CONTENT WARNING: War, Serious Injury (Limb Amputation)
 

My grandfather was conscripted into the Red Army. In 1944, he fought from Stalingrad to Budapest as a tank driver. In Budapest, his tank was blown up, and he managed to get out with only one leg to be amputated.

A few weeks later, in the hospital, he got a false leg and was told that he was not allowed to drive anymore.

As he got up, a nurse helped him out of the hospital. A commissar walked up to him.

Commissar: “Comrade, I see you are ready to fight for the people again.”

Nurse: “But he cannot walk, let alone fight!”

Commissar: “Nonsense! He’s got both legs, both arms, and a head. That’s enough!”

My grandfather realised that the commissar was trying to joke with this description. The nurse, however, did not. Instead, she grabbed his false leg and pulled it — pulled it straight out of his pants while my grandfather was leaning on her.

Nurse: “See? He can not run anymore; he even has to relearn how to walk.”

The commissar turned white, the nurse was all red, and my grandfather started laughing. The commissar told him to spend some time walking and getting used to the new leg and then just walked away.

The nurse became my grandmother, and they lived happily together.

I worked for a weekly newspaper, running a small design department of five people, and we had just lost an investor and canceled a major product, so layoffs were inevitable. The new boss called me into her office, holding a document that she tried to hide from me, but I could catch a glimpse and saw that the new suggested head count for my department was down to three.

Me: “No way we can do this job with three people, even with the reduced workload. We tried it in the past when we had the same mix of products that we have now, and three people just weren’t enough. If one person goes on vacation, it’s barely possible; if someone else gets sick, we’re dead. The bare minimum we must have for this department to run properly is four. I will not sign off on anything fewer than four people. You can try it with someone else running the department, but soon, you will be scrambling to hire a fourth person, someone who would need to be trained, and it would be a huge risk to day-to-day operations.”

Manager: “Okay… Four people it is. But you’ll still have to let one person go. Who will it be?”

Me: “It will be me. This is my one-month notice.”

She was quite shocked, but unbeknownst to her, I had just gotten the phone call two hours prior that I’d been waiting for for months: the job offer for literally three times what I was making, for an organization known to be an excellent employer, with great benefits, decent hours, and excellent job security. The timing couldn’t have been better, and I shudder to think what would have happened if I’d gotten that phone call a day later.

It all worked out fine in the end, one of my people was promoted to my post, and things have been running quite smoothly from what I gather. And my new job was truly life-changing in more ways than one; I’m still there.

I need to do a small skit with my two younger brothers for a youth group we’re in, and I am explaining to my mother how it will work out.

Me: “We need to take two videos, and then later, someone in the youth group will combine them.”

Mum: “Why don’t you combine them? You did that for French class, didn’t you?”

Me: “Yes, but that was putting together five separate videos that didn’t need to look natural at all. It wasn’t like this, where it needs to look natural.”

Mum: “But it should be just fine; that’s exactly the same thing.”

Me: “No, it’s not. It is not the same thing at all.”

Mum: “I think you should do it anyway; maybe it’ll be better than the other person who’ll do it.”

I’m still in high school and the other person actually does video editing for a career.

Me: “MUM. I DO NOT HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO DO THIS. I CANNOT.”

Mum: “Okay, you can try it later. Thanks for agreeing to do it!”

Me: “…”

About six years ago, I went on a family vacation to Budapest on Portugal’s flag carrier. This happened on the flight back home.

After climbing for about fifteen or twenty minutes, the Captain made an announcement.

“Hello. Unfortunately, we will have to return to Budapest to pick up some passengers who did not board. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

We turned back, landed twenty or so minutes after the announcement, and taxied to a gate only for the doors to open and a four-member family to board. They were not famous and they were not important; they were a family on vacation in Budapest, just like mine.

Later on, we found out they made a mistake and entered the wrong bus, saw our plane depart, and spoke to the bus driver who passed the information along for everyone to coordinate the return of the aircraft and boarding of the passengers. It was nice to see that, for a change, an airline didn’t have a “Your mistake, your problem, buy a new ticket, we won’t waste our money with fees and fuel” attitude, but were rather truly interested in getting all their passengers from A to B.

(Our professor tells us this story about her student visiting Hungary and going out to eat.)

Student: “I’ll have the Gulag, please.”

Waiter: “Excuse me?”

Student: “Gulag.”

Waiter: “Oh, you mean goulash. You don’t want to say that other word again.”

(Goulash is a traditional stew. A Gulag was a Soviet work camp.)