When I was in first grade I had a classmate named Lindsay. She's the first Jehova's Witness I ever met, as they are not common in my area at all.

Lindsay wasn't allowed to participate in activities related to birthdays or holidays like Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc... My class had 30ish children so we had a Birthday Day every month for the people born in that month. Lindsay stayed in class drawing while the rest of us ate pizza and cake and played party games.

She sat next to me. I vividly remember one time she brought craft supplies for a project, but the project was for Father's Day (some weird craft with denim and a picture frame) I think Lindsay brought up that she couldn't participate and the adults (teacher and teacher's assistant) had a discussion about it. I don't remember how they resolved it, I vaguely remember her leaving class to sit outside.

One time she brought a Littlest Pet Shop toy to class. I remember 6 year old me being super jealous and then feeling super guilty because I thought about stealing it (I didn't).

I'm old lady #1. Maybe every month or two I feel compelled to get takeout at a nearby Chinese restaurant where the food isn't fantastic but it has a lot of volume.

While I wait for my order I usually stare out the window at the parking lot. It's a plaza with a liquor store, supermarket, dollar store etc., all the makings for "wtf was that?"

That day, I saw an old guy limping across the parking lot. So far so good, normal. But then he started flapping his hands, went to his knees in apparent distress and rolled underneath a parked car.

I was looking around like "Did anyone just see that?" but everyone in the restaurant was on their phone. So I went sprinting out the door because I took standard first aid and CPR and thought 'I could actually be of use here!'

What I didn't know at the time was that the old guy had a quarter in his hand for a shopping cart at the supermarket, but he dropped it. And it had rolled underneath the car and he was on a recovery mission.

I also didn't know at the time he was rather deaf. So I had my hands on his legs and was all, "Sir? Sir? Do you need some help? What's your name?" in a calm quiet voice he couldn't hear so he kept flutter-kicking himself further underneath the car while I was trying to gently draw him out by his ankles.

At this point the guy from the Chinese takeout showed up with my bag of food... I'm sure he was confused by my unexpected run from the restaurant but I already paid for the food so the level of dedication to chase me into the parking lot was both admirable and perplexing... "You left so fast you forgot your food!" He was quite excited.

Right about then the owner of the car showed up, that's old lady #2, she was just walking along swinging her keys like "Yeah got the fuzzy slippers at half price!" and then had to confront this strange party going on beside her vehicle.

She thought another driver must have dinged her car in the parking lot and was very relieved her car was unharmed in this pointless story.

​

I worked in a mall a few years ago and found a wallet with a driver license and money on the ground in front of our store. I did what anyone should do and turned it in to the mall police station so the owner can retrieve it. A few minutes later a guy came up to the counter asking if he left his wallet there. I mentioned I just turned one in and he thanked me and went to go retrieve it.

The store I worked at was just a couple doors down from the police station. After a while I noticed more police officers came in from outside and lead the guy out of the mall in handcuffs. I asked one of the officers later why they arrested him and apparently he had warrants.

I was getting ice cream while traveling and it came with this little bear sitting on top. It looked like one of those edible decorations made of sugar or chocolate, so I didn't think much of it. I picked it up and tried to take a bite, but it was completely solid. Right at that moment, the waiter walked over and caught me with this tiny plastic bear against my teeth. We made eye contact for a second and both started laughing. I think the worst part was that I genuinely thought it was candy. The ice cream was good though.

I was in the 7th grade in 1996/7 and I did not have an email yet. My much cooler friend Naomi had an email address and had printed out and brought to class one of those email chain letters that had been forwarded to her and she was to forward it to an arbitrary number of people or her and her immediate family were in danger. She printed this out for some reason and brought it to class to share with her friends. I, a dumb ass, took it seriously and was confused as to what forwarding meant but she explained that it meant you send it to other people so that you don’t end up with the misfortune of your entire family disappearing.

