⊰ ״?What did you do״ ⊱

The Princess Bride - The fire swamp

The time and place - undergraduate studies in Life Sciences (Biology) at Tel Aviv University.

The first year was especially tough. Not that the others were a picnic, but in the following years we had more flexibility in choosing courses, and were less shell-shocked by the difficulty. We studied for long hours, full days from 08:00 to 20:00. Once, when I cheerfully said at noon, “Only 8 more hours to go,” I got angry looks and someone even threw an eraser at me in protest, for how unhelpful that was.

None of this is actually related to the story – just venting some past traumas.
One day, after a morning of mandatory courses (chemistry/physics/math), we were in a practical lab. I remembered something and chuckled to myself.
Amitay (not his real name), who was standing next to me, tensed up, concerned, and asked, “What did you do?”
I had no idea where that question came from and honestly answered, “Nothing.”

In the movie The Princess Bride (if you haven’t seen it, drop everything and go watch),
The fire swamp is infamous for three dangerous things, including sudden fire burst from the ground, but there are warning sign, a ticking sound that gives it away.
Amitay thought that was a foreshadowing chuckle.

He started checking if he had a paper-sign taped to his back (a previous example: “Ticklish”), or if his shoelaces were tied left-to-right. When he couldn’t find what I had done, he began asking people around us. Of course, that only made me laugh harder, which made him even more suspicious - despite my repeated claim that I’d done absolutely nothing.

He told me, “It’s not funny,” that he’d find out when he got home, and that it would be annoying.
He was wrong - it is hilarious, just to me.

That day, I discovered an efficient new way to mess with someone with zero effort: it was enough to make him think I’d done something, and he’d spiral. Excellent investment-return ratio. I highly recommend it.