Several months ago, my Spanish teacher was setting up a Kahoot game for my class. I had a habit of getting creative with my usernames instead of using my actual name, which most of my classmates did. This time I used my chosen Spanish name from my first year of Spanish classes, which was Neva. When the name popped up on the roster, however, my teacher spoke up.

Teacher: “Who’s ‘Neva’?”

Me: *nervously raises hand*

Teacher: “[My name]? You’re Neva?”

Me: *still nervous* “Yeah.”

Teacher: “Where did you get that name?”

Me: “I chose it for Spanish 1 last year.”

Teacher: “Ah. I asked because that’s also my mom’s name.”

Now, whenever I think of my beloved Spanish name, I remember that it was also the name of my teacher’s mother. She even asked me after class where I’d found the name because it was so rare!

When I was sixteen, I went on a four-day trip with my high school orchestra and band to Nashville, Tennessee. It was amazing, but this is the story I told first when I got home to Michigan.

The buses had stopped somewhere in Kentucky so everyone could eat lunch. One of my friends and I finished our food long before we had to return to the bus, so we decided to check out the gas station down the road. She bought some candy while looked around for a souvenir. I found a small trinket and brought it to the counter to pay. The cashier had spoken perfect English with my friend earlier, so I was not expecting his greeting when I approached.

Cashier: *in Spanish* “Hello! How are you?”

Me: *also in Spanish* “I’m tired. And you?”

Cashier: *in English* “Oh s***!”

We both laughed and I reassured him that I did in fact speak English, and I was learning Spanish as a second language. Even the other gas station worker in the back who heard the exchange started laughing!

My boss told me that she once knocked on a guest’s door and he decided to open the door naked.

Without missing a beat, my boss simply glanced down, laughed, and said, “Not impressed.”

I just had a bad experience with the lift when a rep completely screwed up my schedule and put me down for an hour later than I asked her to, changed the story multiple times, and then argued with me about it. I was in a bad mood by the time the cab driver showed up an hour and fifteen minutes late.

Cab Driver: Sorry for the delay.

Me: I don’t blame you, I blame her.

Cab Driver: Who?

Me: (Horrible representative.)

(I then explained what happened.”

Cab driver: I have never…I had no idea.

(He picks up two more people, an elderly woman from the rehab facility and an extremely elderly man at the hospital.)

Cab Driver: (points to his radio) This is the TARDIS. It’s a time machine.

Me: Are you Doctor Who?

Cab Driver: Who?

Elderly Woman: You’re funny!

Cab Driver: You’re clearly not a Whoevria. You don’t scream Trekkie…you’re pale, and it’s the middle of summer, and you’re not very freckled…you spend a lot of time in the library…I’m at a loss.

Me: I’ll give you a hint: Harry Potter.

Cab Driver: Did you know they’re coming out with a new series about Harry Potter?

Me: There’s also rumors of a new Twilight movie.

Cab Driver: Are you a Twilight fan?

Me: Yes.

This begins a long and entertaining fifteen minutes of discussing different vampire fandoms and the genre in general. I admit that Twilight does not portray the healthiest relationships, and the cab driver says that neither does Interview With the Vampire. We talk about Dracula, Dark Shadows, and other vampire media.

Talking about one of my favorite subjects made me feel a lot better.

(When this happened I had taken up Geography as there was no other subject in that slot that I could have managed to start from scratch after three years. We also got a number of new, freshly-qualified teachers – including this one. Sadly she had no control and our year, which was regarded as being one of the least problematic, even acted up under her watch. My fondest memory would happen quite often – – we’d be in the middle of “work”, or half-heartedly working while talking among ourselves…)

Student 1: *singing* “All the leaves are brown..”

Everyone else: “ALL THE LEAVES ARE BROWWWWN!!!”

Student 1: “And the sky is grey..”

Everyone: “AND THE SKY IS GREEEEEEEYYY!!!”

(Very few of us knew much more of the song and she’d usually bellow at us to get back to work by that point, but it was fun to have about eighteen sixteen-year-olds randomly trying to harmonise California Dreaming in a semi-rural Irish secondary school. I dropped the class for a “study period”/morning and afternoon off the following year..)