Sideswipe: August 3: Sentient grains at Bin Inn

Who knew rice had a brain?

Safety coffins

Fear of being buried before you were actually dead was common enough in Victorian times to inspire entrepreneurs to devise "safety" coffins with various escape mechanisms or means by which prematurely buried persons could signal that they were alive. An early safety coffin, patented in the USA in 1843, contained springs and levers that would open the lid with the slightest movement from inside, while others had a bell on the lid with a rope inserted into a hole in the coffin lid and placed in the hands of the coffin's occupant. If they revived they could pull the rope to announce the fact. Other safety coffins were fitted with glass panes, breathing pipes, and/or flags. One even included a periscope-like pipe that supplied air and could be rotated or pushed by the interred person, alerting anyone nearby that he or she was alive.

Nightmare at the library ...

Giant Weta at the Epsom Community Library freaked out one reader.

Bad birth relived in Waterview tunnel

David from Pakuranga writes: "Regarding the woman who leaves drawers, cabinets and doors open ... She is probably claustrophobic, like my wife. A further expression of this condition is my wife's inability to drive through the Waterview tunnel where she becomes so anxious – regardless of who's driving – that we no longer travel that way to visit family.  I remarked on this to a friend and he said, "Oh, she must have had a difficult birth."  Well in fact, she did, was oxygen-starved and barely survived. My friend then related how, when he and his wife were manoeuvring a bed through a narrow doorway, their 6-year-old daughter burst into tears. She'd had a difficult birth, too."

Re-named by rugrats

"My 3 year-old calls grey hair 'wizard hair'. I'm not getting older, just more powerful."

"My daughter just called a cemetery a 'person garden'."

"My 2-year-old thinks Siri is called Seriously. She picks up my phone and yells, "Seriously! Call grandma!" at the screen."

"My son renamed the ladle a 'souper scooper'."

"My daughter calls a single slipper from a pair of her slippers a 'slip' and I'm never correcting her."

"My kid couldn't think of the right word for Hush Puppies shoes so renamed them 'quiet doggies'."

"My toddler's vocabulary includes 'boo boo trucks' and 'bed skins' (ambulances and sheets, obviously)."

"Snot is 'sneeze gravy' in our house."

"My daughter calls her thighs ... wait for it ... leg holders."