Off on a tangent
Cumulonimbus, your second anecdote reminds me of another Thespian, an elegantly clad youth who walked into a hospital emergency room for removal of a foreign object up his exhaust pipe.
He started off by telling the physician: "You're going to laugh. You see, I was planting carrots when..."
After removing the offending carrot, the physician drily asked: "Upside down, eh?"