(I am an elementary school teacher. I am talking to a third grader and she tells me a joke, so I say:)
Me: “Haha! That’s a knee-slapper.”
Student: “What?”
Me: “A knee-slapper. You know, when something’s funny, you slap your knee?”
(I demonstrate.)
Student: “Um, maybe that’s how they did it in the olden days, but now we just laugh when something is funny.”
(I work through graduate school at an on-campus coffee shop. Recently, the student-run newspaper did a story on me because I won a national customer service award through the company that runs on-campus dining at our school and hundreds of other campuses nationwide.)
Regular: “Oh! I saw you were in the student newspaper this week!”
Me: “Yeah? Is that out already?”
Regular: “I’ll show you!”
(She holds up a copy of the newspaper, which is delivered folded in half; above the fold, the biggest headline is, “[Neighborhood near campus] Rapist Still At Large.”)
Me: “Um, I don’t think that one’s about me.”
Regular: *noticing that the bottom half is facing her* “Oh! Sorry!”
(She flipped it over, and below the fold was the story about my customer service award and my picture!)
A couple of weeks ago, I was working in the cardiology department and the topic of conversation between me, another medical student, and a specialist somehow drifted towards practical exams. The specialist suddenly asked us if we knew how to fail a student. Neither of us knew what she had in mind, so we shook our heads.
Then, she explained.
First, find a patient with LVAD — a mechanical implantable pump that assists the heart with pumping blood in heart failure; due to how the pump works, the patient has no palpatable pulse. And then, you give the student a regular blood-pressure monitor and instruct them to take their pulse and blood pressure.
Those poor students.
(The professor is talking about Black History. She brings up the point that no matter how much a white racist might say “black people are privileged,” they would never willingly switch places with the black person. Somewhere under their lies, they know that black people have it worse. The professor says that she, a white person, would never want to switch places with a black person because she knows how bad racism is. She asks if we would do the switch. No one raises their hand. Then, the professor completely jumps tracks to talk about fatphobia and how awful it is. She asks us the same kind of question: would anyone willingly gain 100 pounds? 200? One stick-thin girl raises her hand.)
Professor: “Why, [Student]?”
Student: “Because I want the weight. And to eat.”
Professor: “[Student], anorexia is a serious thing. It’s downright awful. But we have to deal with it, too. In fact, more fat people have eating disorders than skinny people. And we are encouraged to keep these eating disorders; you get help. People fall over themselves trying to get you the mental help you need. A fat person–“
(The girl starts full-on sobbing, in the mental-breakdown kind of way.)
Student: *between sobs* “I don’t… have… and they… they won’t… My stomach won’t let me eat. My intestines won’t let me digest. And the doctors… They say the same thing as you! They look at me and decide I’m anorexic before they even know me! They just tell me to eat more. They won’t help me… They just send me to therapy… and call me crazy… and no one will run the tests I need… They think if I just eat more, I’ll be fixed… I wish I was fat… so at least I’d have more to lose before I died…”
(The professor stopped saying stupid s*** after that.)
(This takes place on the playground at recess in second grade. My friend and I have built a snow fort.)
Friend: *yelling to the boys in our class* “WHO WANTS TO BE KING?!”
Boys: *all raise hands*
Friend: *still yelling* “THEN YOU WILL HAVE TO MARRY ME!”
Boys: *all scream and run away*
