I didn’t want to take an advanced language arts class for my senior year of high school, so I signed up for the standard English 12. I immediately knew I wouldn’t like the class as, in the first week, the teacher started a unit on basic spelling rules.

My classmates and I all knew each other reasonably well, even if we weren’t all friends. One classmate had a slightly unusual name. For this story, I’ll call her Stella, and I’ll call the teacher Mrs. Hale (rhymes with “rail”).

On the first day, Mrs. Hale called the roll.

Mrs. Hale: “Estelle?” (Pronounced “eh-STELL”)

Stella: “Here, but my name is Stella.” (Pronounced “STEL-uh”)

Mrs. Hale: “Oh, all right. I’ll make a note.”

On the second day, Mrs. Hale called the roll.

Mrs. Hale: “Estelle?”

Stella: “It’s Stella.”

On the third day…

Mrs. Hale: “Estelle?”

Stella & Her Friends: “It’s Stella!”

On the fourth day…

Mrs. Hale: “Estelle?”

Most Of The Class: “It’s STELLA!”

This went on through the whole second week until we all kind of gave up, figuring Mrs. Hale would keep mispronouncing Stella’s name no matter what we did. All except me, that is.

At the beginning of the third week, Mrs. Hale explained something to us and wrote examples on the dry-erase board. I raised my hand to point out a minor mistake she had made. She looked at it and insisted she was correct. I showed her information in the textbook to prove otherwise. She just glared at me in an “Are you finished yet?” kind of way. Clearly, I wasn’t going to win that battle, and as a student against a teacher, I was essentially powerless, but I wanted revenge anyway.

Me: “Never mind, Mrs. Hally.” (Rhymes with “rally”)

Mrs. Hale: “My name is Mrs. Hale.”

Me: “I know that, Mrs. Hally.”

Mrs. Hale: “Why are you saying my name like that?”

Me: “Because you refuse to pronounce Stella’s name correctly, even though we have all corrected you several times. So, until you can get my friend’s name right, I will intentionally say your name wrong.”

She glared at me for about a minute and then went on with her lesson (mistakes and all) as if my interruption had never happened.

I called her Mrs. Hally the entire semester. She never got my friend’s name right.

My parents own a nice piece of property in a neighborhood in the suburbs. There is a quarter-acre pond on the property, and to be honest, it’s picturesque AF, mainly because my parents are amazing gardeners and keep everything looking great. It also sits down a small hill a little ways from the house. Throughout the years, we’ve had to chase away people fishing and kids playing. One, because it’s a liability, and two, because there are a ton of huge-a** snapping turtles. We have “no trespassing” and snapper warning signs, but I guess reading signs is for losers?

One night while I am in high school, I look out and see a man standing on the other side of the pond from the house, fishing. He’s about three feet past a “no trespassing” sign. I tell my dad, and he walks out to tell the guy to leave. Being a nosy teenager, I follow.

My dad stands up the hill from the pond and calls out:

Dad: “Excuse me! I need to ask you to leave.”

The guy turns and seeing my frankly short father just snorts.

Fisherman: “Yeah, no.”

Dad: “You are on private property and need to leave.”

Fisherman: “It’s not private property.”

My dad gestures to the signs, and the fisherman changes his tune.

Fisherman: “Yeah. Uh, right, the owner said I could fish here.”

My dad isn’t physically intimidating, but when he’s pissed, the vitriol in his voice is palpable. Usually, these exchanges are short, and the people are very apologetic. But this dude clearly wants to stay and doesn’t care what my dad says.

Dad: “I definitely didn’t tell you that. Get the f*** off my property!”

Fisherman: “WELL, I THOUGHT ANYONE COULD FISH HERE!”

Enter “S”. Who is S? S is a huge-a** f****** snapping turtle that is making its way out of the water with the fisherman’s line in its mouth. S, who is now hooked after attempting to eat the worm, is pissed. Neither my dad nor the fisherman have noticed as they are still arguing.

Dad: “Just leave my f****** yard!”

Fisherman: “F*** off!”