All I had was a notebook and a bic pen so I got to work. I copied the whole thing which I am pretty sure took up a solid two pages out of my notebook with my larger bubbly 7th grade handwriting. I remember my hand physically hurting from trying to start on a second copy as fast as I could. I think I was half way through the second copy and trying to figure out who I was going to give the letters to when my friend explained it only worked via email. But she like, let me do it. I think she just enjoyed seeing me be a dumb ass and copy it word for word to spare my family.

I didn’t pass the letter out and I wasn’t allowed to have email until the 8th grade and by that time I was privy to chain letters and I didn’t fall for them any more. I spent my time in a much more civilized fashion, such as in AOL chat rooms. I was free to be much more gullible there but that’s where I met my first husband, so maybe that’s a story for another day.

I'm laying here typing as I listen to a faint, occassional crackling scratchy sound coming from the corner where my closet door is open. There's a pile of blankets in the open doorway and a plastic tote and some clothes in a bag. there are also a few other items on the floor of the closet.

I've seen plenty of these fat beetles around the house. they move slowly and are about an inch long with big bulbous bodies. I think it was some time last year when I heard a similar sound and found one of them scratching against some papers or a box.

I'm hoping this sound is another beetle. Because the alternative, that has me afraid I won't be getting any sleep tonight, is that it's a mouse. I cannot stand mice. And if there's a mouse in my room, I'm done for.

So why haven't I gotten up to move stuff around to see exactly what's going on? Because I'm a coward. That's why. I did turn a flashlight in that direction and peered into the areas behind stuff as best as I could, but I didn't see anything. I even took an old curtain rod and poked at stuff from as far away as I could. Nothing.

So here I lay, waiting for the sun to come back up, hoping that whatever is making these sounds will find it's way out like it got in.

Update: to my horror, i stepped out of my room into the hall on my way to the kitchen just in time to disturb a RAT that went scurrying across the floor. A WHOLE RAT.

i can't even tell you how shaken and disgusted i feel right now. so needless to say i'm on lockdown in my room for the night. tomorrow i will be placing rat traps EVERYWHERE.

I’m sitting in class right, and my teacher is talking about how she likes the flavor of coconut, but not the texture. so I ask her “what about piña coladas?” she says “me and frozen alcoholic beverages are not a good idea.” so I go on to tell her about my trip to Florida, and I’m telling her about how I went to the Mai Kai and how I ordered a virgin Piña colada. and how it was in fact NOT virgin, but a bit slutty. and she bursts out laughing and the girl next to me thought it was so funny that she fell out of her seat.

My roommate and I are very different. They are very easily overstimulated. When they're out, they're focused on their destination and will effectively be blind to 90% of outside stimuli. It's not something they do consciously, it's just how they're wired.

I'm the opposite. I am taking in as much sensory information as possible. I can't turn it off, everything is hitting me constantly. Smells and sights are everywhere, and often neither are good (as is wont of a highly populated city).

Because of this, we've had conversations where I'll casually bring up the latest "theme" of the day/week, and they'll be incredibly confused how I keep finding these things. They've lived here for going on 10 years, and I've only lived here one. In that short year, I've encountered multiple places that are fronts, people passed out on the sidewalk (in a way different than a homeless person. One guy was knocked out, weird position, and a bag of groceries he'd dropped. Called him an ambulance when he was unresponsive), more dead animals than I can count, so many bones (not counting intact corpses or bones that are reasonably from restaurant meat), and a dozen puddles of blood, often fresh and reeking to high heaven.

To be fair, the fronts are not something I can confirm, but when I tell you how weird the energy is in there. And like, they don't know their own menu. I ordered limoncello cake and the guy working there asked what that is. Changed it to tiramisu, but he grabbed me plain slice of cake. Or the place where people (6 or so) were talking and smoking inside, but when I entered they all went silent and just watched me. All of them. It was Uncomfortable and I did not stick around. Roommate later told me that fronts are very common here and that I need to stop walking into random cafes just because they say they're open.

