I'd been invited by the head of the math department to deliver a lunchtime seminar to all the academics and researchers in the department about journal access - which is never straightforward at the best of times.
I'd been quite apprehensive about the thing for a few days before as it's always difficult to know what to include and what they know (or more generally don't know) without feeling as if you're patronizing them.
Anyway, it was all going as well as I might expect until about half way through I was demonstrating an ebook collection and asked the audience for a suggestion of what to search for. "Popular math" came the response from one of the few lecturers in the room I knew reasonably well.
OK, fine. I dutifully type in a nice search term in quotes "popular mathamatics" and realized immediately I'd spelt it wrong. Now of course I'd normally be happy enough to pass it off as a typo, move on, no problems. But for some reaons I'm still not sure of, the stress of it all hit me and my mind just froze. I couldn't see how to correct it, I knew it was wrong, and I couldn't just choose a new search term.
A kindly researcher in the front row put me out of my misery and spelt it for me and they seemed very patient with the incident. But aside from the humiliation, I can't help but think that they must question my competence at quite a fundamental level! Ah well. Nothing I can do now.
[1] Of my non-professional career it might have been when I was driving a cab and was reversing in the dark. My passengers asked if I'd seen the street light which I thought I had (a different one) just before I hit the one they'd seen.
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