What I'm Not Good At

M16 came by my desk to talk to me. I'm pretty sure everything he said was English, but what I heard was:

"I need to talk to you about the Ya-Ya Project. I'll have to change the thing to do this instead of that. Do you see any problem with that?"

I grinned happily and replied, "I have no idea what you're talking about. What is the Ya-Ya Project?"

There was a long awkward pause. Then, more pseudo-English as M16 tried to explain:

I'm still trying to figure out the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow

"Well, OK, it takes the nouns and verbs them, and puts them someplace in space-time. Just like the Foo-Foo Project."

"The what?"

There was an even longer pause.

"I've never heard of the Foo-Foo Project either."

"Do you actually work here?"

"Not on everything."

You probably don't want to do a 'Google Images' search on this topic

M16 recovered admirably and launched into his technical speech again.

"OK, well, what I need to know is, ... "

I interrupted him. "No, I have a better idea. Let's talk about some more things that I've never worked with and don't understand. Hay balers! Differential Equations! Animal Husbandry!"

M16 gave up. "I'll come back later."

I love how the phrase "Animal Husbandry" can derail a perfectly sane conversation. I'm gonna have to use that one more often.