Anyway, we're living in the same place and having drastically different experiences. They live in a beautiful, friendly city of convenience, whereas I'm surprised if I leave the apartment and don't see something at least mildly horrific. I say this all with the utmost affection. Everything I see comes with a story, and I like to imagine what it may be. Keeps things interesting.

Winter, 2022. I was 21, working at a chain grocery store.

I was still new, just beyond my 1st month, and while working there, i caught a stomach bug. Wasn't calling out, but i also didn't want to sh*t my pants, so whenever there was downtime, i asked to go, then made my way to the public restroom near our department. i wasn't spending a very long time in there, 3-4 minutes tops.

The department manager, let's say Amanda, had a great rapport with the other employees. Everyone agreed she was very reasonable. She was obviously relaxed and friendly with everyone there.... except for me. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, she was standoffish. i assumed this was because i was new and brushed it off as no big deal.

One night, i ran to the restroom, did my business, came back. She met me outside the department looking extremely angry, and raised her voice at me, yelling for me to "go clock out RIGHT NOW and don't come back!" without further explanation. I crossed my arms, and i asked her why, to which she replied "I followed you into the restroom just now, and i could see under the stall that you weren't on the toilet. You can't just take breaks whenever you want!"

"Uhhh, you can't fire me for that. Did you talk to the store manager about this?" to which she yelled, at the top of her lungs "YOU WANT ME TO GET THE STORE MANAGER? CAUSE I CAN DO THAT!"

"yes." She radio'd for the manager to come down to see us, and within moments, there she was. I allowed Amanda to speak; she told our boss everything that just happened. The manager asked me to tell her my side; i promptly did so.

The store manager literally just sighed, shook her head, and told us both to go back to work and forget about this.

2 weeks later, Amanda quit, and went to go work somewhere else. And to this very day, everyone who knew her back then has been extremely shocked to hear that story; citing her as "the nicest person i've ever met".

I'm still confused by this event.

My friend got some new kitties, and I went to visited.

Since my first exposure of cats was my current cat when I adopted him when he’s 1 year old, I thought all the cats are very gentle like those well trained dogs.

I arrived, the kittens are very nimble, as if everything was on a fast forward mode. They jump fast, loaf fast, airplane ear fast, mischief fast, and calming down and turning cute fast.

As I reach out my hands with the treats my host kindly handed, as he was sniffing my hand, approaching, I turned over to talk to my friend.

Suddenly, I felt a tiny jab, with two little pressure points combine. The jab was sharp, but applied gentle, clueless, ruthless, but not malicious. “Ow” I exhaled, looked over, the tiny kitty snatched the treats from my hand by taking a huge chump on my finger. I tried the glucose device and pricked my finger first time a few days ago, so I knew what breaking skin on finger felt like. Luckily, my skin was completely intact.

I fostered puppy before, and I got bitten by them, because she didn’t understand how sharp their teeth were.

I’ve never interacted with kittens before.

I got nibbled by a cat for the first time in my life.

Forgot I was using voice on chatGPT and ended up with a transcript of me talking to my new foster fail rescue pup, Ms. Rubi Roo. Condensed the approximately 900 “mm mm mm”s and sniffs, but this is basically how it went:

[humming, sniffing]

“We’re not doing that, baby girl. We’re not doing that. Sorry, but we’re not.”

“Girl, stop.”

“Good girl. Good girl. Good girl.”

“Uh, God. Ow.”

[more humming]

“No, leave that! No ma’am! Nope. Not happening. Not happenin.”

“Girl, you better leave it. Girl? Rubi Roo.”

“Good girl.”

[sniff. hum. sniff.]

“Why are you crying? Quit cryin. THERE'S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL!" \*Tom Hanks Voice\*

"What? What do you want? I don’t see what you want.”

“You want your squeak? Hmm? Want your squeaky, Rubi Roo!?”

[squeak]

“No. Ugh. Girl. What you want?! You hungry?”

[brief pause. hum.]

“Like this? You want that? Yes? Yeah? Yummy.”

“Eat your food. Eat your food.”

“What the fuck? Oh my god, what did you do.”

