(My brother runs a company that sells sci-fi and fantasy memorabilia. A customer came up to the table and started inspecting a replica Star Trek communicator.)

Customer: “So does this actually work?”

Me: “Oh, yes. When you flip it open, it lights up and plays authentic sound effects.”

Customer: “No, no, I mean, does it actually communicate with the Enterprise?”

Me: *joking* “Well, the ship would be out of range if it wasn’t in orbit.”

Customer: *serious* “Oh, right!”

This story is part of our Watching-Too-Much-TV roundup!

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This story is part of our ‘Star Trek’ roundup!

Read the next ‘Star Trek’ roundup story!

Read the ‘Star Trek’ roundup!

While I was away from home for work, my chest started hurting for apparently no reason on my first evening there. Being a stubborn person, I completed a full day at work with one side of my chest screaming whenever I moved wrong, breathed in too deep, or lifted anything too heavy. I ignored it, because there was work to be done. On the second morning I admitted defeat and asked to be dropped at the hospital near work and I’d make my own way in from there when they’d made the pain go away.

Unfortunately I was dropped at literally the opposite end of the building to A&E, and it was a fairly long trek down a never-ending corridor to where I wanted to be. As I was resting against the wall, finding myself uncharacteristically struggling to walk in a straight line, a security guard and a cleaner spotted me trying to catch my breath. A difficult prospect when it hurts to even get enough air for a full sentence.

After a brief discussion the decision was made that my journey would be completed on two wheels, a wheelchair to be precise, and a porter was magicked up to enable this. Thus followed several hours of being literally moved from place to place, by porters, nurses, and even a doctor at one point.

A brief foray out of the chair into the toilet, because empty ones were blocking the way from the waiting room, showed me that remaining seated was definitely my best option.

At one point I was moved around to a third department, where the nurses were not entirely sympathetic.

Nurse: What’s wrong with you?

Me: Chest pains.

Nurse: And you’re in a wheelchair?

Me: Hurts to walk.

Nurse: You don’t use your chest to walk.

Me: Was dropped in wrong place. Rested against wall. Cleaner found wheelchair, security guard called porter.

Nurse: Hmmph. You’ll need to start walking around, we don’t have time to be pushing you everywhere.

She wasn’t entirely convinced that it was appropriate for me to be in a wheelchair I think.And when I asked for blood to be drawn from my hand – I had barely drunk anything that morning and my arm veins don’t cooperate unless I’m very hydrated – she huffed that she couldn’t do that and walked off to find a nurse who could.

Luckily the second nurse was not only more competent, but also more friendly and bubbly as well.

Dear readers,

If you’re reading this from certain parts of North America, then today is Eclipse Day! If you get a chance to get outside to see it then you should, as it’ll be the last one in your area until 2044! However, not everyone understands these magnificent quirks of celestial alignment in totality (see what we did there?) and so because entitled customers and the like are prone to ruining good times for everyone else, we’ve rounded up fourteen stories from the Not Always Right archives about eclipses! Some of them might darken your day, but at least one of them is guaranteed to brighten it, so double-check the time of the eclipse for your area, make sure it’s not soon, and settle in to enjoy some eclipsing stories!

Oh… and this should go without saying, but when the eclipse does happen, or even when it doesn’t – NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN WITHOUT THE PROPER GLASSES!

Some Customers Literally Want The Moon – Will someone please think of the children because the sun and the moon obviously do not!

You’ve Eclipsed Their Knowledge Of The Subject – If the eclipse is in the middle of the night then I’m not getting up for it!

Entitlement To Eclipse All Others – We know your mileage might vary with this one, but it’s still a shame to miss an eclipse!

(more…)

This takes place back in the early 2000s when I was in my early twenties and frequently mistaken for a very innocent-looking young teenager owing to my short and somewhat skinny stature. At the time, I was working in an office. Every December before we closed for the holidays, the boss treated the entire office to a very nice dinner at a fancy restaurant down the street. All of the food at this restaurant was delicious, but I should mention that one of the things they were especially known for was their veal.

Stuffed and generally content, everyone was walking back to the office a block away to pack up and head home; due to my height, I tend to walk slower and had fallen a little behind the rest of the group. I heard a loud throat-clearing behind me but ignored it as I assumed it wasn’t directed at me. Oh, how wrong I was!

Woman: “YOU! GIRL!”

I glanced behind me, already annoyed by the tone and method of address, to find a very arrogant-looking woman entirely too close behind me looking mightily unhappy.

Me: “…Yes?”

Immediately, this woman launched into a tirade, having apparently seen my group exit the restaurant. Picture every self-righteous, holier-than-thou stereotype about vegans, and this woman was it. Didn’t I know what horrible things they DO to those poor animals to make the veal? How DARE I patronize such an establishment that profits from murder?! Have I no conscience? And so on and so forth. I can only assume she decided I was the easiest target to bully; why pick a fight with a group of visibly older adults ten feet ahead when she could browbeat what she probably thought was a young teen?

