I’m in the car with my cousin and her friend, and “Banana Pancakes” by Jack Johnson comes on.

Me: I like this song.

Cousin: I love this man. I would love him even if he murdered someone. You have to have made him pretty mad for him to murder you.

Me: you’re a little weirdo. I mean, I like him, but I would NOT support him if he murdered someone!

Cousin: I would! You’d have to be a horrible person for him to do it.

Me: Most murderers are desperate.

<i>Many years ago, I took a job coordinating all of the emergency preparedness activities for our county health department. My responsibilities covered everything from terrorist attacks to mumps outbreaks. One afternoon the chief nurse from the Immunization Clinic approached me. </i>

Immunization clinic RN: Does Emergency Prep have any booties?

Me: You mean the little blue disposable footy-things?

Immunization clinic RN: Yeah.

Me: I’m afraid not. What do you need them for?

Immunization clinic RN <i>(grimly</i>: This is one of those “you don’t want to know” situations.

<i>I never did learn why she wanted them!</i>

(I just got hired to work as a janitor for a very large building, full of offices. There’s a young male that’s new too. We’re a team of about 10 janitors, and have 4 hours to clean top to bottom. A lot of the times, we don’t finish in time because the office is so dirty. One day, my boss buys us a pizza as thanks, which I partake. The male’s face sours at the sight.)

Male: “I don’t want pizza!! I just wanna get to work!”

Boss: “Okaaay…”

(He goes off to work while we eat. The other workers, who are female, eye me like I’m nuts. I think they expected the male to eat pizza not a skinny female. Later I saw the young male looking thunderous running around the building bizarrely, thrusting and thrashing his fists. It was too weird for me and I quit soon after. I still don’t know why he’d get so upset over free pizza!)

(This happened when I was a newbie driver. I was with my mother, waiting to turn left. My light is yield to traffic. It was dusk so everyone had their lights on. Or so I thought. I saw the way was clear so i started turning…almost right into this car with its lights off! The car was the same color as the road too. At the last moment I saw him and stopped, blowing my horn. Mr. Invisible didnt even look. Had I hit him, my mom could’ve been seriously injured or killed.

I’m grousing to Mom about Mr. I, and she’s trying to calm me. The way is clear now, but I’m too scared. What if there’s another? The light turns to red. I’m stuck there in the middle of the intersection, flipping out, and mom tells me to reverse back so the cars can go through. I try but theres another car behind me. Cars do go by, barely, and people look over at me like I’m crazy. Its so embarrassing.
Mom tells me it’s ok, and too not be angry, but I am. Now more than a decade has gone, and I’ve seen drivers do all kinds of crazy things and I’m more meh about it. Still, I was lucky a cop wasn’t there or he would’ve pulled me over and not cared about Mr. I and given me a ticket. )

My high school is beginning work on a production of one of my favorite musicals. We’re having a sing-along before auditions. Because this is a religious school, we understand that the original script and lyrics are going to be scrubbed a little for bad language, but most of it isn’t that bad and we’ve all heard worse. One of the directors is playing an electronic keyboard.

Us: *singing* “Once we’ve begun, as we stand as one, someday becomes somehow! And a prayer becomes a vow!”

Director: *stops playing piano*

Three students: *still singing* “AND THE STRIKE STARTS RIGHT DAAAAAA—”

Director: “THAT’S OKAY! THAT’S ENOUGH!”

The end result had enough changed lines and lyrics to frustrate a number of us, but at least those three fought for their right to some very minor cursing!