My husband is working a late shift. I go to the garden gate with him to see him off. A woman and a little girl are walking past in the street.
Little Girl: “MUMMY! THOSE TWO MEN JUST KISSED!”
That woman avoids eye contact with us.
Woman: “Yes, that’s because they’re in love.”
Girl: “Awwww!”
I am shopping in town with my nine-year-old son in tow. Perhaps it’s not such a good idea, but I go into a shop to get myself some new underwear.
We’re in the area where they sell oversized underwear and my cheeky monkey of a son points to a rack of some of the larger items and says in his high-pitched and penetrating voice:
Son: “Look, Mum! Hats for twins!”
And he scampered off, sniggering.
Trouble is, I couldn’t stop laughing. I was still tittering when I got to the checkout, and unfortunately, I set off the member of staff. They say laughter is infectious. I infected the entire store, basically.
When we got outside I gave him one of my famous punishments that aren’t really punishments.
Me: “Just for that, we aren’t going to go up to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen this afternoon.”
In England, unless the driver has massively wronged you, you generally say, “Thank you,” to them as you disembark a bus. Getting off the bus after a long shift, my brain gets a little mixed up.
So, instead of saying, “Thank you,” I come out with a good old:
Me: “Can I help you?”
And I said it at full customer-service volume.
There was quite a long, frozen pause until the driver drove off.
Thank God there was no one waiting to board.
I work in a formal office setting. Some of my coworkers can be very stuffy and procedural. It can be grating but they are good people. I tend to take a little more time with presentations and emails on important matters, and I avoid any written conversations with those types of people.
I need to catch up with one of “those” coworkers, so drop by his desk. Finding him not there, I write on a post-it.
Me: “Dropped by to catch up on projct slides. Catch you later. [My Name].”
I get on with my other work and said coworker appears at my desk.
Coworker: “Was this your note?”
It has my name on it — a unique name for this office.
Me: “Yes, that’s me.”
Coworker: “I couldn’t really read the writing.”
I don’t have the best handwriting, but it is clearly legible.
Me: “I wanted to catch up with you about the project slides.”
Coworker: “No, I got that much.”
Me: “Okay, well, it’s just—”
Coworker: *Interrupting* “You do realise that you spelt ‘project’ wrong? I mean, it’s not a hard word to write, is it?”
He laughs to himself.
Me: *Pauses* “Okay.”
Coworker: “And to be honest, ‘catch you later’ isn’t really appropriate office language, is it?”
Me: “It’s a post-it note, not a company-wide email.”
Coworker: “I’m just letting you know. So, what did you want?”
Me: “You know what? It doesn’t matter.”
He huffed and puffed but finally left my desk. If he wasn’t such an a**, I would have told him that the project slides he did were based on massively out-of-date information. I ran the same figures and found completely different numbers. As we would be both presenting in the same meeting, he would look the fool, and now I would certainly have the evidence that I was right to take into the meeting.
I’m about five, and I’m in the car with my grandparents heading to a forest. A very well-known family frequents the area. Whilst it’s an area Grandpa lived in for a long period of time, he can’t remember how to get there. We’re surrounded by trees, though, so we’re likely to be close. There’s someone in a swept-up land rover behind us.
Grandpa: “I’ll ask that man behind for directions.”
Granny: *Alarmed* “I don’t think that’s a good idea!”
Grandpa: “It’s fine. I must know him; I recognise his face!”
He does just that and approaches the land rover. Then, men in suits just appear from the trees and the surrounding area. Loads of them. Grandpa freezes. I ask Granny who they are and she says they’re security.
Security: “Sir, please return to your vehicle.”
Grandpa: “But we’re lost. We want to get to [Forest].”
Security: *Pauses* “You’re in the forest. Stay on this road and you’ll get to the car park.”
Grandpa: “Oh. Right. Okay.”
He gets back to the car and heads off. There’s a long stretch of silence.
Granny: *Imitating Grandpa* “‘I must know him; I recognise his face!'” *Crossly* “That was Prince Edward, you idiot!”
