You’re coming off a long weekend. Your powers of concentration are limited. So today you’re getting a bunch of short stuff.
My powers are even more limited, so I have turned the column over to readers who wrote me before the long weekend began. They were funnier then than they are now.
Mystery queries
Bob: OK, just saw the craziest security question ever while setting up a password to manage an appliance service-plan. It was:
“What was the name of your third-grade teacher?”
Are you serious?
Really???
I only remember my first-grade teacher, who wanted everyone’s jacket removed, and made me take off my “sweater-blouse,” leaving me in my underwear all day.
Her name? Miss Moron.
Mindy Aleman
Akron
Mindy: If you think that security question was tough on the ol’ memory bank, get a load of this. When I attempted to sign up for http://tinyurl.com/abjpewpew I had to name the kids who sat in front of me, behind me and on either side of me during ninth-grade geometry class.
In hopes of jogging my memory, I contacted the school, which sent me a yearbook and a list of all the kids who took ninth-grade geometry that year. So it took a while, but it was worth it.
Pew pew. Pew pew pew.
MISPLACED AFFECTION
Bob: This is a screenshot from the Fox8 app on my phone [“Dayton man arrested for allegedly trying to have sex with a van”].
Trying to have sex with a van? Did he burn himself on the tail pipe?
Bill Ellis
Marshallville
Bill: No, but he may have damaged his radiator hose.
At first I thought this was just a funny typo (“van” vs. “man”). Not so.
Another online story offered more detail: “An eyewitness told officers she saw the man pull down his pants and try to have intercourse with the grill of the van. This went on for a while before he passed out in a yard.”
The guy also was seen “swinging on a stop sign with his pants down,” which would seemingly qualify as an equally unusual form of foreplay.
He was jailed on two counts of public indecency. But surely he is in line to receive an honor from the National Fetish Association.
CURIOUS QUESTION
A fellow named Delmar left me three voicemails while I was on vacation. In the last one, he finally spelled out what he was after.
“I have a question for you. When is the paper actually delivered, when the person gets it or when it’s delivered to the address?
“That’s all I wanted to know. Thank you.”
Well, Delmar, as you apparently have surmised, our statistical tracking of delivery success is far more complex than most readers realize.
We don’t log a successful delivery until we personally witness the recipient physically touching the paper in his/her driveway or paper box.
We don’t care whether he/she does it early in the morning, wearing a bathrobe, or in the afternoon, after walking the dog, or in the evening, after work.
Sometimes, when a customer leaves the house early and has an evening function, we have to hang around until nearly midnight.
Things get really complicated when someone is on vacation and a neighbor scoops up the paper.
But we figured this is the least we could do to hold our own in the information age.
VALUABLE GOODS
Speaking of Beacon Journal mysteries, this comes from Greg Smith of Norton, who talked to the owner of Eat-n-Run in Kenmore.
Seems burglars recently pried an exhaust fan off the back wall of the building — a huge undertaking — and crawled through the hole to get inside. Their forced entry triggered a motion sensor, sounding an alarm, which scared the burglars away.
“They got off with nothing,” Smith says, “except the recently delivered copy of the Akron Beacon Journal.”
Police were checking surveillance tapes to see who broke in. The bigger question, in Smith’s eyes: “Why would anyone go to all that trouble to break in and take nothing but a copy of the Beacon Journal?”
Why? Because it’s “informing, engaging and essential,” just like the masthead says.
TRICKY TERRITORY
Bob: Can you help? I am trying to find the origin of a certain plant mentioned in my local newspaper (Healthy Living section, Aug. 16, page A-5).
The article is titled “Clear the Air-Naturally,” and the plant in question is called “Mother-in-Law’s Tongue.”
The article states: “This plant has sharp leaves and also is known as the snake plant.”
My question is: Who came up with this very descriptive name and did his or her spouse know about it? Any info would be appreciated by me and my mother-in-law.
James Diendl
Stow
James: Good thing the Labor Day family picnic is over.
STAT FUN
I received this note after writing a column chocked with statistics about local deaths, numbers that had been compiled by the owner of a local monument-making company:
Bob: You will probably be getting a lot of stats to add to your list. Here is another:
If you are the parent of a teenager, there is an 85 percent chance that you have high blood pressure. The other 15 percent are delusional.
Gene Miller
Copley
DON’T GO THERE
Bob: Do the numbers tell us that a married man lives longer than an unmarried man? Answer: No, it just seems longer.
Frank King
Wadsworth
Frank: You’re in even more trouble than the mother-in-law guy.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com. He also is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bob.dyer.31