of the building is complete and they’ve found nothing, she starts to fret even more. She wonders out loud if someone attending the party hid in the library and is still hiding somewhere.

At which point the officer gives her a look and says, “Party? Balloons?”

As it turns out, the decorations for the party are still up, to be cleaned up by the opening shift… and among said decorations are balloons. When the furnace kicked on in the wee hours of the morning, the balloons were blown about by the warm air, setting off the motion detectors. Red-faced, my boss thanks the officer and sends him on his way.

We haven’t had balloons in the library since.

(I’m a secretary in a law firm, and our lawyers, for the most part, do value our work and contribution for the team effort. One in particular is always careful not to bother us with “simple” tasks, but sometimes he takes things too far.)

Lawyer: *to the room at large* “So, how busy is everyone today, on a scale of one to ten?”

Me: “An eight? Anyway, do you need assistance?”

Lawyer: “Oh, an eight… Well, then. No, it’s fine.” *he’s holding a stack of paper and fussing with it* “I needed something scanned.”

Me: “All right. Give it here, then.”

(I hold out my hands, but he hesitates.)

Lawyer: “No! You’re busy! A trained professional shouldn’t be asked to do simple things like this. I’ll do it myself.”

Me: *pause* “Sometimes you should really listen to yourself.”

Coworker: *who has been listening* “Now, give it here and get back to work; there’s a good lawyer.”

(I am a math teacher, and my husband is a bookkeeper working on an accounting degree, so we both do a lot of math. We attend a conservative church where women are expected to stay quiet. The sermon is about prophecies.)

Preacher: “The prophets weren’t like people today who make guesses about what might happen. For example, a weatherman might say it’s going to rain tomorrow. Well, he has a 50% chance of being right. It’s either going to rain, or it’s not.”

(I bite my tongue. My husband holds my hand.)

Preacher: “…and they might say the rain will start at three. And they’d have a 50% chance of being right, because the rain might start then, or it might not.”

(I hold my husband’s hand tight enough to leave fingernail marks, and start rocking in place. After the sermon, on the way home…)

Husband: “I can’t believe you managed to not say anything. Go ahead. Release the rant.”

Me: “That’s not how math works! Just because there’s two possibilities, it doesn’t make them equally likely!”

(I continued my rant all the way home. Now it’s a joke between us. If one of us asks what the chances are of anything, the other always answers “50%.”)