You know, my life would be a lot more fun if I got more enjoyment out of seeing confusion on the faces of others. Because it seems to me that significant parts of my job result in the confounding of those around me.
Just today, for instance, there was my morning calculus class, where someone wanted me to cancel the uncancellable, and didn’t seem to get why I said I couldn’t. In my afternoon class, one of my students asked about how I worked out (x+a)4 so fast, and seemed quite nonplussed when I told him. And shortly afterwards, I got to walk into a colleague’s office and ask him what he knew about tensor products of linear programs. (His answer, after a moment of blankness, had something to do with differential forms… which I suppose only goes to show that what goes around comes around.)
I tell ya, if you want to baffle the unwary, a math prof is what you want to be.