(My wife has had her car for nine years and is very sentimentally attached to it, but it has to go, as its transmission has just failed, and it is far too small to haul around the coming baby. I manage to find a buyer for just a couple hundred bucks who’ll use it until it’s kaput and then junk it. I sign the papers, take the money, and shake hands with the guy, and then call my wife at work as he drives off.)

Me: “Hi, honey. It’s sold and gone.”

Wife: “Where are they taking it?”

Me: “I assume to his home?”

Wife: “Is he taking it to a farm?”

Me: *catching on* “Yes. To a nice farm where there will be lots of space for it to drive around with other cars and play all day.”

Wife: “And it can chase scooters and cyclists?”

Me: “You bet. It might even catch a few.”

Wife: “Okay, I feel better, then. See you tonight.”

(It’s May, and a guest walks in to get a room. I go about putting in the info and pulling up his name then see that he’s on our “Do Not Rent” list. I tell him I can’t rent to him and he’d have to stay at another hotel.)

Guest: *in a whiny voice* “But why?!”

Me: “Well, it’s noted that you were seriously intoxicated the whole time, you wouldn’t stay in your room, and you were naked through it all.”

Guest: “But that’s what I wanted to do.”

Me: “Well, you can’t do that here.”

Guest: “But I came here to be safe!”

Me: “But all our other guests obviously don’t feel safe with you around.”

Guest: “Well, how long ago was that?”

Me: “Last February.”

Guest: “But that was so long ago!”

(By this point I’m looking at him like he’s an idiot.)

Me: “Not really.”

Guest: “What am I supposed to do, then?!”

Me: “Go to another hotel.”

Guest: “But—”

Me: “There’s one down the street.”

Guest: *quietly* “Thank you.” *walks out*

(My sister goes to the hospital due to her appendix rupturing. Because of the amount of pain she is in, I answer all the questions for her, fill out forms, etc. While she is in the ER, nurses continue to ask if she is pregnant. The first couple times are different nurses that I assume aren’t talking to each other, but it gets annoying. This all happens before they confirm it’s her appendix.)

Nurse #1: “Is there a chance you’re pregnant?”

Me: “No, there’s no chance.”

Nurse # 2: *later, crouching in front of my sister, who’s writhing in pain* “Are you pregnant, sweetie?”

Me: “No, there’s absolutely no chance.”

Nurse #2: *glares at me and leaves*

Nurse #3: *later, as the painkillers are starting to kick in, causing my sister to slur her speech slightly and not be quite present* “Is there any chance you’re pregnant?”

Me: *frustrated* “There is no chance she’s pregnant!”

Nurse #3: “Let her answer for herself!”

Me: *points at the insurance cards I’d pulled out of her wallet and laid on the counter* “If you idiots had taken half a second to look at these, you’d see she doesn’t have a uterus!”

(My sister was in an accident when she was a kid and had to have her uterus removed, and carries a card with that information on it, because the pregnancy question always comes up. The nurse left quickly and we soon had yet another nurse, who didn’t ask the pregnancy question. I apologize to the nurse at the desk later for yelling, but she waved me off and said it was a quick way to learn a lesson.)

Related:
Cause For Pregnant Pause, Part 16
Cause For Pregnant Pause, Part 15
Cause For Pregnant Pause, Part 14

(I grew up in the DOS era — pre-Windows — and started programming with GW-BASIC when I was maybe twelve. As a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none hobbyist, I moved through QBasic, making video games for myself, then in college through Visual Basic and C++, as well as HTML, SQL, the text-adventure engine Squiffy, and game engines like RPG Maker, Game Maker, and Unreal Engine. As a lark, I learned ROM hacking enough to alter text and graphics in classic video games, and even, one summer, tried to learn Assembly Language. I was a programming tutor in college, and, after seeing the same problems crop up repeatedly, created a “Common Errors in Visual Basic” hand-out that got passed around by professors for a while. Now that I have nephews and nieces — six so far, ages 11-19 — I’ve been trying for several years now to get them interested enough in programming to actually work at it on their own steam, rather than by my prompting. I’ve gotten them to make little tiny starts on Game Maker, and two of them went to a robotics class that they really enjoyed. Now I’ve got a niece, age 11, and nephew, almost 14, working on Khan Academy’s “Hour of Code,” which teaches them the basics. My niece must have taken well to this activity, given that she just sits down next to me, as she is getting ready for bed, and offers up this cheerfully energetic advice:)

Niece: “You should learn how to code.”

Me: “…”

(While trying to get things settled with the lady at the desk, my three-year-old son is next to me, looking at a comments box that has five faces on it ranging from a big smile to a big frown.)

Son: “Daddy, what does this face mean?”

Me: *breaking a conversation to glance down* “What face?”

Son: “Oh! Really happy, really sad, kind of happy, kind of sad, what face!”

(He’s 17 now, and the whole family still calls the face with a straight mouth a “what face.”)