Sideswipe: May 14: A Whenuapai dartboard first?

Fly dartboard. Photo / Supplied

Ian Haylor writes: "We had always joked about the random chances of pinning a moth to the dart board and decided that such a feat would win any game outright ... We were blown away when one of the guys actually managed to pin a fly to the dartboard earlier this year. What are the odds of this happening? Possibly a world first right here in Whenuapai? The dart wedged just one leg of the insect into the dart board, hence a walking-around-the-dart effect! When we removed the dart, the fly was airborne and gone."

And now to bed ...

A reader writes: "It was our 7th Form graduation (long ago) and our headmaster gave a long speech that in the end had him referring and pointing to the 'Be Worthy' motto/crest above his head (which we could see, but he couldn't). Somebody had inserted the letter 'd' in the blank space between the two words ... I still remember the look on his face as everybody cracked up laughing, while he had no idea what was going on."

Teacher makes 'a lot' stick

"A teacher of mine in intermediate school was fed up with us all spelling 'a lot' as 'alot'," writes a reader. "To make her point, she walked to one side of the room and wrote 'a' on the wooden frame around the whiteboard, walked to the other side of the whiteboard (about 8m away) and wrote 'lot' on that side of the wooden frame. Then, once she'd made her point and tried to rub the words off, they wouldn't budge (she'd written on the wood and not the whiteboard).This caused an eruption of laughter. But to this day I've never forgotten that 'a lot' is two separate words."

Take a minute to save a bird

"To the three vehicles stopped at the lights at Mechanics Bay on Wednesday mid-morning ..." writes a reader. "It would've taken but a minute to have got out of your car and moved the frightened young sea-bird (black shag or petrel perhaps) from the middle of the road in front of you, to the side of the road. How you thought it was OK to just drive straight over it, maiming it and then killing it, is beyond my comprehension."

Grating cliches not so great

Most cliches are inoffensive but some just grate ... Like when those against gay marriage smugly declare, "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" as if it is the last word on the subject and has never been uttered before. And, similarly, when people declare about breastfeeding: "If you are old enough to ask for it, you are too old to have it." Grrr. Which cliches grate on you?