If I’m somewhere where there are Educational Personell (Museum Docents, Q&A zookeepers, Park Rangers, Public School Teachers, Professors etc.) I have a question I like to ask them:
“What’s the weirdest question someone’s ever asked you?”
I say weird and not Dumb becuase even buckwild questions can have important answers, but whoever I ask it too usually has to think about it for a bit, then comes out with something different every time. And I love every single answer becuase it just warms my heart out there to know people are trying to understand the world a bit better, no matter how limited thier starting point. A collection of favorites so far:
Art Museum Host: “A man once asked me “Can you help me find someone and if you can’t can you find someone who can?” Which I always thought would be a great title for an Artwork.”
Park Ranger: “I’m so glad the Japanese couple asked me “Is bear spray like mosquito spray and it goes on the jacket, or on the bear?” instead of just trying it.”
Zookeeper: “A man once pointed at the live red-tailed hawk I had out for a demo and asked me “Aren’t those extinct?” We eventually figured out he meant “Endangered” but I hear that question every time I see a redtail now.”
Primary School Teacher: “About every other year a student asks me what part of the school I sleep in at night, because clearly I live here. I tell them I sleep under the bleachers in the gym but it’s actually the Nurse’s office.”
Professor: “A student asked me “So how do I use this in a conversation when my aunt is wine-drunk at thanksgiving and being a jerk again?” Which honestly is a fair question about philosophy and really changed how I teach rhetoric.”
Natural History Docent: “A woman once asked me what the difference between a Million and a Billion was. Kinda pieced together that she’d just left her church for her safety, and was learning about Earth’s Natural History for the first time. Nobody else was there because it had been snowing, so I walked her through the Hall Of Time and answered as many questions as I could. She was bewildered, but really trying. It always struck me as a really brave thing, to try to understand all of that while fresh out of a dangerous situation. I hope it helped.”
Forensic Scientist: “People ask me how to commit murder all the time, but if you really hate someone, stealing thier identity causes much more suffering and is a lot harder to get caught at. A guy did ask me if working at a body farm was creepy and did not like that it was ok until you learned that decayed human fingers are a deer’s favorite midwinter snack.”
Zookeeper: “People call us becuase they think they’ve found an escaped animal all the time, or they think they’re neighbor’s husky is a wolf. One guy asked me if his dog was part hyena because it had spots. But that one guy really did have a Tiger in his toolshed that one time so we try to take them seriously.”
Meteorologist: “A guy once emailed me about how hard you’d have to fan a tornado to make it start spinning in the other direction and included a picture of him holding up a box fan at an approaching tornado. We printed it out for the work fridge.”
Park Ranger: “I was giving a talk on the Yellowstone Supervolcano and a guy asked if, after it errupted, the earth would be ‘hollowed out’. I suppose I was just relieved that he understand that the earth isn’t flat.”
Primarcy Shcool teacher: “A student once asked me where she could sell her bones online so she could by a dog. Which? Same.”
Natural History Docent: “A guy asked us ‘If I had a time machine, and managed to kill and cook a T-Rex, what would it have tasted like?’ and every paleontologist on staff deciced to take him seriously. They did research to learn about fat distribution, and read up on culinary science to learn what flavors meat, even did chemical analysis on the bones. They concluded that it’d be Tough (no evidence of juicy fat pockets), bitter (carnivores tend to taste foul) and would probably kill him, because heavy metals travel up the food chain and T-Rex accumulated a lot of the cadmium that was in the dirt in the late cretaceous. Wrote him a letter with our findings and he sent us back a drawing of him and his buddies cooking a T-Rex over a fire and all of them throwing up and dying, and it’s my favorite drawing in the whole world.”
thinkin about a baby of my acquaintance & how when her parents are hanging out & chatting, she’ll almost fully participate in the conversation–politely watching who’s talking, saying something approx the same length & tone of what her parents are saying, occasionally using a questioning cadence & looking at someone specific for an answer, laughing when they laugh–doing everything except actually using any recognizable language
this baby also once tipped me a granola bar at work. she’d been watching everyone in line very closely & when it was her parent’s turn, at exactly the right point in the transaction for a tip, she pickpocketed her mom’s granola bar & shoved it in the tip har
Do other countries not do this kind of cross-country race? Seems Perth to Brisbane would be an interesting run. Or in Europe, Lisbon in Portugal to Tallinn in Estonia? Or I dunno, Sao Paulo to Belem in Brazil?
