Articles in “Strange Conversations”

It’s all summed up in this slightly embellished conversation:

ME: Now, your next piece of assessment is released tomorrow. No, it’s not. That was a total lie. It’s released next Tuesday.
STUDENTS: Yeah.
ME: I was getting my T-days missed up.
STUDENTS: Tomorrow is an F-day.
ME: Is it? Is today Thursday?
STUDENTS: Yes.
ME: Did we have a public holiday this week?
STUDENTS: Yep.
ME: Well, it’s still being released next Tuesday.

Still, at least I was in the correct class and teaching the correct material.

My mother informs me that she’s planning on becoming a Jewish mother as a hobby. I suggested that, since she’s already a Catholic mother, she didn’t really need to pile on any more guilt.

Then she sent me this e-mail:

Was going to ring last evening to see if you were okay as I didn’t get
a response to my e-mail which is very unusual.
Love,
Mum
P.S. If I don’t get a response to this one I will contact emergency
services.

(The original e-mail, I might add, was a request for help with the crossword, and I didn’t know the answer.)

I didn’t learn my lesson, clearly, because yesterday brought this e-mail:

Are you alive and well? I’m concerned as I did not receive a response
to the e-mail I sent yesterday. Correction, I did receive a response
from your sister.
Love,
Mum

And then she suggested that I post them on the blog. She’s hungry for a wider audience, I think.

Nick does the laundry, after some prodding:

ME: Honey . . .
NICK: You are quite right. I leap into action, like the action man I am.
ME: You’re not an action man.
NICK: I am too an action man!
ME: For a start, action men don’t whinge like that.
NICK: There are lots of action men in Aliens, and they whinge all the god-damn time.
(Pause)
ME: All right, that is a fair point.
NICK: Woo hoo!

Trying to decipher Australian Crawl lyrics—always a pointless task:

ME: Knocking on rum balls?
NICK: Maybe.
ME: Oh! Knocking on wrong doors.
NICK: Rundor.
ME: Who?
NICK: Rundor the Repulsive.
ME: Is that a real person?
NICK: I don’t know.
ME: Well, did you make him up just then?
NICK: Oh. Yes.
ME: Then why didn’t you say he wasn’t real?
NICK: I didn’t like to draw conclusions.

Is this how all relationships work?

ME: I mean, if we’d moved in together in our 30s, you would probably have left me, because I’m horrible.
NICK: True.
ME: But we were young, and you put up with me, and I got better.
NICK: You have got a lot better.
(Pause)
ME: I don’t like you.
NICK: I’m going to blow my nose.

We only have these conversations when I’m marking.

ME: Would you say “Count both Nick and me in” or “Count both Nick and I in”?
NICK: “Count us both in.”
ME: I was asking a specific question.
NICK: Oh. “Count both Nick and . . . me in?”
ME: Perfectly correct.
NICK: Ah, I see. You were testing me.
ME: And the reason we use the objective pronoun case is . . . ?
NICK: You give me a biscuit?

Talking Wii Fit. Again.

ME: How was your age and your weight?
NICK: Actually, down a bit.
ME: How much?
NICK: 0.4 of a kilo.
ME: That’s the same amount of weight as I gained. This can’t be a coincidence.
NICK: Why can’t it?
ME: You’re stealing my weight loss! You transferred 0.4 kilos of your weight to me as I slept!
NICK: That’s so gross.
ME: Why?
NICK: Well, how would I do that?
ME: Black magic.
NICK: Oh. Well, that’s okay, then.

In which we discuss rain:

ME: It’s stotting down.
NICK: Ken Stott -ing.
ME: No.
NICK: I think it is.
ME: No.
NICK: It’s solid and dour.
ME: No.

Discussing my rain photographs from earlier today:

ME: I also took this picture.

ME: But I didn’t post it.
NICK: But that’s great!
ME: Really? I thought it sucked.
NICK: It looks like a Krynoid is trying to eat the house. It’s awesome.
ME: Krynoids eating the house is not awesome.
NICK: No. But when it looks like they’re going to eat the house and they don’t? That’s awesome.

My best friend has just sent me this conversation, which she had with her elder son (whom I call my nephew):

ELDER NEPHEW: Do you know why Auntie Treena loves the colour blue?
BEST FRIEND: No. Why?
ELDER NEPHEW: ‘Cause it’s the colour of the sonic screwdriver.

Makes me proud to think I was the one to buy him his first sonic screwdriver.

In which I fret about whether to put a cardigan on over a strappy dress.

NICK: I think you’re looking better than you have for ages.
ME: Gee, thanks.
NICK: What?
ME: “I think you’re looking better than you have for ages”?
NICK: It’s a compliment! I think you’re substantially improved!

NICK: I’m going to eat a chocolate bunny and play video games.
ME: We don’t have any chocolate bunnies.
NICK: “Chocolate bunny” is more of a metaphor.
ME: No, it’s not.
NICK: Bugger. Well, I’ll just have to have something else.
ME: You can have a chocolate egg. We have chocolate eggs coming out the wazoo. And that is a metaphor.

Checking out the blisters where Nick burnt himself with a splatter of hot oil:

NICK: And there was a packet of tomatoes next to the stove, and I noticed the packaging had been burnt through by splatter.
ME: Well, that’s why you shouldn’t cook without a shirt on. Also, your pans are too hot.
NICK: My what?
ME: Pans.
NICK: Oh, pans. I thought you said my pants were too hot.
ME: No, your pants aren’t too hot.
NICK: Really? Oh.
ME (sighing): They’re exactly hot enough.
NICK: Woohoo!

Debating the lack of coffee:

ME: Whose fault was that, then? Hmm?
NICK: Society.
ME: The society of Nick.
NICK: Well, that is my definition of society, yes.

Early morning IM strange conversation:

ME: Oooh, toast is ready! Bye!
NICK: Oh, of course. Oh wait!
ME: Quick! Toast is going cold!
NICK: We’ve now got 60 gig a month for no more cost from Internode!
ME: That is not urgent!
NICK: Sorry! Bye!
ME: My toast went cold for that?!
NICK: Bye!

You’ve got to admire his desperate attempts to leave the conversation at the end. Well, admire or pity them, I suppose.

(A brief apology: Things have been ever so slightly completely and utterly insane here, culminating in a pile of 93 first-year 500-word blog posts with a five-day marking turnaround and two other equally urgent deadlines, all coming due, oh, now. So the blog has suffered, I’m afraid. But do not abandon me, gentle readers! Not even if you find being called “gentle reader” horribly patronising! I’ll be back into my usual routine in no time—plus, there’s Doctor Who soon. Very soon. You wouldn’t abandon The Circulating Library just before the Eleventh Doctor appears, would you?)