[extended mm mm mm intermission]

“Can you sit? Good girl.”

“Stand? Stand?”

“Off, off, off! Girl, off! You’re not listening!”

“Good girl, hold on.”

[dog whining]

“Why are you frustrated? Why are you frustrated, baby?”

“Go get your bone! Get the bone!”

“Oh, you want squeaky toy?”

[squeaking]

“Give me that squeaky toy. That's my squeaky. Give me that squeaky!”

[human and dog growling]

“Careful… Careful… Oh my gosh, you okay?”

[sniff. hum. scratch.]

“Oh, girlfriend. You are annoying me.”

“What do you want, baby? Do you want this side? You want that? No? You want this?”

“Oh, you want THAT side.”

[several sighs]

“Go ’head, honey, go outside. You can go outside if you want.”

“Go ahead. Go outside.”

“What are you doing? Make up your mind.”

“No, we just were outside. Nope.”

[humming resumes]

"Aw. Outside? Outside, OUTSIDE?"

"Okay, Roo Roo. Let's go outside!"

I'm a new teacher, and I teach 5th grade. This is my first year of teaching.

Anyway, I haven't been doing well lately. I've been struggling a lot mentally.

Today, I walked into my classroom and found a small flower and a letter on my desk, signed by all 22 of my students. They had written two whole pages telling me how much they love me, how happy I make them, and how much they appreciate everything I do for them.

I started reading it and immediately burst into tears. I couldn't stop crying and had to take a little break to compose myself. I'm still crying as I'm writing this.

They are the most amazing, incredible kids, and they have no idea how much I needed this today. They gave me a reason to keep going.

If only they knew...

Forever grateful. ❤️

Even more embarrassing is that it has happened more than once.

*explanation*
I was holding the tube of yogurt with my left hand on the far end, and squeezing the yogurt out into my mouth with the right hand. While doing this, my fingers slid onto a wet spot of the tube and lost friction, causing my hand to rapidly strike my own face.

My power went out this morning and won't get restored until like midnight. So, I walk to the extremely hippie store down the street to buy a candle and I pick one that smells the best.

The owner is really passionate about all the candles, and starts telling me how you’re supposed to gaze into the candle’s flicker and imagine yourself absorbing the magnetic energy of your candle or some shit, and you’ll gain it. She looks down and my candle’s tag says “Money” and definitely feels like she judges me a little. Like I knew you were supposed to pick one for that reason.

The others were like “Love”, “Belonging”, “Health”, “Family”. Anyway, I’m getting enlightened tonight 💰💰🕯️

About twenty minutes ago, I sat at the park and watched two very epic ping pong matches happening simultaneously. One of them finished and they asked if anyone else wanted to play. I raised my hand - I’ve just come from tennis training, so I unsheathed my racket and stood at one end of the ping pong table. They laughed. I didn’t bat an eye. We played. I lost. I want a rematch.

I was sifting through old emails and came across one labeled “stuff” from years ago. I opened it and found some of my very first piano compositions…for the first time in my life, I was an audience member to my music. It gave me goosebumps. It was a resurgence of life. It woke so, so many wonderful memories…so many great and beautiful memories. I’m going to re-develop them, organize a concert and perform them in January. It feels good.

You know that awkward moment when you hold a door open for someone, but they’re just far enough away that they have to start jogging?
Well, I did that today.
The guy was probably 30 feet away when we made eye contact. I was already holding the door, so there was no going back.
He started doing that awkward half-walk, half-run thing while I stood there smiling like an idiot.
When he finally reached the door, he was slightly out of breath.
He said, “Thanks, man.”
I said, “No rush.”
NO RUSH.
After making this poor guy practically sprint across the parking lot.
I think I’m done being polite for the week.

My coworker asked if I ever wear makeup?? Um yes what do you mean? My eyeshadow has glitter in it? I wear eyeliner too??
I found it so funny because she’s seen me without makeup on before.
Like I know I prefer a subtle look, but not so much you have to question whether I put any effort in.
I don’t even go for a non-makeup look.

