This happened some time during the early part of 1999, when I was working in the Company Secretarial department of Northern Foods plc in Hull. I had just finished A-levels and was working as an Office Junior for a year until I went to university - interestingly, I didn't actually tell the company that, but never mind.

My boss Fran was the single most humourless person I have ever met. She was a fifty-year-old divorcee with a history of being evil and an attention to detail that required the most stringent behaviour of all her staff. No place for a nineteen-year-old kid who was just trying to earn some money.

When not stifling in a suit in a spartan office overlooking a railway yard, my salvation was my crazy friends back home. At the time we were going through a phase of listening to tapes of The Goon Show and quoting incessantly therefrom. My double life as a wild child and respectable suit-wearer couldn't last for ever. Soon, something would slip out.

Slip out it did. Talking about her plans for reviewing the company's Report and Accounts, or some such dull thing, in the office one day Fran said "this is my plan of attack".

I couldn't help it. Quick as a flash I replied, "Looks like a nail".

"WHAT?!!?"

Fran has a way of looking at someone that literally makes them feel two centimetres tall. Eyes like gimlets and a particular way of holding her jowls that makes one think, "you have displeased me. Prepare to pay the ultimate penalty". I nearly spontaneously combusted on the spot.
It's okay. I can escape from this alive. "Erm, er, nothing."
"No, go on. Tell us."

Damn. "Ahem, erm, it's from an old radio comedy... 'this is my plan of attack' - 'looks like a nail' - 'no, it's a tack' - nothing, really...."
Don't fire me... pleeeasssse....

The second that followed was an eternity of torment as Fran's eyes bored into the back of my skull. Her jowls firmed yet further. I thought she was about to spontaneously combust on the spot. I felt myself shrinking, fidgeted in my chair, and tried to make sure I didn't fall through the weave of the padded seat.

Finally, after I had considered using the fourth-floor window (that's the fifth floor to Americans) as an escape route, Fran said, "oh, the Goon Show. I love that."

Phew!

Then Fran decided she would quote some Goon Show herself... she said "Min, Min, Min Min Min...?"
Without conscious thought I continued in a Minnie Bannister high-pitched voice, "Yes, yes, yes yes yes?" Fran looked at me, and then I did spontaneously combust....

Anyone who's ever owned a textbook knows that they float around from person to person, as there are countless other students with the same book. They all look alike, and it's not uncommon to open what you thought was your textbook and see someone elses name in there. It happens all the time. A few days ago, I opened my grammer book and found this message:

"Sam Duncan. That's right. This book belongs to Sam Duncan. Both legally and emotionally. So if you find yourself in possession of this book, you're both a criminal and a cretin. Sure, you could keep this book. Hey, I'll never know about it. You're probably thinking: 'Bah! He can't care that much about this book, 'cus he hasn't asked me if I've seen it lying around.' Well, I reckon it'd be pretty damn useless walking around asking every single damn person if they'd seen a spare Oxford French Reference Grammar book lying around. But I can assure you, until you give me back my book, I'll be getting a detention a week for being ill-prepared for my lessons. And as I said before, by keeping this book you're putting a good relationship on hold, 'cus me and this book are like *that*. We just click. We're damn near soul-mates. So come on, you indolent depraved munchkin, spend the 15 minutes finding my locker and give me back my goddamn book, 'cus it ain't yours. And unless you do, you'll go to hell. Honest. Trust me. I've tried. I too used to be an asshole who didn't return textbooks to their rightful owners. But after an incident with a big horny elephant, I saw the error of my ways. Damn, maybe I should stop using this excuse to not do my homework and just get started. Otherwise I'll be up all night."

I was too scared to go anywhere near this guy.

GTKY? Yes... and no. There's a bit of a lesson here, from either side... and even for someone who never becomes involved in something like this.

I was a 19 year old guy building a sand castle on a broad beach filled with vacationers. A little girl of about 4 was nearby at her family's beach mat. She was looking on with interest, so I invited her to help out. She did. This happened all the time - my sand castles were (and are) ambitious, but I didn't give orders, or control the kids - the beach was for fun, and there's little way to stifle fun faster than getting orders. Sometimes I would ask if they wanted some pointers, and of course I'd always be using the best techniques I knew, so as they watched me, they'd pick them up. I like teaching, so this was fun even beyond the challenge of trying to make a castle different than those I had made or even seen before. So, she made the castle a bit, went to swim, came back, changed, made more castle.

Fast-forward one day. I come down to the beach, and see the girl sitting on the family towel, crying. I figure the parents were okay with her making the sand castle yesterday, and would remember me; so I go back up and said hello. The mother did not see me approach, and kind of freaks out. She doesn't remember me from yesterday, even though I was making an enormous sand castle right in front of their towel for about two hours, with the help of their daughter and others. I try to remind her, but she still doesn't recall. She insists that I leave. Fair enough. I go down to the water.

A minute later, the father comes down and accuses me of being a child molester, and threatens me with death if I come near them ever again. He is clearly not under rational control, so I can't be sure he won't attack me on the spot. And he's stronger, and more dangerous yet because of parental protective instincts. I tense up, stand on the balls of my feet, spread my feet out into a defensive stance.

This was it. For all the posturing, if he had attacked, I would have run, but I knew he would have caught me. I had never been any good at fighting, and I didn't want to hurt him anyway - he was just doing what he thought was right, even if he was jumping to conclusions. Maybe he saw my sand-castle-building as luring. Maybe he had been looking at me yesterday while his daughter changed on the beach in front of everyone, and misinterpreted my surprised embarrassed look as furtive lecherousness.

Or he could have completely forgotten me from yesterday, so that the first time they remembered seeing me, I was approaching their daughter, rather than the other way around.

I figured that, given no evidence against me to explain away, I would do best with a flat denial: "I have not harmed your daughter, and never intend to. I have not asked her to reveal herself to me, and will not. I am not attracted to her." Nice and complete, if I could get it out.

When he finished his threat and asked, "Do you understand?", I instead replied with "Yes sir". It wasn't hate-filled. And it wasn't a lie - I did understand what he was saying. But it was defiantly insincere in its recognition of his authority, and expressed my readiness to defend myself against this accusation, by force if need be. Well, it expressed that, even if I wasn't really prepared to do anything of the sort. And it wasn't what I had intended to say. It didn't cover any of the points I was trying to cover - mainly, establishing my innocence so that the whole conflict could be avoided.

Maybe my front of being ready to fight was much more convincing than it seemed on the inside. Probably, it occurred to him that the beach guard would call the cops if he smeared me all over the beach. For whatever reason, he backed off and stalked up the beach before I could regather my wits and say my line.

In any case, I figured that correcting him wasn't worth the risk, so I rounded my corners wide for the next week so I wouldn't find myself face-to-face with them.

In thinking about this afterward, I figured out a lesson that I have followed to this day: If you want to make contact with a kid, and his or her parents are present, do so directly in front of the parents, and make dead sure that they know that you know that they're there. If you see a kid alone, and want to help, then be sure to deliver him or her to his or her parents so that their first impression of you will be that you are someone who is on the up-and-up. If they get a negative first impression, it'll be worth your teeth to get it fixed.

And of course there is the other side to it - be cautious, but please don't jump to conclusions. Some people do just like kids. There are plenty of responses which work equally well for either category.