Lying to children is fun when they know you are being ridiculous. When you hold up a carrot like “guys look at this huge Cheeto” and they all scream “NOOOOOOOOO that’s a CARE-OTT!”
“What? No, it’s my giant Cheeto.”
“NOOOOOOO!”
When I was a camp counselor a fellow counselor claimed that any silly camp song we sang was “his next hit single” and we should all follow him on SoundCloud and he stuck by this daily and it never ceased to amuse both the adults and the children.
When children are small and learning to count and you say the numbers out of order? Peak comedy.
“How many toys are there? Let’s see… oneeee, twooo, six!”
“NO! One two three!”
“What? Are you sure? Let me try again. One, two… six?”
“Noooooo!”
Once reduced a toddler into a fit of giggles by singing “A B C D E F Q.”
on Halloween at the store i work at there was a little boy in a Batman costume, and as I was helping his mom I kept addressing him as Mr. Superman and Mr. Aquaman & he kept correcting me, “noooo, BATMAN” until they were leaving and he very seriously told me, “actully, I’m Ryan”
There’s a phase that small kids go through, when they’ve just learned how to talk enough to have something sembling an intelligent, intellectual argument. They like to practice this by wanting to disagree about anything - mainly general statements that were not 100% perfectly waterproof. If you tell a 4-year-old that bananas are green when they’re raw, and they turn yellow when they’re ripe, there’s a good chance that they’ll give you that “well that can’t be right” frown, and start to argue. Surely not all bananas that are yellow are always ripe.
Unfortunately humouring them about these arguments is very important for their development and a great opportunity to teach them more about how the world works, so you’ll sometimes end up arguing about things like these, and every single time when you explain that’s not how something works, they’ll come up with another argument starting with “but what if-”, until you are forced to admit that yes, if someone did for some reason take one single green banana, spray-paint it yellow and then expertly textured it to look just like a ripe banana, and then break into a grocery store in the middle of the night to slip that one painted banana into the display of ripe, edible bananas, then that one specific yellow banana would not be ripe and ready to eat.
As far as the child is concerned, this means that your entire initial statement was false, and you were wrong and they were right. Their need to be correct about something has been satisfied. Fortunately, most children grow out of this phase eventually.
The ones that manage to survive into adulthood without growing out of it end up on Twitter.
I didn’t know how to say “im a vegetarian” in Spanish so I very haltingly said “los animales … son mis amigos…” when my coworker asked why I wasn’t eating the tamales. Which makes me sound insane but also my coworker just nodded sagely and said “ahh. Entiendo.”
Remember if you’re out at a store and someone says “This is a robbery” you can say “no it’s not” and then the robber will leave because theyre a robber and this is no longer a robbery .
You can not just say this without dropping the whole story
Ok so,
My dads coworker is at the front and this man comes Up and hands him a document.
The coworker took a Look at the document and while he couldn’t read the things written by Hand, because he wasn’t wearing his glases, he did notice the Logo of a different Bank so he’s like:
“Oh, sorry sir you can’t do that here! You have to go to the other Bank for this :)”
The man, visibly confused leaves, but dosen’t take the document with him.
The coworker, now just as confused as the Guy actually Takes Out his glases and reads the hand written part:
This is a robbery
Can you imagine trying to rob a god damn bank and the teller just cheerfully tells you to go rob the competition instead
I worked as a bank teller for several years and a few things you should know, bank robberies happen far more frequently than you might think and they come in waves. When a bank gets robbed a notification with photos goes to all banks in the area to be on the lookout. And there are two kinds of robbery, the pass the note and the takeover (what you see in movies).
So our branch had had a big takeover robbery as well as a note one. We also had a teller that had transferred to our branch after having been through a robbery. She was sweet as apple pie, hair up to the ceiling, southern lady who had just been through multiple robberies.
A guy comes in and hands her a folded note. Her immediate thought was “this guy needs to learn you don’t hand bank tellers notes. I am just not going to read that.” So how the conversation goes:
Her: how can I help you today?
Him: I’m here to get money
Her: great *hands him a withdrawal slip*
Him: all the information is on the paper
Her: to process the transaction I need you to put it on my piece of paper
SO HE FILLS OUT A WITHDRAWAL SLIP. Meanwhile another coworker is looking at her latest robbery notification email thinking the guy at the window looks a lot like him but the teller is calm and seems to be following standard transaction.
Back at the window the teller notices his name on the withdrawal slip doesn’t match the name on the account so she asks for his ID. He once again tells her all the relevant info is on the folded note but also gives her his ID and says it is his dad’s account. She tells him he will need a check from his dad to get cash. He grabs the note and leaves.
ONE HOUR LATER
Two new robbery notifications hit our emails, both branches within a mile. It is our guy. Teller goes over to the manager and sheepishly informs them he was here and the time. Security department is notified as are local police and the FBI. The FBI comes over believing that these poor tellers had been robbed for the 3rd time in a month and take her statement. She is completely embarrassed telling them how everything went down and he kept signaling to the note and telling her to read it but she was just done.
To which this FBI agent of 40 years who has been to the scene of many bank robberies (several at this branch in recent weeks) says: Ok. Let me see if I got this right, he came in fully intending to rob you. He gave you the note and you just…refused to read it? So he left and went to the bank literally across the street, handed them the exact same note, and they just handed him five grand? Do I have that correct?”
Her: I am so embarrassed
FBI: this is best thing I have ever heard. He even handed you his ID! Holy-
Her: I feel so dumb!
FBI: don’t! This is the best thing I have ever heard. This is going to be in training courses. (He sat there giddy for at least 5 more minutes)
I have a similar story from my friend Fred, who is a great human and I like him lots.
He was working at a 7-11 that got robbed a lot, working nights. And he was bored and read though his entire contract and learned if you’re shot at work you get $200,000. Also, he hated his boss and the job.
So when a guy came in to rob him at gunpoint he got excited and was able to hatch the plan he had been pondering while dealing with a Shitty Boring Job.
“Dude. Shoot me in the leg. Right here- it’ll go through and not hit anything vital and I’ll be able to quit this fucking job. I’ll give you fifty fucking grand to shoot me in the leg then you can take everything in the register.”
This ended with him chasing the weeping attempted burglar out of his store screaming “SHOOT ME YOU FUCKING COWARD I WANT THE MONEY”.
One of my uncles was a branch manager at a local bank when I was a kid. His branch had the dubious honor of being one of- if not the- most robbed bank in the area. There was a bullet hole in the wall behind his desk where he’d been shot at once.
One day, this guy came in and announced he was there to rob the place. This man was smoking a cigar with one hand and had a gun in the other.
My uncle pointed at the “No Smoking” sign and told him in no uncertain terms, “Put that cigar out, or finish it outside first.”
This guy, bless his heart, went back outside to finish his cigar.
My uncle locked the door behind him and waited for the cops to show up.
