One story leads to another

Two stories sprung to mind when I was reading Jinksy's post about fish. One is clearly connected to her post, why I thought of the first one I'm not quite sure. At one point in my life I had a short career in a doctor's office. The doctor was a friend of ours and needed someone who could pick up the phone and write down things people wanted. Like prescriptions or appointments. He asked me if I could do that. I do not have a very high opinion of my capacities, but I thought that this was something I probably could manage. So every morning I jumped on my bike and rode off to the doctor's office to help the needy. Not bothered by any knowledge of the medical dictionary, I phonetically wrote down the (repeat) prescriptions people asked for. Which had some hilarious results, but I can't think of any examples right now. Sorry. My feeling for language and slight knowledge of Latin helped me to quickly learn the real words though and I functioned quite well. Really enjoyed my time there and the doctor was a happy one too. Every day he told me that, although what I wrote down didn't make much sense at all, because my handwriting was so very beautiful and clear, he forgave me. And we had a good laugh. Once an elderly lady phoned to ask for a repeat prescription for: 'the pills I take to help my memory'. 'Do you know the name of these pills?', I asked. 'No, I can't remember', she said. 'Are you sure you want them again?', I laughed. 'They don't seem to work very well for you.' The doctor did not find that funny at all. The lady did. And I'm still laughing while writing it down (and now I know why this story popped up in my mind while reading Jinksy's post). Anyway, someone once told me that the neatness of one's handwriting is inversely proportional to one's IQ. That is why no one can read what the doctor writes. And that is why my handwriting is very readable whilst I apparently have an IQ of about 130 (137 to be exact, but I think someone made an error in calculating that). Why did no one give me the manual when they gave me all that intellectual power? Now I don't know how to use it. The other story I thought of is about the daughter of a colleague of mine when I worked with a large oil company. The colleague took his little daughter (about 5 or 6 I think she was) to a petshop to buy a new goldfish. The previous one had died. And so had the one before that and the one before that. When the petshop person fished a goldfish out of the tank, the little girl said: 'Daddy, can I please stroke it before this one dies too?'