The fisherman is facing us, away from the water, but still holding the rod that S is using to floss his teeth. Finally, he gives up on being able to fish and jerks the rod to leave. It doesn’t move much, but it pisses S off even more. The fisherman turns to see what it is caught on and, instead of a rock, sees an angry prehistoric scrotum with teeth and kevlar meandering its way toward him.

My dad finally sees S and uses this moment to yell:

Dad: “THIS IS WHY YOU CAN’T FISH HERE, DUMBA**!”

The fisherman apparently didn’t want to lose the rod, and he tried to pull it toward himself as if it was a fish he could catch and release and not a demon mini dinosaur. This got S more pissed off, and it lunged, biting the fisherman’s leg. There was blood everywhere, and we had to call an ambulance. He ended up getting some infection and dying like a month later. We made a pen for S, and now he has a little family.

Nah, I’m kidding. The fisherman dropped the rod and scrambled up the hill to his car while my dad laughed. My dad then went down, cut the line, and ushered S into a trap to be rehomed out where kids, dogs, and dumba**es wouldn’t accidentally run into him.

The dragging-heels entitlement still baffles me to this day. If the guy had apologized and been kind, my dad would have geeked out about fishing rods with him. Instead, he lost an apparently nice rod.

There are plenty of fish in the sea — except where snappers ate them all — so fish in a place that doesn’t have warning signs.

I’m finishing my shift at the checkout, and my coworker is taking over so that we don’t have to close the lane. I was about to serve an older male regular before my cover arrived.

Coworker: “Have a good night! I can’t wait to see how different you’ll look tomorrow!”

Customer: “What does she mean? How will you look different tomorrow?”

Me: “I’m cutting all my hair off tonight! Going for a new look!”

Customer: “Oh. Men don’t like very short hair on girls.”

Me: “Well, I am a woman, and I’m not doing it for men.”

Customer: “Oh. Well, I don’t like very short hair on girls.”

Me: “And I don’t like very short guys, but I’ve managed to not be an a**hole to you about it for the last few years.”

Customer: *Angrily* “I’m 5’7″!”

Me: “Honey, you’re 5’5″ on a good day, and I can see that you’re wearing elevator shoes. Okay, byeeeeee!”

The customer complained, but my manager said I was off the clock the moment my cover arrived, so there was nothing he could do. My new hair came out great, by the way!

An older gentleman comes into the store with his digital camera.

Customer: “It’s broken; it’s not powering up. Can you repair it for me?” 

Me: “Let me have a look.”

It seems like it’s out of power, so for troubleshooting, I replace the batteries, and it seems to work just fine.

Customer: “Oh! What did you do?”

Me: “It just needed new batteries.”

I play around with it a little and test a few functions.

Me: “I think you’re all set.”

Customer: “Thank you! I was worried because I thought it was broken. How much do I owe you?”

Me: “Nothing, you’re all set. There’s no repair job to pay for.”

He hands me a twenty.

Customer: “Here. Take this, then.” 

Me: “Seriously, no charge.”

Customer: “Son, let me tell you: I am paying you for your expertise. It might have been a simple fix to a young man like you, but to me, that is knowledge that I am willing to pay for. Never undervalue yourself and your knowledge in this world, ya hear me?”

Me: “I hear you, sir.”

Customer: “Good. And if you really need more justification, I’m paying for those nice new batteries you put in my camera!”

And with that, he was gone. My all-time favorite customer.

My cousin spent his youth as a nitwit, and real life hit him very hard in early adulthood. For those playing along, please pause reading at any time to double-face-palm (and maybe keep a tally or ring a bell).

Once [Cousin] got an idea in his head, no amount of advice, reality, or brain cells would change his mind. Pain and bleeding were usually required.

[Cousin]’s Idea #1: it would be hilarious for my friend and me to run around shooting each other with a BB gun. 

