Sideswipe: November 5: What do you see?

Nutty quacker.

It's a rabbit, right? Or is it a duck?

Getting an earful
A teacher tweets: "One of my deaf students farted loudly in class and the other students turn to look. This is a snippet of a conversation entirely in sign language among the group of deaf students and me."

Kid 1: "Why are you looking at me?" Me: "Cause I heard you fart." Kid 1: "What do you mean?!" Me: "Hearing people can hear farts." Kid 2 (Totally horrified): "Wait, they can hear all farts?!" Me: "Well, no. Not all farts but some of them, yes." Kid 3: "How do you know which farts they can hear and which they can't?" Me: "Hmmn ... You know how sometimes you can feel your bum move when you fart? A lot of those they can hear, but if you bum doesn't move it's more likely they didn't hear." Kid 1: "TELL THEM TO STOP LISTENING TO MY FARTS! THAT IS NOT NICE!"

Family's name surprise
How's this for a coincidence: Aucklander Adam Pascoe took sons Boston, 5, and Caesar, 8 months, to Auckland Museum at the weekend. Outside, he took a photo of the boys in the memorial field honouring those killed in World War I. Boston cannot yet read, so it was by pure chance that of the 19,000 white crosses, the one he chose to stand alongside bore his family name. Only two New Zealand Pascoes were killed in the Great War, according to the Online Cenotaph.

Message slow to get through
Ignorance is bliss, sure. It also can be hilarious - like the revelations in this epic Reddit thread asking people: What simple thing did you learn at an embarrassingly late age?

1. My parents used to constantly call me a "bull in a China shop". I always thought they meant "bowl" and never thought about the context they said it in. It wasn't until I turned 17 that I realised they were calling me terribly clumsy and not a beautiful bowl.

2. TLC did not write a song asking Jason Waterfalls not to go.

3. That cashew nuts are not called monkey nuts. Apparently no one felt the need to correct me for most of my life ... "I'll have the chicken and monkey nut stir fry."

4. Pineapples don't grow on palm trees. I always thought there were certain types of palm trees that grew coconuts, certain types that grew pineapples. I didn't see a pineapple plant until I was maybe 20 years old and it shook my world.

5. Girlfriend at the time asks me if I think she is homely ... My definition: homely, to want to start a home with someone or someone who makes a place feel like home. Her definition: unattractive. Real definition: unattractive.

6. I ordered a shrimp cocktail at my 21st birthday party. When it came back and I asked where the alcohol was, everybody laughed at me.

7. That Hotel California is not, in fact, the national anthem of Ecuador.

Video Pick

This forest floor in Sacre-Coeur, Quebec, Canada, looks like it's breathing…

The explanation from The Weather Channel is comforting: "During a rain and windstorm event the ground becomes saturated, 'loosening' the soil's cohesion with the roots as the wind is blowing on a tree's crown," he said. "The wind is trying to 'push' the trees over, and as the force is transferred to the roots, the ground begins to 'heave'. If the winds were strong enough and lasted long enough more roots would start to break and eventually some of the trees would topple."

Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz