(My fiancé and I are currently in a very long-distance relationship. I’m in New York, but he’s in Chile because of his job. However, we still stay close by constantly communicating over text throughout the day. To liven up the conversation, I get the idea to try to ‘Rickroll’ him with the first word in every text.)

Fiancé: “Good morning!”

Me: “NEVER say good morning to me this early. Ugh.”

Fiancé: “Oh, okay. Start waking up already.”

Me: “GONNA be a few minutes.”

Fiancé: “So, are you going to be working tonight?”

Me: “GIVE me a minute. Still waking up.”

Fiancé: “I think you said that already.”

Me: “YOU are right, I did. What did you ask again?”

Fiancé: “Are you working tonight?”

Me: “UP to my schedule… let me check.”

Me: “NEVER getting a break until the twenty-eighth. No, wait…”

Me: “GONNA have tomorrow off!”

Fiancé: “Awesome!”

Me: “LET me remind you that I have tomorrow off.”

Fiancé: “Um… awesome?”

Me: “YOU looking forward to watching Doctor Who when it starts up again?”

Fiancé: “Of course I am! What kind of nerd would I be otherwise?”

Me: “DOWN-to-earth and boring and no real nerd at all.”

Me: “NEVER forget that I love you, my real nerd.”

Fiancé: “Your real nerd? Are you suggesting I was a fake nerd before?”

Me: “GONNA be honest… no nerd is more real than you.”

Fiancé: “Um… what constitutes a fake nerd?”

Me: “RUN away! An army of fake nerds are heading our way with all of their lens-less 3D glasses!”

(He stops replying for awhile, so I take advantage of the pause to finish a line of the song.)

Me: “AROUND 4 PM now and I’m still in my pyjamas.”

Me: “AND now I am dressed!”

Me: “DESERT your job and come back to me!”

Me: “YOU know you want to!”

Fiancé: “That’s not really an option, but I miss you.”

(He goes to bed at this point, so I happily continue the song.)

Me: “NEVER gonna forget the first time we played Pokémon together. It was so magical and wonderful. I am simply never…”

Me: “GONNA forget it.”

Me: “MAKE me a promise… never battle anyone the way you battled with me.”

Me: “YOU definitely had the advantage because you’d been playing longer. I almost cried when you beat me. In fact, I still…”

Me: “CRY when you defeat my poor Pokémon.”

Me: “NEVER have I met a man like you. No other man plays Pokémon the way you do. I know with certainty that no other man is ever”

Me: “GONNA compare. You are the very best that no one ever was, and I know that I will never regret it when I…”

Me: “SAY ‘I do!’ on our wedding day.”

Me: “GOODBYE, time for work!”

(After work, I pick it up again.)

Me: “NEVER mind that goodbye… hello again!”

Me: “GONNA sleep late tomorrow. By the way, I want to…”

Me: “TELL you that I love you very much! Goodnight!”

(As soon as I wake up the next day, I continue it.)

Me: “A good morning to you!”

Fiancé: “Um… good afternoon.”

Me: “LIE! A lie!”

Fiancé: “Sounds like you’re calling me a liar.”

Me: “AND you are not, so I suppose I have to accept the fact that I slept so late…”

Me: “HURT foot feeling better today?”

Fiancé: “Um… my foot is fine?”

Me: “YOU must be glad of that!”

(I allow a pause.)

Me: “Hey, dear?”

Fiancé: “Yes?”

Me: “Read the first word of every text from me for the last 24 hours.”

Fiancé: “What the heck!”

(My friend has arranged a disco birthday party for her six-year-old daughter at a local club. She invited ten of her daughter’s best friends, including my daughter. One of the mothers walks up.)

Parent: “We are here for [Daughter]’s party.”

Friend: “Great to see you!” *to the child* “If you’ll take a seat over there with [Daughter] while we wait for everyone else?”

Parent: *to all four of her children* “Go and sit with [Daughter].”

Friend: “But we only invited [Child].”

Parent: “No. It’s not fair that you only invited [Child]. I expect you to take all of my children.”

(The parent walks off and leaves the venue before we could react. My friend has to pay an added $45 for the extra children. One is a toddler, and they are very undisciplined. I stay and help supervise. At the end of the party we have to wait for the parent to finally turn up.)

Parent: *shoves something into my friend’s hand* “Here, buy a gift for your daughter.” *takes kids and leaves*

(My friend, standing stunned, opens her hand to reveal $2.)

Me: “I’m guessing that woman will be wondering why her children will never get invited to anything more than once.”

This story is part of our Birthday Party Roundup!

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(My friend and I are trying out a new bar we have heard good things about for a girls’ night out. There is a guy who has had an eye on one of us the whole evening that we had been trying to avoid. However, he manages to sit himself next to us at the bar.)

Him: *to my friend* “Hey, let me buy you a drink.”

Her: “No, thank you.”

Him: “Aw, come on. I know you’ve been eyeing me all night.”

(Admittedly, this was partially true, but only because we were trying to see if he was still following us.)

Him: “I know you want a piece of this.”

Her: “No, thank you, I’m in a relationship.”

Him: “So what?”

Her: “Excuse me?”

Him: “I said, ‘So what?’ I’m sure I can make you forget all about him.”

Her: “How dare you?! How dare you assume that my relationship is inconsequential? If it did not matter, I would not have brought it up! And how dare you assume that I am so vapid and fickle that I would throw away a relationship that I consciously choose to be in for a one-night-stand with a stranger? How dare you think your own brief satisfaction so much more important than the emotional well-being of a man you don’t know? The only reason I mentioned being in a relationship was because I wanted to be nice and turn you down without implying any fault in you. Now I see that I was incredibly misguided. In the few sentences you’ve said, you have proved that you are a primeval, misogynistic, self-centered a**-hole who views women as nothing more than glorified sex toys. Even if I were not in a relationship, I would never consider doing anything with you.”

(By this time, many of the surrounding people, particularly the women, have fallen silent and are watching us intently.)

Him: *after a moment of shock* “Well, if I had known you were such a c***, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

Her: “Again, you prove my point. You try to insult me by using a word that implies that my having a vagina is something to be ashamed of. I am inherently proud of being a woman, and would much rather it than the penis that has given you such an undeserved sense of entitlement, arrogance, and ego.”

(He slams his beer down on the counter and storms out. All the surrounding patrons seemed stunned beyond words.)

Bartender: “That guy has been harassing women here for ages, but has never done anything bad enough that we could kick him out. For the rest of the night your drinks are on the house.”

(We had women coming up and to my friend and thanking her, telling us story after story about him. We’re now regulars at that bar, and haven’t seen him since.)

(This happens while I’m setting up a new prepaid phone with a cute little lady.)

Me: “Alright, ma’am. Go ahead and press the phone’s power button and let me know when it has powered up.”

Customer: “The power? What is power?”

Me: “It’s the button you normally hang calls up with. Looks like a little red telephone.”

Customer: “Ah, I see!”

(A few minutes pass in silence.)

Me: “Ma’am, are you having trouble turning the phone on?”

Customer: “Yes. It doesn’t work. There’s no light.”

Me: “I’m sorry. Check and make sure the battery is pushed in all the way on the back.”

Customer: “Battery? What battery?”

Me: “It came with the phone, in the package. It’s small, black, and has three little metal contacts on one end. You need to put it inside the back part of your phone.”

Customer: “I don’t see a battery. There isn’t one in the phone, and there isn’t one in the package, either.”

Me: “You don’t see it? It should have been packaged in a separate little baggie–”

Customer: “OH! That! That’s in my candy dish!”

Me: “Your candy dish?”

Customer: “Yeah! I saw it on the table and thought it was a piece of chocolate!”

(Line activations for Internet service can take up until midnight of the activation date. I am explaining this to the customer and helping him get the software installed on his PC in the meantime.)

Customer: “So, what kind of things can go wrong?”

Me: “Well, a number of things. Most of them are relatively simple to sort out and we should be able to talk it through.”

Customer: “If it doesn’t work after midnight, if something goes wrong, what would I need to do?”

Me: “Okay, well, we’re open twenty-four hours, so even if it’s one minute past midnight, give us a call back and we can do some troubleshooting.”

Customer: “Send out an engineer. I don’t want some f****** technically untrained idiot in call center messing around. I want an actual technician sent out.”

Me: “I assure you, our call center staff are the first line of troubleshooting and can resolve the problem over the phone most of the time.”

Customer: “Just send me out a f***ing engineer now. I know someone in a call centre won’t be able to resolve my fault.”

Me: “So, what exactly is the problem?”

Customer: “I don’t know. It hasn’t happened yet!”