Laughter is the best medicine

Occasionally, I like to pull a small prank to relieve the pent up stress in my life. Usually, it's something harmless that causes me to have the slightly naughty giggles. And boy, I have been having a lot of stress lately. (A bad sign when one realizes there are half a dozen posts I could link to.) So, anyway, I missed a few classes waiting for a tow truck to tow my car away to the junk yard.

In one of my classes, I had missed a significant introduction to this engineering program that handled periodic waveforms. Suffice it to say that this is one complex program that is, as all engineering programs seem to be, undocumented. So, I started playing with the program, trying to figure out what it did. One of the first questions the program did was to ask me my name.

Since I didn't really know what to expect, I entered a dummy name. By default, I usually pick the pseudonym Sum Dum Fuk. That usually elicits some amused smiles from fellow classmates. This time, I was a bit more colorful. As much as it amuses me to think of this particular pseudonym, I can't put it into print. Let's just say that it's very naughty. Like I said, it has been very stressful, and I wanted to see who would say it out loud.

Eventually, I figured out how the program worked, and produced a waveform, which I printed as an example. The thing is that the computer prints to a communal networked printer and I didn't get up immediately to go pick it up, thinking that one of my fellow students would pick it up and get a laugh. Well, unbeknownst to me, one of my fellow students had picked it up, mistook it for an arabic name, and set it on the seat of the only person of arabic origin in the classroom. That would have been bad enough.

It gets worse. This person picked it up, saw that it wasn't his and set it on the table next to him. Then, he went to his work station and started to work again. The professor of the class walked by it and saw the wavefrom, which was not at all like what we were expected to produce. Now, in my particular class, about half of the students know what they are doing. The other half, well, let's just say that the professor spends a lot of time with them to help them along.

Well, the professor sees this clearly wrong waveform and picks up the sheet. He knows that someone in the class has no idea what they are doing. Now, remember, there is a printed name on this sheet. He then asks out loud who this sheet belongs to. No one responds. Then he carefully pronounces the name out loud to the class. It sounds very much like he stated a sexual act out loud. After hearing it, two thirds of the class bursts out in laughter. I was just about dying from asphyxia trying not to laugh out loud. Not to mention giving myself away as the perpetrator of this prank.

The professor, of course, realized what he just said out loud and turns to the class joker asking this student if he had done this. Tears were rolling out of my eyes at this point. The student denied this, but I think the professor still thinks it is him. For the next twenty minutes, I could do nothing but struggle to contain my laughter. It was ever so wrong. Yet, it was also ever so funny. They say laughter is the best medicine, no matter how you make yourself laugh.