Maybe it’s just Americans who are that addicted to cars.
There’s cameras and speed limits everywhere. You’d be able to buy Lichtenstein with the amount of fines you’ll have to pay after a run like that
That’s true in the US as well. A cannonball run takes weeks of prep work and usually an entire team of people to map out an ideal route that sticks to mostly rural areas, dodges cameras and law enforcement, and avoids traffic. There are places the team has set up to refuel, and alternate routes in case the first route develops a sudden case of cops.
I so badly want to do this. What better time than during Quarantine2020?
Qurarantine is why the Cannon Ball Run Sea-to-Shining Sea record was broken seven times by the time this article had been written.
Brock Yates may be dead, but he’s having a pretty good 2020.
I want to make Star Wars Kessel Run jokes so badly here.
The SBNATION podcast IT SEEMED SMART had a good episode about this although it was pre quarantine times
Fun fact: the reason wearing seatbelts became common in the US was because kids were trained to in school, and would constantly bug their parents to wear their own seatbelts. In my mom’s words, everyone was shamed by little children into behaving safely.
This is how I got my mom to quit smoking,,, by annoying the everloving shit oughta her at age 7
My 8 year old looked at a man in the airport (when I had to fly her to her Dad’s for the summer) and the sass came out in 3 ways.
First: She would constantly ask why someone wasn’t wearing a mask, loudly. “It’s not like it’s hard.”
Second: Standing in line to get food she noticed ome guy behind us wasn’t adhering to the 6 feet guidelines. She turned to him. “Six feet please.” He was so surprised he stepped back automatically. But then glared at me as I shrugged. “Rules are rules dude. She did say please.”
Third: A woman sneezed on the other side of the terminal waiting area. She was joined by a couple other kids for this one. “If you cough or sneeze, use your elbow please.” Honestly half of us were trembling to keep in the laughter and the others were just shocked to hear kids speak up like that.
hearing a five year old yell across the yard that the neighbors were having a party and “its illegal!” is hysterical.
aka Asbestos! It heals lung cancer! heals it from 0HP to full health! it causes cancer do not touch do not lick
okay but this is a cool danger rock, it’s a physical carcinogen. As in, it doesn’t poison you into having cancer, it just has little needle-y bits that LITERALLY STIR UP your DNA and break it, and when the cells try to repair their DNA they get it wrong and you get cancer
2. Torbenite
A super pretty danger rock! it’s a uranium ore and releases radon gas for Extra Poison!
3. Hutchinsonite - (Tl,Pb)2As5S9
This danger rock has it all! Lead! arsenic! Thallium! All super toxic! Will legit kill you
seriously don’t lick this one, i’m looking at you, fellow geologists
thallium doesn’t taste like anything so you’re not even getting data, just poisoned
4. Cinnabar (Mercury sulfide)
Can be a very pretty red color! so it was used to make paint. The paint was super toxic.
In addition to being dangerous to your health, it’s also morally dangerous! someone had to mine it (v dangerous) so even owning it feels unethical
5. Stibnite (Antimony sulfide)
people used to make spoons and makeup and shit out of this, the spoons poisoned people who ate with them. It’s kinda pretty but not worth dying over
6. Orpiment (an arsenic sulfide)
Look how pretty it is!!
“Incorrect handling” WILL poison you, that’s fucking arsenic
Honorable mentions:
Malachite, if eaten or… you know ;) (warning: nsfw, THat Post) Galena (lead sulfide), don’t eat it or break the rock and you’ll probably be ok, the dust is the main danger
