Miscellaneous Quotes
Stuff that was just plain weird to hear: typos, test answers, and funny things that didn't fit into any other category.
Typos
"Dinner and Bizarre"--Announcement in my church bulletin.
"Deadline: November 22th"--Poster at school.
"Bi-Laws"--Item on a committee agenda.
"Satan Claus."Online discussion (see it here).
Stuff people said in their sleep
"If it does, does it really have batteries?"--My sister, when she was 8 or 9.
One day, very early in the morning, my aunt went into my cousin's room to ask him where he had parked the car the night before. He was tired and wasn't responding, so she kept repeating the question. Finally, he looked around and blurted out, "I can't find it, Mom!"
Signs:
On a sign in front of a church in South St. Paul, MN, the service times are listed and the pastor is listed as Reverend Fallen.
"Feed your starving children to Eagan."--Actual sign seen in Eagan, MN (courtesy Melissa).
"TURN HERE SWEET CORN"--Sign advertising a vegetable stand.
"FOR RENT: CONDOM"--Poster on bulletin board at the local community college describing a condo, which someone else added the letter "M" to.
"IINFORMATION"--Sign posted to help new students on the first day of the new semester at the same school.
Duh:
"Wow, the steam's hot!"--Guy draining noodles for macaroni and cheese.
"What day is Cinco de Mayo?"--Somebody talking to my friend.
"Is it 99 cents for a leaf of cilantro?"--Friend's fiance, now husband.
"One of the things I want to do when we get to New York is see the Eiffel Tower."--Girl to her friend, planning their trip to NYC. She meant to say the Statue of Liberty.
On the first day of the school year, our first year at college:
Girl: "Hey! What are you doing here?" (said when she ran into a friend who she thought was going to go somewhere else for school).
Guy: "Um....going to college."
On the anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, at my dad's work:
My Dad: "Today is the 28th anniversary of the day the Edmund Fitzgerald sank."
Kid: "What's that?"
My Dad: "It's a ship that went down on Lake Superior in 1975."
Kid: "Oh, you mean the F. Scott Fitzgerald?"
One day at work, I was finishing up a customer's order and she handed me her credit card. I looked at it, and it had a nice picture of the the coast on it, with the ocean on the left of the card and the shore on the right. I asked her where it was a picture of, and she said she didn't know. I looked at it again and said, "Oh, it must be the Pacific Ocean, since the ocean is to the left of the shore." When she pointed out that it would also depend on the direction you were facing, I couldn't believe I had made such an idiot comment. (And she was so nice about it too.)
Fun Driving Antics
Beware, all these people are still out on the roads.
"Eat dust, you big SUV!"--My sister when doing behind-the-wheel with my mom.
"Look! I'm steering with my thumbs!"--A friend when he was driving me home.
"Let's see if we can get pulled over."--The same friend while flooring it.
"It's fun to fishtail! I've never had an accident."--Another friend.
"Oh, I forgot I had to drive!"--Friend, distracted by a bee that flew into the car.
"There's a big pile of rocks in your street. Let's go over it."--Still the same friend. He did too, with no apparent ill effects for the car.
"Why don't you learn to drive?"--Another driver (who was speeding) yelling at the Driver's Ed car with a student driver in it (who was carefully driving the speed limit).
One time my sister and I were driving down our street, and we saw a guy flooring it down his driveway. I looked over in that direction and said, "Ok, buddy, you don't need to drive quite that fast, the road's still going to be there!"
Test Answers and In-class quotations
"Yes! I passed!"--Numerous students after receiving D- on tests,
Question: "What is the most important muscle in the body?"
Answer: "The gluteus maximus." (The correct answer is the heart.)
From a pop quiz in our American history class, fall of 1998:
Question: "Who is the current governor of Minnesota?"
Answer: "Irony Carlson." (Correct spelling is Arne Carlson. The kid who gave this answer got half credit.)
Question: "Who shot Abraham Lincoln?"
Answer: "A theater-goer."(The correct answer is John Wilkes Booth.)
