Sideswipe: March 3: Puerile road trip

A reader writes: "My sister was stuck in a checkpoint queue coming back to Auckland. Sadly for her, she'd let her 7-year-old son choose the music."

Small embarrassments

1. I was at a coffee shop waiting for my coffee when I ate the largest muffin sample on a plate... wasn't until I'd started to try one more tasty sample that I realised it wasn't free samples; but someone's dirty plate they'd returned to the counter. Left without my coffee in horror.
2. I was once standing on a small holiday tourist boat in Turkey and the boat hit a wave, and I overbalanced and fell forward. I steadied myself on a one-legged man's stump as he was [sitting] down. I think about that a lot.
3. When I was very young Mum and Dad were told by a neighbour that a local farmer was letting people help themselves to potatoes from his land. Dad filled a sack. The local paper that week ran a story saying "Farmer's field ransacked" ... We had spuds with everything til they were gone.
4. I was once out for dinner with a couple of friends. Bread rolls came first, with triangles of cheese in a small bowl. I ate one triangle ... and then another. I said to my friends the cheese tasted weird and asked what type it was. That's the butter, they told me.
5. When I was 2 or 3 I saw a framed photo of some baby on my mother's dresser and got so jealous I threw it on the floor. The photo was of me.
(Via @ItsAndyRyan)

Next level vegetable department marketing

Not the most direct route to getting a day off

A 19-year-old man admitted that he had faked his own kidnapping in order to get a day off from work when police found him near a water tower in Coolidge, Arizona, with his hands bound behind his back and a bandanna stuffed in his mouth. He had told officers that two masked men knocked him unconscious in front of his home and drove him around before leaving him by the water tower. The cops determined he was lying when they checked surveillance video. He was fired from his job.

Don't ask Frank how he is

Frank Coulter of Pauanui Beach writes: "The greeting 'How are you?' from another chair-sitter seems a bit trite when you are in a doctor's waiting room. If you say 'Good thanks' it raises the question as to why you are in the waiting room at all.  Other possible answers are: 'I'll tell you after I have seen the doctor' … 'Sorry, that's personal and confidential because of the Privacy Act' …'I've just popped in for a heart transplant' … 'Sorry, that's restricted Information because of the Official Secrets Act'. One could even consider a ruder comment like 'None of your business'. I'm reminded of an old story where the retort was 'Terrible thank you'.  The questioner, who clearly wasn't listening, replied: 'Oh that's nice'."