I’m sitting with my boyfriend of six years, and we’re about to watch a movie.

Boyfriend: “Hey, I need to talk to you.”

Me: “Is it about how you’ve been cheating on me with my best friend?”

My boyfriend is shocked.

Boyfriend: “How did you know that?!”

Now I was shocked. I was just making a joke, but this was better. I told my boyfriend that we were done and he needed to leave.

He left, and I confronted my best friend. She admitted to it, and I haven’t spoken to either of them since.

I used to teach tenth-grade English. One day, I assigned a twenty-minute writing prompt on the students’ dream life.

In my seventh period, I had a couple who had been dating for about three months. The boy was completely head-over-heels in love with his girlfriend, but he had some “unique” ideas.

After the twenty minutes were up, I asked for volunteers to share what they had written and the boy stood up to read his paper.

Boy: “My dream is to live off the grid in either Wyoming, Montana, or Alaska. I want to live in a cabin that I built with my own hands. I am going to have a farm and grow my own food, an orchard where I grow my own fruit, and cattle, chickens, and pigs that I’ll raise myself for meat. I’ll be living hours away from any real towns or cities and just have a completely free life where I can do whatever I want and be totally self-sufficient. My wife will help me build our cabin, she’ll bear our children right in our cabin, and we will homeschool them and teach them to live off of the land.”

Girl: “Um, I will definitely not be having our children in a cabin! I will be having my children in a hospital.”

Boy: “Honey, we’ll probably be three or four hours away from any hospital. Maybe more if we choose Alaska.”

Girl: “I am not giving birth four hours away from any sort of medical care!”

Boy: “You won’t have a choice. I won’t be able to get you to a hospital! You’ll be fine, I promise! I’ll know how to deliver a baby because I’ll have to help our cows have their calves.”

Girl: “Yeah, I don’t think this is going to work out.”

Surprisingly enough, they were no longer a couple the next day. He was much more heartbroken about it than she was.

My boyfriend takes me to a restaurant for my birthday. It’s a very expensive restaurant but still casual clothing. My boyfriend always dreamed of taking his love there, so he has saved up for it. I have no fashion sense, and the fanciest outfit my boyfriend has is a nice sweater and good jeans. When we enter the restaurant, we notice people staring. It’s not a large restaurant, so it’s easy to see we are out of place. The staff treats us nicely, but we do not feel welcome.

After the appetizer, we get on to the main course. My boyfriend asks for fish and I ask for meat. We get what we ordered and start eating. Halfway through the meal, the waiter comes by and asks if everything is all right.

Me: “Yes, the food is amazing.”

The waiter turns to my boyfriend.

Waiter: “How is your meal, sir?”

My boyfriend doesn’t answer. He just keeps on staring at his plate, carefully chewing. He does nod a bit, so we assume he doesn’t want to talk with his mouth full.

Me: “He loves it, as well.”

The waiter leaves. Ten minutes later:

Boyfriend: “This fish is amazing! I mean, delicious! Here, taste it! This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted! We have to let them know that; that chef is amazing!”

Me: “Well, the waiter already knows; surely he told the chef.”

Boyfriend: “The waiter? When did you talk to him?”

Me: “Eh, about ten minutes ago? He visited our table?”

Boyfriend: “No, he didn’t… Did he?”

Me: “He was standing right next to you. He asked you if everything was all right?”

Boyfriend: “No… When… You mean…?”

Me: “You didn’t notice the waiter standing next to you?!”

Boyfriend: “You tasted this fish! It is pure heaven! I didn’t notice anything!”

When the waiter passed by again, my boyfriend profusely apologised for not noticing the waiter and unintentionally ignoring him. The waiter promised to tell the chef his dish was so good that my boyfriend forgot about the world for a moment. After that, the staff was a lot more chill with us (I guess the ice broke) and we had a great time.

My mom was a big foodie and loved cooking for people. Barbecues were always a huge thing with my family, and my mom loved to try new recipes. She also never made a fuss if anyone asked for accommodations. She was always willing to make adjustments so everyone could have at least something they could enjoy, and everyone was welcome at her table.

Once, my nephew had a girlfriend who was… a bit strange. Let’s call her Cleo.

It wasn’t so much that she was inherently a bad person, but her thought processes were sometimes hard to follow, and she had a tendency to hog conversations and make them all about her.

Cleo also followed all kinds of trends when she thought it was fancy. If social media hyped depression, she was all depressed and proclaimed that happily to everyone, totally oblivious to the fact that several of my family members battled with diagnosed depression and that my mom and I had to spend significant time in mental hospitals for depression.

