• Dreamt I had awakened and it was 9:21am. Cue panic because I’d missed my flight. I had multiple levels of thoughts, my eyes were bleary as if I’d just awakened—everything felt extremely real. Then I decided that it couldn’t be real. There was no way I had missed my flight. Woke up for real. It was 4am.
• Spent nearly 20 minutes at the terminal because the cab’s pay screen wasn’t working (sound was there, but the screen was black). Finally he did it manually, but even that took time because he’d never used the manual one before.
• I was supposed to board with the As, but had to use the restroom and ended up boarding right before the Cs. Still managed to get an aisle seat though. Slept the entire flight.
• My cab driver got lost. He used GPS and went up and down the same road at least four or five times. The GPS kept telling him to turn the wrong way down one ways. Finally, he reached the destination, only for me to learn that he had put AVE into the GPS rather than EXPRESSWAY.
• Cue fifteen minutes at the hotel with the cabbie trying to figure out how to do a flat rate since he couldn’t reduce the cost if I used a card. (And I was not paying $50 when it was only that high because he took me to the wrong place).
• Inside the hotel, the counter is protected by bulletproof glass and a woman with long, orange and yellow fake nails is arguing with the guy (Patrick) behnd the counter about a bill. She apparently stays at the hotel frequently and is disputing one of hte charges from December.
• Then I learn check-in isn’t until 2 and I’m there at 11.
• The fake nail lady returned to argue more. Patrick has the patience of a stone.
• While waiting another woman comes in and says she left her hammer in one of the rooms. Yes. Hammer. No explanations given.
• After getting a room (at noon, yay), I leave to find food. I finally find a deli. When I return to the hotel to eat, I discover the guy sliced some plastic in with my cheese (which was swiss instead of provolone as I’d asked).

Oh, this day.

This bit of absurdity was administered to 8th grade students in New York as part of their yearly state assessment. The story is a nonsense tale masquerading as an Aesop with a moral that has driven many to exasperation (though might, in sentiment, be familiar to fans of Going Postal and similar stories). Google will yield several articles on the subject and the going hashtags on Twitter are #pineapplerebellion and #pineapplegate. 

And for the sake of curiosity—which animal do you think said the wisest thing?