In my freshman year of high school, we read the poem Pheasant, by Sylvia Plath. One of the phrases in the poem is "through crosshatch of sparrow and starling." Our teacher, going through many classes with the same subject, sometimes highlighted certain phrases and words to one class and forgot to cover it with others. He defined the word crosshatch as a criss-cross pattern to his other classes and forgot to cover it with ours. On the day of the exam, I came across this question: "Define crosshatch." The poem in its entirety was on the exam so we could read through it, so I did and tried to figure out what the definition was based on its use in the poem, and came up with this gem: "A cross between two kinds of birds." (The teacher thought it was funny.)
Question: The people who discovered DNA were ________
Answer: "Scientists." This was another of my fabulously brilliant thoughts.
"Dr. Bob and Dr. Joe."--Another kid's answer to the same question.
"Siskel and Ebert."--Yet another creative answer to the question. Apparently, none of us paid attention during this part.
"See that little box with the notes in it? That's the measure."--Class voice teacher.
"It takes place on an island, and there are some nurses and some sailors."--Girl in my American music class, describing the musical South Pacific.
"I know who the 13th president was! Willard Fillmore!"--My 12 year old sister, referring to Millard Fillmore.
"George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jeffrey..."--My sister, reciting the names of the Presidents in order.
During a high school music class, where we studied sight reading:
Teacher: "What page in the text are we on?"
Student: "The last one!"
In physical science class while learning about motion:
Teacher: "What is speed?"
Student: "A drug!"
In my sister's geometry class:
Teacher: "These angles are--" (referring to a problem where the anwer choices were circumscribed or prescribed)
Student: "Circumcised!"
While playing trivia in American history:
Teacher: "Who wrote the national anthem?"
Girl in class: "F. Scott Fitzgerald."
The correct answer is Francis Scott Key (who, incidentally, Fitzgerald was named after.)
When we studied spirituals in my American music class:
Me: "Who in the world is Jeremiah anyway?"
Guy in class: "Wasn't it Jeremiah and the battle of Jericho?"
Before prayer in my sister's religion class one day, after an incident between the teacher and one of the students:
Teacher: "Does anyone have any prayer intentions?"
Student: "For all the people in the class, except for you."
During a discussion about nutrition in home ec class:
Teacher: "What food group are eggs in?"
Me: "Dairy."
Teacher: No, eggs aren't in the dairy group.
Me: "Oh. Well, they're in the dairy department."
In high school, there was a kid in my class named whose last name was Gaughan (pronounced gone). During freshman year, he was in my religion class, and the teacher kept pronouncing it Gowgan, despite repeated corrections. One day while taking attendance, he once again said Gowgan, and the entire class yelled out, "GONE!" (the proper pronunciation) So the teacher started to mark the kid as absent.
In my junior year of high school, we studied Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Often for an assignment, our teacher would have us pick out a line of one of the works we had discussed and illustrate it. One kid illustrated Thoreau's line "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity," by writing the words down in large black letters on plain white paper. For the Emerson quote "Flowers are always a good gift," he drew a picture of a florist truck driving down the street. We all got a kick out of his drawings!
Quotes from Freshman History/Geography:
Question: "Any of you know who John Dillinger was?"
Me: "He was a gang member." (He was actually a gangster.)
"I have my own theory on how the pyramids were built. I think aliens built them."--Freshman geography/history teacher.
"The next time you drop that pen, we're all going to pick you up and drop you out the window!"--Teacher again. For some reason, he absolutely hated it whenever someone dropped a pen or a pencil.
"The next time I catch you sleeping in class, I'm going to take my white-out and draw alien symbols in your hair."--Once again my freshman history/geography teacher, this time speaking to me.
When I was a freshman in high school taking world history (again, taught by the teacher who thought aliens built the pyramids), we learned about ancient Greek architecture, which included thee types of columns: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. As a mnenomic device, he told us, "Doric is the simplest type of column, and it sounds like dork, a simple silly person. Remember it like that." When we took the test, some people actually wrote "dork" for their answer.
Another incident in freshman history/geography, this time involving our final exam for the first semester: Our teacher had been telling us for weeks that the exam would be worht fifty points and would be three to five pages long. When the day drew near, he reminded us that the exam was worth fifty. One girl looked up, her eyes wide, and said, "Fifty pages?"