Cue a very unsurprising need to go to the hospital because he got shot right between the eyes. He popped the pellet out like a pimple and went home bleeding from the face to get his mom to take him to the hospital. The very paper-thin lie told was that the gun just went off on a hair trigger. He was fifteen when this happened and had already spent several years under instruction of proper gun control. So, no, this wasn’t even A Christmas Story situation of being in the single-digit age range and having no safety instruction. He knew proper gun control and safety; he just didn’t think he needed it for a mere BB gun.

[Cousin] had a growth spurt in his early teens that topped him out somewhere around six feet tall by the beginning of high school and got into a lot of fights. 

[Cousin]’s Idea #2: “Fighting and brawling are fun, but I get in trouble if I throw the first punch. I know! Just say it is always the other guy’s fault!”

In the four years from freshman to senior, he got into nine or ten fights, all of which were “started by the other guy.” While I agree that some teens decide to prove their toughness by picking fights with the biggest student on the campus, [Cousin] made no secret that he was down to fight anybody, anywhere. But of course, he never started the fights. To hear him tell it, not one single, solitary, fight in his life was because [Cousin] stirred the pot in any way, shape, or form. 

[Cousin] got in trouble a lot. His mom made excuses for him (she’s a nitwit for a whole other story), and thus, he never learned. He reached adulthood with a nose that no longer worked properly for breathing due to it getting broken enough times. (Pain was not a teacher for this one.)

By the time he reached eighteen, despite “never starting fights”, he was on a hair trigger for physically lashing out. It got to the point where I no longer felt safe around him after he very nearly punched me because I bumped into his backpack. (For context, I’m a 5’3″ woman, and he’s six feet tall and can palm my head easier than a basketball.)

[Cousin]’s Idea #3: “Enlisting will give me an easy ride to get my college paid for since I don’t mind fighting.”

Graduation happened (don’t ask how he managed), and [Cousin] got hyped up on recruitment propaganda to join the military. We tried to get him to understand that going into the Service was going to be insanely difficult and extremely strict. Grandpa (World War II and the Vietnam War, Navy) and my dad (Vietnam War, Navy) both told him stories of the boot camp Hell that they had to endure and how none of his goof-off, class clown, schoolyard tough guy nonsense antics would be tolerated. But [Cousin] didn’t take either of them seriously and enlisted.

He lasted about a month before calling his mom, crying about how hard it was in Boot Camp and how he wanted to come home. But this is where reality smacked him full power; you can’t just quit once you enlist. 

“Well, that’s just too bad. You wanted this, so now you’re going to have to be an adult and stick with it,” was the response he got from everyone he tried calling with his sob story.

Unhappy that he was getting zero sympathy, and with the full maturity of his nineteen years of age, [Cousin] got the brightest idea EVER!

[Cousin]’s Idea $4: “If you don’t like boot camp, just run away!”

The first his mom learned of it was getting a call from [Cousin]’s commanding officer, telling her that he had gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave). Nobody knew where he had gone initially. 

When [Cousin] tried calling his family, he was told that he had to go back and face the consequences of his actions. No one was willing to pick a fight with the US Military on his behalf, and he couldn’t understand why. He’d always gotten his butt hauled out of the fire before! What did being a legal adult have to do with it?! 

He was eventually found and picked up, now deeply in trouble. Deciding on his next smartest plan, he pulled the class clown nonsense and played the fool — talking to his shoe as if it were a phone, and things like that.

In the end, [Cousin] was dishonorably discharged. He was happy to have gotten out, only to discover that this didn’t look good at all to prospective employers. He couldn’t get a decent job, eventually having to go to school to become a mechanic. He was very good with vehicle repair, but his dishonorable discharge still haunted him. With more years under his belt and those years under the cloud of Consequences Of His Own Actions, [Cousin] matured quickly.

After discussing how to clear it from his record, [Cousin] reenlisted. This time he wasn’t an idiot about it and managed to not only get through boot camp but also was on his way to getting the rank of Ranger. This was sadly nipped in the bud due to a car accident while on leave, and he ultimately had to be medically discharged due to a back injury. His dishonorable discharge was wiped from his record, and while he still has nitwit qualities, a lot of them are no longer in play in his life.