Visited NY and went to the WTC site with a (now ex) GF a couple of years after 9/11 (before the memorial stuff started getting built so it was a just an empty building site), she turned to me and (loud enough for everyone around us to hear) said “there’s not much to look at is there?”, I wanted to back away and pretend she wasn’t with me…

On the first day of college the students we were all invited to introduce ourselves.
The lecturer asks one student what she liked doing in her free time.
Riding horses was the reply.
Anything else? was the follow on question.
After a couple of seconds the slightly embarrassed girl replied, no! just horses. 😳

Impromptu maths lesson with Mrs MTG’s 13 year old daughter this morning;

Me, “What’s the square root of 16 ?”
Daughter, “Er…2 ?”
Me, “No, it’s 4”
Mrs MTG, “Think about it. A square’s got four sides, so to find the square root of something, you divide it by four”

Not so much stupid things you have said as stupid things you have done on the work computer.

My old secretary was Dutch and bonkers. Her English was great with a good breadth of slang and swearing but the occasional word had slipped her by. We were having a discussion about furry Russian style handwarmers. We referred to them by another name. She burst out into giggles. We said – yes, they really are called that, let’s find a photo on the internet.

“Muff photos” is probably not the best thing to type into a search engine at work…

I was stood next to my bike waiting for my mate to arrive when father and late teen son MTBers stopped nearby. The son came over an started to ask me about SPDs, after I sang their praise the son said ‘maybe I’ll try one for this foot’ (his left foot). ‘It’s not that hard, use both, you’ll be fine’ I replied. ‘No I can only use one’ he replied and for a few minutes or so we bounced backwards and forwards with me saying just do and him saying he couldn’t. Whilst discussing I saw that his dad was getting increasing agitated and my mate (who had now arrived) was giving me strange looks. Then I noticed the son’s false leg 😳

Another time I was walking by a canal lock with a girl I had just started seeing. Lock was filling up but we weren’t at the edge so couldn’t see the water. I asked the girl if she had heard about the recent tragic accident where a canal boat had sunk in a lock and the disabled children on board had drown. I then turned to see a canal boat with several wheelchair occupants on board slowly rising in the lock. What are the chances ❗

At an international telecoms conference in Cannes (back in Telecoms boom time) sat at lunchtime with a table full of mixed nationalities. Chatting quite loudly to the German guy opposite me I asked if he’d even been to the UK. He replied yes he’d been to Coventry on a training course, I then said bit of a dump isn’t it, he said yes, I then said well we know who’s fault that is. Talk about silence in the cafe..

Russell96’s post reminded me of a pair colleagues who in a last minute panic to think of something to wear for the aviation themed xmas do made hats with the Coventry and Dresden skylines (they both had a WW2 obsession).
At the party the CEO had a tradition of going round asking people about their fancy dress. Unfortunately that year he was accompanied by the the German MD 😯 The first day back in the new year my colleague got called in for a chat.

“Muff photos” is probably not the best thing to type into a search engine at work…

Years ago, I’d been campaigning to get this new “internet” thing set up for our tech support desk as a research tool. After a couple of weeks of me hassling them, the MD dropped by my desk unannounced with a couple of board members in tow, and demanded a demo.

Off the cuff, I explained what a web browser was and how you could type company names into the address bar (this was long before google) with the www. and .com bits, eg http://www.ford.com. (EDIT – STW appends the http bits here <– please ignore.) “For instance, we’re having issues with our DTK motherboards at the moment,” says I, “let’s see if they’ve got a website.”

So I typed in http://www.dtk.com and, at 64kbps ISDN speeds, the web page slowly unfurled for the Dressed To Kill fetishware and bondage site.

There’s silence for a beat, and then the MD said quietly, “Yes. I don’t think we’ll be getting that.”

I recently met Ellie Simmons at the opening of a swimming pool. A colleague was going around telling everyone how “down to earth” she was.

In the curry house one night my mate asked for a “chicken tikka banana”. He was informed they had no bananas but he could have a bhuna instead.
We remind him every time we’re out for a curry.