Maybe because she’s younger than me and she wears more trendy makeup that maybe what I do is too subtle from what she’s used to?
I’ve only really started wearing more makeup in the last two years for work so maybe I was just delusional in thinking I was doing a good job. Lol

I even pointed to my eyes and said “Yeah? I’m wearing eyeshadow right now.” and she just looked and said, “Oh yeah I can see it.”
???
I know she didn’t mean anything bad by it because she’s a really sweet person but it just made me laugh.
I miss my sister telling me I look busted without me having to guess. 😆

I was traveling through Czechia and somehow got on the wrong train. I didnt realize anything was wrong until we were already pretty far along and I finally looked at the screen and noticed we were going in completely the wrong direction. I got off at the next stop, and the funny part was that a girl got off right after me for the exact same reason. We started talking while trying to figure out how to get back, ended up taking the next train toward Prague together, and talked pretty much the whole way. So I got on the wrong train and accidentally made a new friend

Hi, everyone! Welcome to one of the most ridiculous things that has ever happened to me in my life. This event dates back a few years, but even though it was so long ago, I remember it like it was yesterday.

When I was about seven years old, my mother was pregnant with my little sister. (I wanted a baby brother, but I still love her, though. Just some relevant info.)

She was planning to go to the hospital soon to stay there for a few days before she gave birth. Before you ask, things with childbirth worked a little differently in my country, and you might be confused as to why. Women had to stay in the hospital about a week before the child was due, just to prevent any accidents.

While that was a safer way to do things, it was still quite stressful for the husband, who was meant to stay at home and could only check up on his wife during the day.

Aside from that quick detour, my mother soon went to the hospital for the next three days. It was just me and my grandmother in the house.

Now, if I haven't mentioned it before, we had a rat issue.

And no, it was not because our house was dirty or anything. It was mainly because of our neighbors, who'd been raising little piglets near our house. Don't ask why she was even allowed to do that, because she was. However, that is a story for another time.

Going back on track, that woman fed the pigs leftover food and everything, which soon attracted giant rats.

Not the cute, innocent-seeming rats you might keep as pets. No. This was far worse.

These were the kinds of rats that chewed through everything, including the wood our house was made of. They ate the straw baskets in which our food rested, and so much more.

They even went to desperate measures, such as eating the bottom of my foot after finding no food.

I believe I've gone into enough detail about these demonic little creatures.

Oh, wait! Perhaps I should mention how weak the traps were against them.

We'd spent hundreds on rat traps and even went to desperate measures, like buying rat poison. Unfortunately, those failed quite badly, because this is what happened to the rats.

We bought a trap that was meant to snap their necks in half once they got caught in it. Of course, we set it up with some greasy cheese for them.

And somehow, the rat managed to get the cheese without even setting off the trap.

We simply woke up and found that the cheese had disappeared.

There was only one good explanation for this.

They had somehow hired Sonic the Hedgehog as their sidekick.

Next was another incident that led to us buying yet another trap that seemed ridiculously smart at the moment.

The rats had done us dirty one more time. My mom had made an entire meal and left it on the stove, perfectly covered, then went outside for maybe twenty minutes.

When she came back in, all the pans were on the floor, the food had been devoured, and the pans had been licked clean.

That day, we simply gave up and ordered food.

The next day, we set out on an adventure to the store and bought an incredibly sticky plate that smelled like peanuts.

The original goal was to get the rat, or rats, stuck and then do what must be done with them.

What happened, however, was far from what we expected.

We went to bed that night feeling smug and satisfied with our plan. We waited for a while, waiting for the impetuous swines to come out.

And they did.

And somehow, they escaped.

See, what happened was that the rats did, in fact, get stuck on the plate. But the most surprising part was how they managed to get out through their hole.

I mean, the rat most definitely escaped with the sticky plate before the whole thing just disappeared.

Like, poof! As though it had never existed in the first place.

And honestly, this story was supposed to be about the first night of my mom's absence, but it turned into a story about the demonic rats instead.

