(I’m in a small, quiet bookstore with a friend. We’re about to buy a stack of books when three teenage girls, 16 or 17, come in giggling and talking. I’m slightly irritated when they pick up a book.)

Girl #1: “Oh em gee! What is this book?”

Girl #2: “Who cares? Here, I’ll take one, too.”

(Girl #2 picks up a book. I’m a bit curious at this point, so I peek over my own book.)

Girl #3: “Hurry up, we need to go shopping!”

Girl #1: “Okay, okay! Hashtag calm down!”

(Now Girl #1 pulls out a phone, handing her book to Girl #3. Girls #2 & #3 are holding books and pose with them for a selfie.)

Girls #1, #2, and #3: “Hashtag nerd! Oh em gee!”

(They then put down the books and leave. I look at my friend.)

Me: “Did three girls just come in here, take a selfie with a couple books, and leave?”

Friend: “This generation is so f***ed.”

Store Owner: *woman in her 80s* “Yep.”

(I am walking towards the hospital, behind an older woman who is walking extremely slowly. As I need to get to my own medical appointment, I walk around her and through the door.)

Woman: *angrily* “Well, YOU’RE no gentleman!”

Me: “Pardon me?”

Woman: “You’re no gentleman!”

Me: “Because I walked in ahead of you?”

Woman: “Yes.”

Me: “So I have to walk behind you and can’t just go around you?”

Woman: “Well, yes!”

Me: “…” *and kept walking*

(I have been dating my boyfriend for a while now. My friend and I are talking about him while we’re out shopping.)

Me: “My boyfriend and his sister are both adopted.”

Friend: “Oh, that’s cool; does he know anything about his birth parents?”

Me: “Not really. He considers his adoptive family his only family.”

(We talk a bit about more about his adoption and family situation. Then we happen to run into his sister. I introduce his sister to my friend and then we go about our shopping and his sister leaves.)

Friend: “I could tell that was his sister. The two of them look so much alike!”

(For the record, he’s got dark hair, dark eyes, tan skin, and roundish features, while his sister is light haired, blue eyed, freckled, with sharp features.)

(My friend and I often do bad impressions of older people complaining about situations, not aimed at anybody in particular. We are walking to a shop behind an older gentleman and passing an alleyway that some builders are working in. They drop something that makes a very loud noise, which catches the old gentleman’s and our attention.)

Friend: “Jaysus, they’re wreckin’ the place down there!”

Me: “I know! It’s shockin’!”

Friend: “Merciful Jaysus, shockin’ indeed!”

Me: “That wouldn’t have happened in my day!”

(Just then, the older gentlemen looked over his shoulder at us and sped up. My friend clapped her hand to her mouth and we hurried into the shop. We’re convinced he thought we were mocking him!)

(In my first year of college, I really ‘gothed out’ after finally finding like-minded friends and retailers in that town. I go home at weekends, so it often shocks a few people in my hometown who haven’t seen me dressed so “intensely” before. My mother and I are in a local discount store that October, where the owners really go to town in their Halloween aisle. A woman has her two young daughters with her, who are nieces of a coworker of my mother’s. They keep sneaking looks around their mother’s legs at me in all my purple-and-black glory, while we both politely ignore them and repress our giggles. When they go home, they burst into the room their aunt is in….)

Child #1: “[Coworker]! We saw a witch in [Shop] today!”

Child #2: “She was a real witch! She had black on her eyes and big black sleeves and everything!”

(I’m still not sure if it’s a compliment that she knew exactly who they were talking about….)