(I’m babysitting a three-year-old girl and we’re playing a game that features different characters on a board. One is a ghost.)

Me: “Ooh, a ghost!”

Girl: “We have a ghost downstairs named Jack. He doesn’t do anything. He just stands by the stairs and waits.”

Me: “So, when is your mom coming back again?”

(I am having one of those bad memory days and post about it on Facebook:)

Me: “I am watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and some part reminded me that I had to look up something on the Internet. By the time I got up and walked to my computer, I had completely forgotten what I wanted to find.”

Friend: “Someone must have cast obliviate on you…”

(We’re on a family road trip and my brother’s friend is along, and his parents wrote a letter authorizing my parents to take him to another country. There are two adults and one minor named Jones, two adults named Wilson, and one minor named Smith.)

Guard: “Can I see your IDs, please?”

Dad: “Here you go.”

(The guard looks through them for a bit.)

Guard: “And who does Mr. Smith belong to?”

Mom: “The people who wrote this letter.”

Guard: “You don’t know how happy I am to hear that. Go on, folks!”

(The man behind me in the parking garage is attempting to tailgate and punches it, tapping my bumper. There is no damage, but considering the circumstances, I insist on calling the cops. The man gets very angry with this, including yelling at bystanders, shoving a camera in my face, and implying I am a racist simply because he happens to be black and I am white. I insist on calling the cops, regardless of what he says and does.)

Man: “You are a terrible person, you know that? You are horrible! God will judge you for this!”

(To make matters even worse, he tried to leave the garage, but when I didn’t completely move my car, he ended up paying the parking fee just to get out. He would have fled if the security guards didn’t show up and convince him to stay, since I had already called the cops. The whole time he insisted he was the victim and I was racially profiling him, despite my inability to see what he looked like before I got out of the car, rather than admit that he hit my car trying to get out of an $8 ticket. May he be able to justify that when HE meet his maker. Until then, I suppose the police report and a hike in insurance is justice enough for abusing discrimination claims over something so petty.)

(My dad is an intense mountain biker; he’s 50 and has been biking for over a decade. You maybe wouldn’t guess since he looks his age but he’s really healthy and does things like river rescue training in his spare time, so he’s got a lot of stamina. He’s also a pretty nice guy. He’s all about following the rules of the road, like pedestrians first, and minding the horseback riders sharing the trails. Just today he told me this story about a rookie biker while he was up on one of the smaller, longer trails.)

Dad: “I was heading up on a trail, and I got to a part that was straight mountain on one side and a drop on the other, and this young guy comes up behind me. Now usually when a biker wants to pass anyone, he’ll say ‘on your left’ and wait until anyone in front of him moves. This guy, though, I guess he didn’t want to. He decided to speed up to try to pass me and he bumped me. He was on the side with the rock; he almost tipped me off. This was a very thin trail, too. There’s barely any room for two people to walk side by side. He bumped me, and he lost balance and stopped, and I stopped. So then I said:”

(In story:)

Dad: “Hey! You gotta be careful, man. You could’ve gotten someone hurt.”

Rookie: “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”

Dad: “Seriously, man, all you gotta do is give a heads up.”

Rookie: “Yeah, whatever.” *rides away*

(Out of story:)

Dad: “So I decided not to get angry; you know, he’s just a cocky young guy, he probably wanted to feel good about himself or thought I was going slow, whatever. I decided, hey, I’ve got time. I caught up to him, just riding a ways behind him, not losing sight. Eventually, he took a turn for an easier pass, because there’s this incline that’s shorter but really steep. I took the steep path and when he got back on the trail he ended up behind me. Afterwards, I kept my rhythm, but whenever I could hear him catch up, I’d speed up ahead until I was far enough and go back to my rhythm. We kept this up for an hour or so. I gotta say, he did help me beat my best time.”