I've got two stories, one good and one bad.
1) The bad: I was a freshman in college in 2007. I took a retarded class taught by a retarded woman in her 40s or 50s. At some point in the class, I guess I'd mentioned that my dad was a contractor. Anyway, I was wearing a PRIDE shirt one day, one of those old white ones with the PRIDE logo with the lightning and everything. It's before class and the teacher decides to make conversation with the students. She comes by me and she asks, "Is that your dad's company?" Confused, I asked, "Is
what my dad's company?" She nods at me and says, "Your shirt. Is 'PRIDE' the name of your dad's company?" Dumbfounded, I told her, "No, this is an MMA shirt." She looked at me like I hadn't yet started speaking in response to her question, so I continued, "Mixed martial arts is the sport with the guys that fight in rings and cages. PRIDE was the main Japanese MMA organization before the UFC bought it." She then goes, "So it's like boxing or WWE?" Ready to be done with the conversation, I just went, "Yeah, exactly," and watched her walk away pleased with the way she'd been able to rebound by displaying her extensive knowledge of combat sports
2) The good: That same year, I took a speech class and the final presentation was a "demonstration speech." I decided to demonstrate BJJ. I got a guy in the class who was going to demonstrate rock climbing by climbing up the door, one of those crazy outdoorsman types, to be my guinea pig. I told him the different shit that I'd talk about and demonstrate and I told him that I'd end by demonstrating a triangle choke and he was totally game. For the whole presentation, everyone in the class was snickering and giggling because it looked so gay and silly, which is the response that I knew that I'd get. The triangle demo was my ace in the hole, though. For my grand finale, I demonstrated the triangle. Fortunately for me, in a manner that was so perfect as if to have been scripted, I happened to lock it up just as the outdoorsman was inhaling, and the sound of his breathing getting cut off and his throat getting squeezed resulted in an audible choking sound that freaked
everybody out. All of the girls in the class put their hands to their mouths in worry, all the guys were looking on curiously and with concern, and the fat old black lady teacher who had no clue what MMA or BJJ was and who probably couldn't have even named a single martial art got up and yelled, "Stop!" When I let go, the outdoorsman was fine and said, "That was crazy." Then I proceeded to explain how triangles work to a now-captive audience
