Krystina's Best Idea Ever

Once in a while, regular people come up with fantastic ideas-- ideas as brilliant and world-changing as Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity-- and I'd like to recount one of those times, and this particular moment is even more significant because the creator, a colleague of mine, is not known for her sense of humor (although I always find her funny) and her students generally consider her a "tough cookie," but her idea is as fantastically comedic as Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" routine . . . and I'm not going to go into exactly how this idea was developed-- because it's one of those "you had to be there" conversations, and people were being denigrated and that's not the point of this post . . . the point of this post is to give you some thing funny that you can do to your friends-- and so the first thing you need is a friend who loves to be the expert . . . to give out information . . . to be a know-it-all, and the second thing you need is a straight face, because you are going to need to ask this person for some advice, advice in a category in which they deem themselves expert, and the third thing you are going to need is a pen and paper, because you are going to take notes on what your friend the expert says . . . or you are actually going to pretend to take notes on what your friend says, but actually you're going to write "F%$ You" on your sheet of note paper; and so once they're done explaining what restaurants you should eat at when you visit Trieste, or what funk bands are worth your time, or how you should discipline your Weimeratter, then you are going to say, "Did I get everything?" and you are going to say it sweetly, cordially, and with gratitude, and then you get to show your friend your note sheet and your friend is going to realize that you weren't listening to them at all-- and that instead you were writing "F(*& YOU" in really interesting hand-writing (with lots of underlining)-- and then you get to laugh and laugh and laugh . . . and it's not only funny to do it to an unassuming victim, it's actually fun to do to someone who knows what you're going to do . . . after Krystina shared her brilliant idea, I asked my friend Eric how to put tile down in a kitchen, and he knew full well I was going to write "F%$ You" on my notepad, but he still gamely  described how to pull up linoleum and deal with asbestos, and we both still laughed and laughed when I asked him to check my notes and make sure I had gotten all his instructions.