My mate was with his little girl in a shop when a dwarf comes in, she turns to her dad and asks why the little boy has a big head.

Couple of Not me Buts-

Lad on the phone at work trying to do the phonetic alphabet says “E for ‘elicopter.” Oh how we laughed.

A friend went to see The Lion King musical with his missus and at work the next day his boss asks what it was like, me mate gives it “Well, it was all a bit gay really.” His boss is gay, my mate knows this, has done for 2 years. And it was the day he was having his yearly review. Whoops.

Abstract
Although discordant karyotypes are known in identical twins, cases involving differences in sex phenotype are rare. We studied identical twins with the 46,XY karyotype – a male with mixed gonadal dysgenesis and a female with “pure” gonadal dysgenesis. The testis-determining SRY gene was present in DNA from both twins but no mutations were detected in the SRY conserved motif. Monozygosity was indicated by short tandem repeat polymorphism analysis. These observations could be attributed to (i) mutation and mosaicism involving “downstream” sex-determining loci, (ii) variable penetrance of genes such as DSS/NR0B1, duplication of which can disrupt the male-determining pathway, or (iii) occurrence of cryptic 45,X gonadal cell lines

#
That rather spoils my story. I was pushing my twins 6 months old, round Sainsbury’s, probably feeling a bit grumpy as we were accosted virtually every five minutes by little old ladies cooing over the cute little blondies.
Littel old lady “Are they twins?”
Me “Yes.”
LoL “What do you call them?”
Me “James and Emily.”
LoL “Are they identical?”
Me “No, James has a penis, Emily doesn’t”
Mrs Scape “Come on, we need bread.”

A police officer friend of mine tells the tale when he was being taught the job by his tutor they went to a house where an elderly brother and sister lived together. The brother had died in an armchair watching TV.

Tutor “How old was your brother?”
Bereaved Sister “He was eighty six”
Tutor, looking at the body in the armchair “By ‘eck, looks well for eighty six doesn’t he!”

Yesterday, Christmas shopping, in Waterstones. A lady steps away from the till to try and find her loyalty card- I notice she’s got no hands, both arms end just above the wrist. But she seems really indepedant and capable so I figure she’s got this covered.

A minute or so later, she drops the wallet on the floor… So I think, time to offer to help.

“DO YOU NEED A HAND THERE?”

Northwind I have got to hand you that one 😉

Years ago on a night out i’d spent my taxi money and had to walk the 10 or so miles home in just a shirt and trousers. In the middle of nowhere a taxi driver stopped, said they were going my way and offered a free lift. The guy had long blonde hair and for some bizarre reason I said “thanks LOVE” as I opened the door, he though I thought he was a woman and got really offended. Needless to say I walked the rest of the way.

To a colleague at work:

“Can you answer my phone for me if it rings?”

Shortly followed by remembering that said colleague is profoundly deaf.

Website one here…

Work at an outdoor shop in Manchester. We were curious to see what Blacks were selling, and at what price, to keep up with competition.

So I typed in what I thought was the Blacks website, it turned out to be a ebony porn site. My manager said to me, “well they’re giving it away for free. We can’t justify that. Incidentally, maybe Google is best to find websites from now on.”

I also said when I was younger, “if you can’t hear the music, then listen louder.” I don’t think my family has ever laughed so hard. 14 years later they are still crying when we mention it…

she turns to her dad and asks why the little boy has a big head.

He’s not big but he is clever?

A couple in sainsbury’s – the guy picked up a feminine hygiene product and called over (very loudly) to his girlfriend (who was stood 3 or 4 meters away)
“here, why don’t you get some of this for your smelly fanny?”
cue me burst out laughing to her horrified face 😀

edit- double post!

Following the maths incident on the previous page…

Mrs MTG’s daughter has been writing lists of what she wants to buy with her xmas money.
I found one headed;
“Things to get”, followed by;
“One Direction album £10”
“Next shirt £15”
and so on, so I added on the bottom “Maths O level, free”.

She found my alteration and demanded to know “What’s a maths zero level”.