I wasn’t in the mood to argue; I just wanted to go home, enjoy my food coma, and start my holiday vacation. I simply wanted her to go away. I didn’t feel like getting into it with this preachy harpy that while the place is known for their veal, I had not had any of their veal dishes, nor did I feel like pointing out that her designer purse was most definitely leather. But I also knew that telling her in less-than-polite words to go sit on a cucumber was just going to invite more righteous indignation and extend our interaction.

Instead, I turned fully to face her and put on my best Kubrick stare and creepy slasher smile — unsettlingly wide, teeth showing to the gums, staring at her and through her over the top of my glasses, pretty much the opposite of what anyone would expect from a “young girl” being verbally harassed. In a tone of voice dripping with what I can only describe as “pure and absolute evil,” I simply told her:

Me: “Yessss… and I do so enjoy the taste of Pure. Suffering.”

She’d stopped short when I first turned around, and that one line and the look on my face were apparently enough that she visibly deflated, shut her mouth with an audible click of teeth, and started backing away quickly before turning and all but running as fast as she could in her heels. Mission accomplished: I was able to complete my trek back to the office in peace. I did have to explain to a couple of my colleagues who’d noticed the altercation what had happened and why that woman had fled looking like she’d just seen a horror movie murderer.

Growing up, I lived very close to my elementary school, about five blocks away. Like any child, I was very eager for days off of school due to weather, but we hardly ever got snow days; the local snow plows were too efficient.

One day, it was raining very hard. But this wasn’t normal rain. I can clearly see that this was freezing rain, turning to ice the second it touched the ground. Everything, especially the snow piled where grass once had been, was covered in a sheet of ice.

Excited and having never seen weather like this before, I checked the news and discovered that school was canceled. I told my dad.

He insisted that school wasn’t canceled; school wouldn’t be canceled for a little rain.

He demanded that I walk to school. Now, even though I lived only five blocks away, I lived at the top of a small hill, and school was at the top of a different small hill. There was a very significant valley in between. A person could only go around the valley by walking on a couple of streets that didn’t have sidewalks; I was forbidden to walk on those streets.

That day was supposed to be show-and-tell day, so I loaded up my backpack with my favorite rock: a random hunk of conglomerate about the size of a sack of flour I had found one day. I was a very strong — but very stupid — child. It took up most of the space in my backpack, but I also added my three favorite books, my lunch (a thermos of soup, a sandwich, and an apple), a stuffed animal, a calculator which I was forbidden to use by the teachers, a notepad/diary, several pens, pencils, markers, and erasers, and a thermos of hot cocoa I’d made for myself because this was looking like it would be a hot cocoa sort of day.

Leaving the house, I immediately started to slip and slide on the sidewalk, so I switched to all fours. I told Dad it was very slippery, but he didn’t care; he wanted me to go to school myself and report back to him if it was closed.

So, I started to the sidewalk. I slid down the driveway and managed only barely not to slide into the street. Then, I stood back up and attempted to walk down the hill into the valley.

I slipped, fell on my butt, and slid the entire way down into the valley. Then, I was trapped.

I tried to crawl up the other side. I slipped part way up and slid all the way back down.

I tried to crawl up in the direction of home. I slipped part way up and slid all the way back down.

I tried this repeatedly and started feeling sick and cold and wet, so I opened up my backpack to get my thermos of hot cocoa out. From how many times I had fallen down, my sandwich was smashed, my apple was sauce, my thermos was dented, my pens were all broken, and my favorite rock was shattered. This last thing was the most upsetting to me.

I chugged the hot cocoa angrily and got off the sidewalk into the snow. (I was a stupid kid and couldn’t imagine walking anywhere but the sidewalk prior to that.) This worked, and I made it to the top of the hill. After that, it was a short walk to the school.

One of my teachers was standing in the driveway waving cars away from the school. School was canceled. I made her write it in my notebook for me with one of the pens that had survived, and I started the trek back home.

I ate my soup at the bottom of the valley on my way back home.

Finally, I got home. Dad was still there, and I was covered in ice. Angrily, crying, I told him school had been canceled, he was an idiot for not listening to me in the first place, and my favorite rock was broken. It turned out work had been canceled for him, too. I was in first grade, and I understood that the weather was unsafe better than my dad did.

Five years later, still in elementary school, we had another bout of freezing rain. And once more, Dad forced me to walk all the way to school. This time, the doors were just locked, and there were no teachers handing out pamphlets. Once more, I returned home to yell at him for not trusting my instincts. I had never once said that school was canceled when it hadn’t been.

A few years after that, still in elementary school but nearing the end of my elementary career, it was freezing rain again. Dad still didn’t believe me, but this time my school had a website. So, I pulled up the website and triumphantly showed him that school was canceled due to freezing rain.

This happened one final time, in high school. I had to pull up the website to show him once more that freezing rain was considered enough of a threat to human life to cancel school.

After that, I left home, left the state, and went to college and later to work. I… don’t talk to my Dad as much as he maybe wants, but he never really respected my opinions growing up, so I’m reluctant to share much with him.

I am now free to refuse to go anywhere during freezing rain, and I do so openly. Everyone at work knows that if I’m not coming in, it’s because of unsafe conditions. It’s at the point that people will call me to see if I’m coming in, and if I say I’m not, they say they won’t, either!