CONTENT WARNING: Adult Content

I used to coach girls’ cross country (middle distance racing) for a small high school (ages fourteen to eighteen). On one occasion, we had a meet far enough away that we left the day before and stayed the night in a hotel. It was far from swanky, but it was clean and secure, and the team would get a good night’s sleep before race day. After getting dinner and making sure everyone knew the plan for the next day, the athletes went to their assigned rooms and I to mine.

A bit later that night, I discovered how sheltered some of the athletes were, despite being nearly adults.

A group of athletes knocked on my door.

Athletes: “Coach?”

Me: “Is everything okay?”

Athletes: “We think our room is haunted.”

I was confused enough to wonder if I was still asleep and dreaming.

Me: “Uh… why?”

Athletes: “There are moaning sounds in our room.”

Me: “I’m positive it’s not a ghost.”

Athletes: “The sounds are weird, and we’re nervous.”

Me: “Okay, let’s go check it out.”

We walked a few doors down to their room and went inside. I did hear sounds… coming from the next room, which held none of our athletes.

Me: “It’s not a ghost.”

Athletes: “What is it?!”

Me: *Trying to be delicate* “Some people might find this hotel romantic.”

They were quiet for a moment, and then they broke out in giggles at the thought of a couple finding the dumpy hotel romantic.

I neglected to mention that the sounds appeared to be coming from the bathroom area of the other room, and that maybe just one person was making the noises…

In one of my higher-level computer classes, our professor assigned three problems out of our textbook. They were at the end of chapter 11: problems 21, 22, and 23. The format the book’s author chose to label their problems was chapter number, dash, and then problem number.

So, when my professor wrote the assignment on the board, he simply wrote, “Do the following problems: 11-21, 11-22, and 11-23.”

At the end of class, I came up to his desk with a notebook sheet with my name, date, and the answers to the problems. I had simply written: “-10, -11, -12”

He laughed. I still had to do the real problems.

Back when I was still in the early days of studying for my architecture degree, my year head was a real jerk. Full of his own self-importance and ready to bully students at the slightest provocation, he was best avoided at all costs. As part of one project for which I was unfortunate enough to have him as a tutor, my group had to do a study of an architecturally unique house that he assigned to us.

The one thing my group and I struggled to understand was how the structure of the building worked since there were very few walls. After reluctantly asking for help, we were told:

Tutor: “This is incredibly simple. How can you not understand it? I’m not here to do the work for you.”

And with that, he walked off. We put our heads together and really tried to figure it out but simply couldn’t. We tried asking for help again a few days later but got the same sort of response. After that, we went to our structural engineering lecturer to ask for her help, and while she got us much closer to an understanding, she wasn’t completely sure how it worked either, though she gave us her best guess.

Following that, we approached the tutor for a final time, telling him that even our structural engineering lecturer had struggled to understand and explain it, telling him what she had told us.

Tutor: “It’s so simple! Fine, I’ll show you how it works… It’s, uh… The floor cantilevers out by… Umm…”

After several minutes of stunted explanation and sketching diagrams, he was forced to, very reluctantly, admit that he had set something that he didn’t understand properly how it worked either. This didn’t stop him from telling us to just work it out ourselves, though. Luckily, our structural engineering lecturer was able to help us, and in the end, we got the project finished and presented our study, to which the tutor responded:

Tutor: “Of course that’s how the structure works. I told you!”

When I was in second grade, my class had a game that we would play periodically to learn words and spelling. It was a variation of those word games that have become popular on phones where you get a series of letters and have to make words from them, except that instead of just finding words at random, the teacher would give us verbal clues for specific words and we had to try to figure out the specific word (since the idea was to actually teach us to understand the words). The final word would use all the letters.

One day, the letters were “ABEKSST”. We’d made a series of words, and now it was time for the final word.

Teacher: “Okay, so for our final word, it’s something you might use to hold or carry things.”

We looked at our letters, but no one could figure it out, so she had to give us another clue. (It’s probably obvious to a lot of readers by now, but keep in mind that this was a group of seven- and eight-year-olds.)

Teacher: “They can also be something you get on a holiday. Like for Easter or—”

At that point, she realized she was about to say something she wasn’t sure of. Not wanting to say something inaccurate, she turned to me, one of only two Jewish kids in the class.

Teacher: “[My Name], do Jewish kids get Passover baskets?”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she facepalmed, realizing what she had just done. The entire class burst out laughing, and after a moment, so did she. Once the laughter had died down, I politely replied that no, Jews don’t have that particular tradition. By that point, we’d all miraculously managed to figure out the word.

I work as a counselor at an after-school program. These particular kids are six to eight years old. An ad for the new “Wicked” movie shows up before the video we are about to watch.

Kid #1: “That’s The Wizard Of Oz!”

Kid #2: “That’s not The Wizard Of Oz; that’s Wicked. Wicked came out today. But The Wizard Of Oz is super old — like, it came out in 1989.”