(I’m driving my daughter and a friend to an amusement park. It’s August, the highway is full of people driving to and from holidays, and there are also major road-works going on. We come to a fork that I know well. It’s being refurbished, and the speed limits decrease accordingly. Because I’m taking the left bend, I stay on what would be the fast lane, even though the limit is now 60 on all lanes. A driver appears behind my car, flashing his headlights, but I can’t change lanes to let him overtake, nor can I accelerate. He guns up the engine and overtakes me on the right side, giving me the stink-eye and mouthing bad words as he passes by. A few kilometres later, there’s a queue caused by yet more road-work. Cars are driving bumper to bumper, and I happen to side up with the guy who overtook me. He has both windows down, so I wave at him.)

Me: “Sir, I’m sorry that I wouldn’t go past 60… It’s because there are three speed cameras in that spot. Have a nice holiday!”

(I then rolled up my windows and watched him stew until the exit.)

(There is a drive-on beach in my town. People sometimes get their cars stuck in the sand, and are then anxious to get them free before the tide comes in. One day we are there in our Samurai, about the smallest 4WD truck ever made. We see this huge SUV, with a boat trailer, which has gotten stuck at water’s edge. It’s been spinning its tires so much that now there’s water under them, as the truck’s belly rests on the sand. A young man in a huge pickup truck with plastic “balls” on it has tried to pull him out, breaking his tow rope.)

Young Man: “Sorry, old man, you’re stuck!”

Me: “Mind if I give it a try?”

Stuck Man: “Please do!”

Young Man: “Are you kidding? Is that thing even all-wheel drive?!”

Me: “It’ll work. Can I use your truck as a dead-weight?”

(I use my winch and snatch block — big pulley — and pull the SUV right out, trailer and all.)

Stuck Man: “Wow, you really know what you are doing! That is a fantastic little truck!”

Young Man: “Grr…”

Me: *a minute later, to my daughter* “I should have ripped those balls off his truck and said, ‘You won’t be needing these anymore!’”

When I was going to college at a commuter campus, there was one semester that, due to tight finances, I was stuck driving an old car. It had a recurring problem where the engine would randomly die while idling. I was working on getting money together to get a more reliable car, but in the meantime I had to use this one.

Usually, when the engine died, it would start right up again without issue, but every once in a while it would take several minutes of letting the engine sit before I could get it started again.

One time I was on my way to class, sitting at a red light at a busy intersection, when the engine died. Unfortunately, it did not start up again right away, and I knew I was going to be stuck there for a bit. I immediately put on my emergency flashers while trying to gesture to the lady in the car behind me that she would have to go around. The light turned green, and the lady started honking at me and angrily gesturing for me to move. I frantically tried to start the car again, hoping I could at least get it going enough to pull up on the curb and out of the way.

While I was doing this, I saw a woman who was parked nearby get out of her car, walk up to the lady behind me, and angrily shout, “You dumb b****! Can’t you see he’s having a problem with his car? GO THE F*** AROUND!”

The lady squealed her tires in doing so. The woman who did the shouting then came up to my window and in the kindest, sweetest voice asked if I was okay. I told her that I just needed to try to get my car moving enough to get it out of traffic. She said, “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Just do what you have to do. I’ve got your back!”

I thanked her profusely, and finally managed to get the car moving long enough to pull it into a parking lot where I could wait for a tow truck. That turned out to be the last time that car worked right, and I ended up getting a replacement soon after.

While I definitely wouldn’t have handled the situation the same way that woman did, it was an amazing feeling to have a stranger so fiercely watching out for me!

(I am working at a theater, which at one point was a different theater. Due to the owner refusing to put any money into the theater for twenty years, it closed down as soon as it was no longer the only theater in the town. Among other problems, there were recurring issues with the plumbing in the women’s restroom. It is now the grand opening of the current theater. The women’s bathroom has been redone, with new toilets, tiling, etc. We have over 300 people at the opening party, and while we have tested all of the women’s toilets, we have not tested them to that level of use. The ones on one side of the restroom, all sharing one pipe, are fine. The ones on the other side, sharing a different pipe, begin overflowing. ALL of them. In addition, water begins to come up through the drain in the floor. We end up calling an emergency plumber, and I spend an hour and a half mopping dirty water off of the floor before the plumber gets there, so that it doesn’t soak into the floor tiles and cause issues later. Because we are a small theater, we only have the one set of bathrooms. We end up rotating who is allowed into the men’s restroom, two guys and then two girls. This causes some minor grumbling, but for the most part people are very understanding… except for this guy:)

Upset Guy: “I just don’t understand why they can’t send the girls into the stalls and let us use the urinals!”

Coworker: “Some women are uncomfortable with that.”

Upset Guy: “That’s ridiculous! Why would they be so uncomfortable with that? They’re in the stalls; we’re at the walls! That should be fine! Come on, [Friend]! Tell them I’m right!”

Friend: *quietly but firmly* “If it was my daughter, I’d be uncomfortable with it, too.”

(The guy spluttered and protested a bit more, before either getting his turn, or giving up — I was still in the ladies’ room, so I didn’t see which. It made a night of mopping dirty bathroom water a little less monotonous, I guess, but I would rather have not had to listen to that guy.)

This happened in the 1990s when tokens were the main way to pay for public transit.

A friend of mine got on a bus around Thanksgiving. After he got on, a weird-looking guy carrying a huge frozen turkey got on the bus. He dropped a token in the slot ostentatiously, announcing, “This one’s for me,” and then did it again, saying, “This one’s for the turkey.” Then he sat down and put the turkey in the seat next to him.

As the bus went along its route, it started to fill up. At a certain point, there were no empty seats left. A lady went up to the guy and asked him to move his turkey so she could sit down. At that point, the guy said dramatically, “The turkey pays, the turkey stays.” The bus driver confirmed that the man had paid for the turkey’s seat, so there was nothing the lady could do about it.

Frankly, I think he was brilliant for buying a seat for his turkey — carrying a frozen, 20-pound object on your lap would not be fun!