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Humor Column

By Barbara McLay, University of South Florida

Sometimes You Have to Laugh

When I was an undergrad at USF, you either had to pass a swimming test, swimming the length and back in an Olympic-size pool, or take a PE swimming course and learn four strokes. I could barely dog-paddle, so I had to take the course. I never did learn to do the breast stroke and so was prepared to fail the course and suffer through it again the next semester. During the final exam, I competently used the other three strokes to get across the pool—sidestroke, backstroke, crawl—and left the one I could not do to last. I was at the starting point, debating whether to climb out and confess or to risk to drowning and humiliation, but a loud clap of thunder saved me. The instructor said, "Okay, everybody out of the pool! Barb, you pass; the rest of you come back tomorrow to do your tests!"
Barbara McLay

To pay for graduate school, I was teaching a freshman level writing course in the evenings and substitute teaching on days I did not have to attend classes. One substitute teaching experience was so amazing that I told my writing class about it:

I did not know that I had been called to teach a special education class, but when I got to the school, the principal and I encountered a young man in the hallway and he introduced us. “John, this is Mr. McLay. He’s going to be your teacher today. “

“Yeah,” answered John, hanging his head.

“Mr. McLay doesn’t know how smart you are, John. Why don’t you tell him the square root of 2025?”

“Forty-five,” John answered immediately in a bored voice. I certainly can’t do square roots in my head, but I could multiply and know that he was correct.

The principal had John do a couple more square roots, and then asked me, “When were you born, Mr. McLay?”

“December 1, 1969,” I told him.

“Monday,” John muttered without hesitation. I was flabbergasted! This is an almost impossible calculation to do without a computer.

At this point in my story to my writing class, a young woman exclaimed incredulously, “You were born in the sixties?”
R. McLay

Contributions

Please share with us your funny classroom experiences or faux pas from students’ papers. Send contributions to bmclay@cchd.usf.edu. Please put “LCN Humor” as the subject.

Questions or comments? Contact the author at bmclay@cchd.usf.edu.

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