I’m a nurse, working with inmates that are detoxing from drugs and/or alcohol. This particular inmate is a pregnant female with very noticeable track marks from intravenous drug use on both her neck and arms. We have deputies that stand next to us at all times when passing out medications.

An inmate shows her identification wristband. I pour the patient’s medications — vitamins and anti-nausea — into her med cup.

Inmate: “What’s this s*** you’re giving me?!  I ain’t taking this crap! I ain’t going to take anything that’s gonna hurt my baby!! Y’all are trying to kill my baby!”

The deputy and I look at each other and then back at the inmate.

Deputy: “You’re in here because you’re shooting yourself up with illegal drugs, while pregnant, and you think this nurse is trying to kill you by giving you prenatal vitamins? Yeah, that makes sense. Your choice on taking the vitamins or not, but stop wasting the nurse’s time and go sit down.”

Me: *To the deputy* “You are my favorite person ever.”

The sad thing is, I get inmates like this at least once or twice a month.

This was related to me by someone I knew back in the 1970s; it took place around 1960. He went to a local new car dealer to look into buying a car. As part of that process, the salesman suggested that they take his car to the service bay so an appraisal could be done for trade-in value purposes. He wound up not liking the final purchase price, so he decided to not buy anything. That’s when things got weird.

They claimed they didn’t have his car. The salesman, who had taken his keys to hand off to the service person who took the car around back for the appraisal, tried claiming that this didn’t happen, and told him that he’d probably need to just buy a car.

He called the police via payphone. When they arrived, he told them what had happened. They addressed the salesman, asking him where the car and the keys were. When the salesman tried to claim he never received any keys, they started to arrest him, at which point the salesman admitted to receiving the keys and handing them off to someone else.

The police informed him that unless he could find the person he had handed the keys off to, he’d be arrested. The rest of the search for the “missing” car took place out of sight of my friend — the police told him to remain where he was while they went looking — but the police just kept doing the same thing until they finally found someone willing to take them to the car rather than be arrested.

Shady car dealers have been with us a long time.

My neighborhood has been dealing with a rash of thefts of packages and mail from porches and mailboxes. I end up installing a camera to hopefully catch whoever it was in the act, and I end up getting a hit when a jacket I ordered gets stolen from my porch. The perp is a teenage girl who walks up to my porch and shoves the package into her backpack.

I manage to get a still from the camera that shows a fairly clear shot of her face while she is shoving the package into the bag, which I put onto a poster and post on a couple of the lamp posts near my house, asking for information about the “package thief.” I don’t actually expect anything to come from it; I just hope to maybe shame them into stopping or something. 

To my surprise, I get a phone call the very next day.

Me: “Hello, this is [My Name].

Woman: “You need to take down those posters!”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Woman: “You are in big trouble if you don’t take those posters down, now!”

Me: “I’m not taking down anything. I have the right to record my property, and I can use the images how I wish.”

Woman: “My daughter isn’t a thief!”

I look at the phone, taking note of the number in a text document in case I can look up who this is later. I respond in a fakely sweet voice.

Me: “Oh, I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea I was accusing such an upstanding young woman. If I could have your name and address, I’ll write a personal apology for the inconvenience.”

Woman: “It’s [Woman], at [Address].”

I stare at my phone again, this time in shock that it actually worked, before I quickly type things down.

Me: “Right, that will be in the mail shortly.”

I hang up before she can say anything else, and then promptly call the police. I explain what happened and what I did. The person on the other end is a little hung up on the poster and tells me that I really shouldn’t have done that but does promise to look into things. 

It is a few days until I hear back, but I end up getting contacted to get the actual video as evidence. Apparently, the police sent an officer by to check things out and the woman spit in their face after opening the door, which was not a smart move. They found the packaging for a bunch of packages in the house, but unfortunately, most of the stuff had already been sold on, so I never got my jacket back or any of the other packages.

However, the story doesn’t end there. About a month or so later, my front door is vandalized with spray paint, including a note about me “running my mouth.” I repaint it, and then a couple of days later, I get another call from the same number.

Me: “Hello?”

Woman: “That’s what you get! You ruined my daughter’s life, and I’m going to make your life a living h***! You b****!”

She tore off, swearing at me and screaming until I hung up. She immediately tried to call back, but I kept ignoring it while I called up the police again. In a massive karmic coincidence, there was a cop car driving through in the area that happened to be passing by my house just in time to see this woman’s daughter, with a spray can, defacing my door again. So, while I was on the phone, I got a knock at the door and found two officers, with the girl, explaining how they’d seen her graffitiing my doorway.

I explained things, they took the daughter to head over to her mother’s house, and I haven’t heard a thing about it since then. So far, no more graffiti or stolen packages. We’ll see if whatever happened actually sticks.

At the time of this story, you have to be 18 to buy cigarettes. I’m with two sisters; one is 20 and the other is 17. We get to the gas station and the older one needs cigarettes but she has a headache and doesn’t want to go in. They decide to send the younger one in with the older one’s ID. The younger sister goes in and comes out empty-handed.

Younger Sister: “Sis, they don’t have [Brand #1]; what else do you want?”

Older Sister: “See if they have [Brand #2].” 

The younger one goes in and again comes out empty-handed.

Younger Sister: “They’re out of [Brand #2]; what else did you want?”

Older Sister: “Try [Brand #3].”

[Younger Sister] goes back in and comes back out empty-handed again.

Younger Sister: “She said she won’t sell them as they’re obviously for you and not me.”

[Older Sister] went in with the younger and both showed their IDs, explaining that the cigarettes were for the older but that she didn’t want to go in. The older sister threw a fit when the cashier still refused the sale. I don’t know what they were expecting, and they were probably really lucky the cashier didn’t call the cops on them.

My friend is moving to a new state, and since my house is midway between his new and old house, I offer to let him stay the night while driving through with the stuff he is moving. My friend is on his laptop in my living room when a call comes in, but I happen to overhear part of it while he walks past me heading to my guest room.

Friend: “Oh, okay, sure. I must have it out in my car somewhere. But my car is full of stuff for the move so it would take me a long time to find it…”

My friend trails off as he enters the guest room. He shows back up a few seconds later, sans phone, and goes back to his laptop in the living room

Me: “What happened to your phone?”

Friend: “Plugged it in to charge; it turns out it was almost dead.”

Me: “Your call ended that fast?”

Friend: “I sure hope not.”

Me: “Huh?”

Friend: “It can take an awfully long time to hunt down a tiny card in such a full car, you know.”

Me: “So, are you going to your car to look for something?”

Friend: “Definitely not. It’s not like I need to find the card, anyway; I memorized my social security number back in high school.”

He is clearly enjoying my confusion, but finally, he apparently decides to let me in on the joke.

Friend: “That call was obviously a scammer. Once I figured that out, I promised him I’d dig up my social security card in my car to give to him.”

Me: “Why would you do that?”

Friend: “Because I stressed that it would take a long time to find due to the move. I’m curious how long I can get him to wait for me to ‘search my car’ before he gives up.”

Me: “You put your scammer on hold?”

Friend: “Pretty much. I figure every second he wastes waiting for me is time he isn’t scamming someone else out of their money.”

In the end, my friend went back twice with “wrong” identification, acting confused and promising to go back out to his car to find the right card each time the scammer told him it wasn’t his social. After the second time, he ran out of believable ways to screw up finding the card, so he just left the scammer on hold indefinitely after the second time. He never bothered to check how long the scammer waited after the second visit, but I imagine my friend wasted at least twenty minutes of the guy’s time with the ruse.