In my high school American History class in 1988, my teacher was leading a discussion on the pre-Civil War Fugitive Slave Act. He explained that under the terms of the legislation, a slave who had escaped from Alabama and Ben found later in Michigan could be sent back to his former owner in Alabama. At this point, an extremely confused (and non-blonde) girl in the back of the class raises her hand and asks in a hesitant, halting manner, “Does Alabama still have slaves?”
During our high school homecoming week, each class has to make a Homecoming poster to be displayed in a business window downtown. A girl in our senior class asked us what our poster was going to be. We jokingly told her that we were going to pose as mannequins for the entire week in our designated window. To our surprise, she seriously responded with,”Wow! That will be really cool. But what are you going to do at night?”
In high school, a girl named Sonya asked the science teacher the following: “If you weigh 100 pounds, and then you lose 100 pounds, what happens?”
For a computer programming class, I sat directly across from someone, and our computers were facing away from each other. A few minutes into the class, she got up to leave the room. I reached between our computers and switched the inputs for the keyboards. She came back and started typing and immediately got a distressed look on her face. She called the teacher over and explained that no matter what she typed, nothing would happen. The teacher tried everything. By this time I was hiding behind my monitor and quaking red-faced. I started to type, “Leave me alone!”
They both jumped back, silenced. “What the…” the teacher said. I typed, “I said leave me alone!” The kid got real upset. “I didn’t do anything to it, I swear!” It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. The conversation between them and HAL 2000 went on for an amazing five minutes.
Me: “Don’t touch me!”
Her: “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit your keys that hard.”
Me: “Who do you think you are anyway?!”
Etc. Finally, I couldn’t contain myself any longer and fell out of my chair laughing. After they had realized what I had done, they both turned beet red. Funny, I never got more than a C- in that class.