I recall an incident at school during my high school years in the 1990’s.

In my county, the fire department does unannounced fire drills at schools; basically, the fire department chief walks into the school and triggers the fire alarm from the main console. And then they stand and watch how well the fire evacuation plan is executed.

Every teacher is expected to grab the attendance list for the class, get all their students out of the classroom and school to the designated gathering area and do a headcount, and report to the crisis management team whether all students are accounted for or not.

My classmates and I were about fifteen minutes into a physics class with an ignorant, busybody of a teacher when the fire alarm went off. We got out of our chairs and started for the door when the teacher yelled at us to sit down and shut up.

When we tried to argue that it was the fire alarm and that we’re supposed to evacuate, he yelled that he didn’t care and he was not going to have a false alarm interrupt his class.

About five minutes later, there was loud banging on the door, and the teacher irritably went and opened it. Outside was the fire department chief looking like an insulted drill sergeant, and in a loud, stern voice, he declared: “All students in this classroom have burned to death, class dismissed!”.

As my classmates and I left the classroom, we could hear the fire department chief yelling at the teacher, dressing him down.

The school failed the fire drill because of him, and he did not come back to teach at our school after the summer.

Our college is hosting a quiz night (called Mastermind), but each participant will be quizzed in a subject of their choosing, related to or adjacent to the degree they’re studying.

My friend and classmate is taking mathematics, but he has a unique interest in really large numbers, and so he’s taking the quiz using his specialist subject “Names Of Really Large Numbers.”

He’s asked some of us to shout out “ten to the power of ‘X'”, as long as ‘X’ is a multiple of three (3, 6, 9, etc.).

Math Friend: “I’ve memorised a lot of these, so I have this list.”

He hands a list, which goes as follows:

Line #1: “10³ – Thousand.”

Line #2: “10⁶ – Million.”

Line #3: “10⁹ – Billion.”

This list, I kid you not, went all the way down to:

Line #1000: “10³⁰⁰³ – Millinillion or Millillion.”

So, we started having fun with it:

Me: “Ten to the power of 2325!”

Math Friend: “Quattuorseptuagintaseptingentillion.”

Friend #1: “Ten to the power of 1485!”

Math Friend: “Quattuornonagintaquadringentillion.”

Friend #2: “Ten to the power of 474!”

Math Friend: “Septenquinquagintacentillion.”

All of us are amazed, and also suddenly interested that the big numbers have such interesting names. One of our friends, thinking he’s so smart, shouts out:

Other Friend: “Ten to the power of a million!”

Math Friend: “A milliplex. Or a milliplexion depending on which scale you use.”

We all laugh and look at [Other Friend].

Other Friend: “Wait, I want a do-over! Mine came out lame. I wanted a long-ar*e name like you lot got.”

Math Friend: “Well, if you wanted that…”

We googled it (no pun intended), and discovered:

Math Friend: “…it would be called ‘ten trestrigintatrecentilliduotrigintatrecentillion’.”

Other Friend: “You know what? Milliplex is fine.”

Many, many years ago, I worked in a private Christian boarding school as an assistant teacher and boarding house attendant. Coming from a very liberal and open-minded country, I was a bit put off by the extremely strict and restrictive rules regarding what you could say or do. But, hey, their country, their rules.

One of the big no-no’s was anything related to sex. The girls even had to sign a contract that said they would not have sex before marriage, as it was their husbands’ God-given right to have a pure bride. 

There were frequent talks by the local pastor and other senior church members about proper Christian behaviour. This pastor was young and very good-looking, and most of the girls had a crush on him. The talks would be advertised by posters and flyers announcing the topic of the talk and the speaker.

One day, I came into the main school building to be confronted with posters advertising:

Poster: “Sex before marriage with Pastor John Smith.”

Somebody clearly didn’t think that through.

Many years ago, my dad was a college student who needed to pass a certain math class as a requirement for his computer science major. He failed this class twice before he had the brilliant idea of asking his girlfriend (my mom), a math major, for help. She agreed and told him to bring his homework, some paper, and his textbook.

After discussing the assignment for a few minutes, my mom opened the textbook to see what it said on the subject. When she did so, the spine made a creaking noise, like it was stiff.

Mom: “. . . Have you ever actually OPENED this thing before?”

Dad: “No. Should I have?”

Mom: “You failed this class twice, and you’ve never opened the textbook?!”

Dad: “Who reads the textbook?!”

Mom: “EVERYONE!”

He did pass the class. With the absolute minimum non-failing grade. To this day, he’s pretty sure the professor only passed him because they were sick of seeing him. He now has a successful career in tech.

When I was eleven, my identical twin sister and I attended the same summer day camp. While most counselors and campers could tell us apart immediately, there was one kid who struggled immensely. For the entire week, he approached us with furrowed brows, trying to crack the code.

He looked at our heights, our face shapes, and spent time searching for a mole or freckle that only one of us possessed.

He tried everything to distinguish us, kept coming up to us asking us to hide our name tags so he could guess, and failing every time. It took him the full week to realize the obvious: my twin sister has a prosthetic leg (traumatic lawnmower accident). We weren’t hiding this fact; in fact, due to the summer weather, we wore skirts or shorts every day, so our legs were always visible.

On the last day, he finally noticed. I’m not sure what was up with him – maybe he expected the difference to be in our faces, where most people would look when talking to us?

Now, whenever I feel absent-minded, I think of that boy and his week-long mystery. Wherever he is, I hope he’s learned to look a little closer.