Back in Swedish high school a few years ago, I had a friend (we’ll call him “NetFriend”) who got most of his facts from the American Internet, and he would constantly talk about pressing issues from the US as if they were current issues right now in Sweden or quote memes as if they were facts.

NetFriend, a bunch of other friends, and I were talking after a math class where we got our test results back.

Me: “So, how did everyone do on the math quiz?”

NetFriend: “Ah, man. I got, like, zero points.”

Friend #1: “What, you didn’t study?”

NetFriend: “Ah, it’s stupid anyway. We don’t learn real stuff here.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

NetFriend: “Like, we only study what numbers are called and how to find areas of triangles, not how to balance a budget or something important!”

Me: “Are you serious?”

NetFriend: “They should be teaching us stuff about reality, like how to pay our taxes and how to vote! How to, like, buy a house and stuff!”

We stare at him, disbelieving, as he continues on that line for a minute or two. I interrupt.

Me: “[NetFriend], can you read?”

NetFriend: “What?”

Me: “The math quiz was about percentages! The questions asked us to calculate interest, figure out how much you save if something is on sale for a certain percentage off, and figure out which job is more lucrative to pick if job A and B have different starting wages but one has a higher guaranteed raise, given three years. Isn’t that ‘real world’ enough?”

NetFriend: “I… didn’t… Well, you know…”

Friend #2: “No, we don’t know.”

NetFriend: “I didn’t… read all the questions.”

Me: “That might explain your low score, you dunce.”

Friend #1: “And have you also missed that the Civics test next week is about voting and taxes?”

NetFriend: “Is it?”

Later that day, I helped him summon the courage to talk to his math teacher about letting him retake the test. [Friend #1] helped him study the math, and [Friend #2] helped him with civics. He was OUR dunce, after all. He also promised to study more in the future, and he did finish high school with passing grades, so lesson learned, I guess.

This is a story from my first year of high school. A young boy with mobility issues attended a number of my classes; some days he would get around using a pair of crutches, and on bad days, he would use a wheelchair. He was also well below average height and suffered from what is known locally as “Wee Man Syndrome”. In other words, he would regularly try to pick fights with people much, much bigger than him for little or no reason. Although, he was fairly safe in the knowledge that nobody wanted to be known as the person who fought the small kid in a wheelchair.

That is, until the events of this story.

One day, in the middle of a class, our teacher had to step out. I don’t know why, but we were left unsupervised for what felt like a really long time, and most of us kids started to have a laugh and carry on.

Now, I forget what started it but the kid, who was using his crutches on this occasion, took exception to something a much taller boy said and made a critical error of judgment.

Wee Guy: “I want to fight you.”

Tall Kid: “What did you say?”

Wee Guy: “You heard me: I want to fight you. Square go, right now!”

His error of judgment here was that the kid he was speaking to had a reputation for being a bit wild and for not taking crap from anyone, not even from teachers (hence having spent a fair bit of time in detention).

Tall Kid: “Aye,. Okay, then. Let’s go.”

At that point, he got out of his seat and walked over to the Wee Guy’s desk. The Wee Guy promptly panicked and tried to hit him over the head with one of his crutches. The Tall Kid snatched the crutch out of the air, threw it away, and then picked the Wee Guy up by his collar.

Tall Kid: “Listen very carefully because this is the only warning you are getting. I don’t care that you can’t walk. I think you’re a coward because you pick fights knowing people don’t want to fight you. Well, the next time you talk crap to me or any of my pals, I am going to make you eat your crutches.”

Then, he shoved the Wee Guy back into his seat, picked the crutch up, slammed it onto the desk in front of him, and walked back to his own seat.

The teacher came back to class not long afterward, so that was pretty much the end of it, but funnily enough, I don’t recall the Wee Guy picking any more fights after this incident. I don’t remember what the class was, but I do remember the lesson.

When I was in college, back in ye olden days, my professor for Chemistry 101 assigned lab partners. We were also expected to “help” each other, tutoring as necessary. He had access to our transcripts from both college and high school.

He assigned me a tall guy we’ll call Bill. Bill was… not good at Chemistry. Every single lab consisted of me telling Bill how to do it, correcting every little thing he did wrong, and basically doing it all myself while Bill “helped” by writing down what I told him (after I spelled way more words for him than you would expect).

Bill would constantly chat about stuff — not chemistry-related stuff, just random stuff. I was venting to my fiancé one day and mentioned something Bill had said.

Fiancé: *Giving me a weird look* “Do you really not know why you were assigned to keep Bill passing?”

Me: “Why?”

Fiancé: “Football.”

This was a big football school, division 1. Bill was their starting quarterback.

He went on to a fairly unremarkable pro football career.

When I was school-aged, my mother would drop me off at Sunday school while she attended the adult church service.

As was typical, in the weeks before Christmas, we were inundated with the story of Jesus’s birth: being born in the barn, cradled in a manger, visits from the Wise Men, the little drummer boy, etc.

Then, right after Christmas, we were taught about some of Jesus’s teachings. This led up to Easter, where Jesus was betrayed, arrested, convicted, and then executed.

One of my female classmates broke into tears when we first were taught about his execution, which was rather brutal. The teacher tried to console the girl.

Teacher: “It’s okay. This happened hundreds of years ago.”

Girl: “But he was just a baby!”

She obviously didn’t get that the narrative was covering his whole life; she thought it was happening in real time. Still, the crucifixion story is a bit graphic for elementary kids to handle.

It’s my first day as a freshman at a college a few hours away from my family, and it also happens to be my nineteenth birthday! A friend of mine has just given me a large cookie cake with “Happy Birthday” written on it in large letters and is introducing me to some fellow freshmen she met during orientation.

One of the guys comes over to me and sees my cookie cake.

Guy: “Oh, nice cake! Is it your birthday today?”

Me: “Yeah, I’m nineteen today!”

Guy: “Cool. Mine is tomorrow, actually.” *Jokingly* “Do you think I could get a piece of that cake?”

Me: *Laughs out loud* “Sure!” 

And that’s the story I tell my children of how I met their father — and lured him in with a giant cookie!