Sideswipe: February 23: Misheard brand pinching

Sideswipe - ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz·NZ Herald·

22 Feb, 2018 04:00 PM3 mins to read

Misheard brand pinching. (Via @dairymanNZ on Twitter)

Opinion by Ana SamwaysLearn more

Kid misunderstandings

1. "I thought the 'millennium bug' was a real giant bug that was coming. Everyone made a big deal of it for the whole year of '99 and my dad worked in IT so he left our NYE holiday to go fight it and I was TERRIFIED."

2. "When I was about 5, we all had to go around the class and say what our parents did for a living. My friend said that her dad made blinds. Now, having either never learned of the existence of, or having forgotten about, window blinds, I immediately assumed his job was to poke the eyes out of bad people as a punishment for their crimes. I was scared of him for about a year until it finally clicked."

3. "I genuinely believed that teleportation would be a thing within a few years and found myself frustrated every time I had a long car journey that the breakthrough hadn't been made yet. Seemed like it was just a matter of time."

4. "As a child, I didn't want to eat fish ever, because I thought that if I drank water soon after, the fish would regenerate inside my body."

Beating the heat

In the most humid weeks of summer, air conditioning at work is a godsend, writes Louize. "This year my husband's building managers decided to upgrade theirs. This meant they had to do without it for two-three weeks. It hasn't gone so well. What with the rain that fell when they took the roof off, then the poor staff who've had to endure the office heat with barely more than fans. Here's one staff member's solution."

Best way to beat the heat! Photo / Supplied

Name game

A reader writes: "Nominative determinism — I always liked Mr Bunny of Rabbit Control Board and Mr Lamb of the Pork Marketing Board — way back in the 80s. My surname is Greenwood and I owned a garden centre for a long time!"

Katz among the pigeons

"Came across a bit of a glitch in this theory for names matching career paths with a writer of books about dogs," writes Michele Burstein. "He's written A Dog Year, The Dog Who Loved, among others. The author's name? Jon Katz! Just sayin'!"