Maybe in the next story, then. If you guys enjoy this one! :)

The cashier handed me my food and said, “Enjoy your meal!”
I confidently replied, “You too!”
We both froze for a second.
She smiled politely. I pretended nothing happened.
Then, for absolutely no reason, I said, “Thanks, you too” AGAIN.
I don’t know what happened to my brain in those five seconds, but apparently I was determined to make sure she enjoyed my meal too.
Anyway, I’m considering moving to another city.

A couple weeks ago i attended office hours for this class am in and i had a lot to catch up on because i kept coming to class late. So the professor stayed with me for like 2+ hours explaining everything that i missed and she stayed explaining to me till like 6:30pm. when i first got to her office hours i started with apologizing about always being and i told her that the reason i keep coming late is because i usually rent an E bike in the morning but that now with the huge amount of new students all the bikes near my place are gone at 8am and then we moved on to her catching me up but also jokingly reprimanding me about being late every 10-15 minutes of duration of our time together, it was funny and i didnt think much of it. Today was my mid term and i open page 6 and the question goes “students face the issue of always being late for class no matter how much they prepare, it’s usually due to unpredictable circumstances, Examples: the buses not following a timely schedule, the walk being too long due to construction around campus, E bikes not being readily available early morning etc. …….. come up with a solution for the students.” I took the exam in a room alone and when i saw that question i thought it was so funny because there’s like no way she came up with that out of nowhere and i just started laughing at it.

Yesterday, I arrived back at my apartment building after work, and I got off the elevator at my floor.

I was walking down the hall, and I noticed that one of my neighbors had put out a new welcome mat. It had a picture of a little weiner dog, with the words "The Grass Is Always Greener Under My Weiner."

"Aww that's cute!" I thought to myself. That apartment belongs to a nice young woman from Pakistan. She introduced herself to me when I moved in. She must have gotten a weiner dog...

Then I noticed that all the other apartment doors had new welcome mats too!! The apartment management must have gone around doling them out while I was at work! The people who own my apartment building are pretty fun, and they're often doing cutesy things like that.

There was a little brown welcome mat in front of my apartment! I was really hoping it would be Weiner-dog themed like the Pakistani girl's mat, but unfortunately it was just blank.

It wasn't until the key to my door wouldn't turn that I realized I had gotten off the elevator on the wrong floor...

The neighbourhood cats like to congregate in my garden. I’ve noticed a lot of them have snake like abilities and are able to squeeze under and into the smallest gaps. They all look pretty well fed and looked after so I have no concerns as to whether they are strays who might need my human input. When I wash the dishes I watch them through the window as if I’m part of a tiny wildlife show that’s made just for me.

This morning a ginger tom cat was eating grass, but not really eating it, just sort of pretending with a little gnaw here and there.

Sometimes if they start fighting I knock loudly on the window to remind them they are behaving inappropriately. I don’t allow bullying in my garden.

I’m the oldest of seven kids and a millennial, but a good chunk of my younger siblings are Gen Z. We are all friends on Instagram. In what is probably classic millennial behavior, I like/comment on anything they post. I don’t care what it is, it’s getting a positive reaction from me.

I’ve played a big part in my younger siblings’ life. This means that half a dozen friends of theirs are also like little siblings to me because I’ve interacted with them so much. For example, I’ve helped my sister’s best friend with getting a job when she needed one, tutored another sister’s friend in math all through high school, etc. Essentially there is this gaggle of Gen Z kids that I am an unofficial older sibling to. Plus my own actual siblings.

What this means is that whenever I post something on Instagram, I get flooded with a gang of Gen Z kids all leaving comments in a uniquely Gen Z style. It startles me, but I love it. Comments on my latest post include “such a diva!!!” “Okay slay, queen” “my icon” “millenial life looks fire 🔥 “ “wheres my invite” and “i eat dirt”

What goes around comes around, I guess. I will continue to leave aggressively positive auntie-style comments on all these kids’ posts, and they keep returning the favor in their own way. It’s a fun cycle