Interesting Facts

Back in the spring, our company had a users conference. We bring as many clients down to New Orleans as will come, and bombard them with all of the gee-whiz neato things that they could do with their software but probably aren't.

There is also a lot of opportunity to socialize (or kiss asses, depending on one's nature). They make a particular effort to schedule activities where clients interact with the teams of people that support them specifically.

Before the conference started, we were asked to list an interesting fact about ourselves that few others knew. Then, after lunch one day there was a game where peolple tried to match up the little known facts with the people to which they belonged.

But we didn't really know why we were being asked for an interesting fact about ourselves. And given the fact that we spend 40+ hours a week staring into the glow of a monitor while seated in a cube farm makes it difficult to come up with things that could be described as "interesting."

(In case you were wondering, my fact was not, "I got in trouble for ridiculing the CEO of the company that bought us on my personal web site." I would have liked to put that, but I was too chicken shit.)

Anyway, while people struggled to come up with their interesting facts, I typed the ones that amused me in a text file. I thought it might be good to save for posterity. Then, I saved the file and forgot all about it.

A new programmer starts working. He's putting a program on our test system, and he notices a file called InterestingFacts.txt. Naturally, he opens it. The full content of the file was this:

I can only poop at work. I was a twin, but I ate the other fetus while in the womb. Anything that starts, "I was once so drunk that I...." Because of closed adoptions, I accidentally married my first cousin. I lost my scab collection, because it was mistaken for a bowl of corn flakes. I have a small wiener.

Imagine yourself at a new job, finding a file of "interesting facts" with these sentences and having no context. Imagining the things he must have thought of his new company makes me laugh harder than the list itself.

It's a good list, because it doesn't get less funny with age. In fact, I'm having a good laugh as I write this.

If you have more good ones, please don't hesitate to add them to the comments or email me for my own amusement.