When one of Cleo’s favorite actors was advocating for women’s rights, she became a ferocious women’s rights activist, blaming all women around her for not caring enough and buying into the “paternal narrative” — whatever that was supposed to mean. She accused them of wanting all women to be stay-at-home moms, completely disregarding that my family is mostly blue-collar and all the women have been workers all their lives. No one, from my great-grandmother to me today, has ever been a stay-at-home mom.

When social media claimed pescatarians were en vogue, Cleo claimed to be a pescatarian — no matter that she didn’t eat fish at all. She proclaimed that it meant eating only chicken.

At the time that this story happened, Cleo got it into her head that she was a vegan. And no, being vegan was not a problem for my family, nor would it have been a problem on this special day if Cleo really was a vegan. The problem was that she wasn’t a vegan; she just fancied herself being one.

We had a barbecue planned, and my whole family was there. I also brought my friend and roomie who was a vegetarian. My mom created a group chat on a messenger app and asked [Friend] and Cleo what they would like to eat. When Cleo answered that she didn’t know what she could ask for, my mom offered several options for them to choose from. [Friend] said, to make it easier for my mom, she would also eat the vegan option Cleo chose, knowing from my tales that Cleo was a very picky eater.

Cleo then wrote that some veggie shashlik and hummus would be nice, so my mom made that. She told both of them specifically what she planned to put in the shashlik. She also made several salads and a chimichanga for dips along with them, as well as vegan mayonnaise, the promised hummus, and several other vegan-friendly dips to choose from, and foil-baked potatoes. Cleo knew exactly what would be there for her to eat and happily agreed with everything, enthusiastically writing back how much she would enjoy eating all that. Despite being asked repeatedly if she would like anything else, she always answered everything was fine.

Knowing how nitpicky Cleo was, my nephew brought a separate grill to put the veggie options on so they wouldn’t touch the meat. This was solely for her since [Friend] doesn’t really care much about all this; she’s the type who eats what’s available as long as it is vegetarian-friendly. She’s also a bit picky, but when push comes to shove, she eats bread and some salad and is happy as a clam; she doesn’t make her own peckishness into other people’s problems.

The day came, and everything was finished. Madam Cleo walked over to the vegan dishes, scrunched her nose, and proclaimed:

Cleo: “I can’t eat all this; it’s not really vegan.”

After pushing a bit, she proclaimed:

Cleo: “I don’t think this will taste good, either; it looks strange.”

Then, she marched to the kitchen and prepared herself some toast with butter! Yes, real butter,  which was totally not vegan. She could not eat the butter right there at the table — no, that was not vegan — but it had to be the new piece of butter from the fridge and the store-bought toast, because — and this is a verbal citation — “homemade bread is NEVER vegan!”

Cleo then proceeded to complain that no one had asked her for her opinion before, although she had been engaging in a messenger group generated just exactly for that and not telling anyone anything and agreeing with everything for a whole week!

When [Friend] very gently inquired why she didn’t say anything during the chats, Cleo claimed that she felt overwhelmed by my mom’s suggestions and didn’t dare to voice her concerns after my mom had “decided” what she should eat.

At this point, my mom was fuming, so I decided to keep Cleo away for the rest of the evening and engage her in talk so my mom and the rest of the family would not have to deal with her silly and self-centered nonsense.

[Friend] stayed with me because she knew me and found my way of dealing with such situations amusing.

So, we engaged in talk. I prompted Cleo to tell me about herself, and she willingly obliged.

All in all, I kept her occupied for several hours, never letting her feel bad, and constantly keeping her talking. [Friend] quietly sat next to me, dipping bits of her freshly made and completely vegan baguette in fresh olive oil and salt, smiling and nodding to Cleo who explained to her how that was not vegan.

My family members dipped in and out of the conversation, looking at me with disbelief and shaking their heads, but gracefully not saying anything to aggravate her.

When it was time to say goodbye, Cleo beamed at me and proclaimed loudly:

Cleo: “Thank you for the nice evening! It was a joy talking with you! It’s really nice to meet someone who’s open to new knowledge.”

Then, she left her stage.

My sister approached me.

Sister: “I listened to part of that conversation. How the h*** did you stand that? How could you be so calm? I only listened to bits here and there, but I wanted to strangle her halfway through.”

[Friend] chuckled and answered before I could.

Friend: “Don’t you remember what [My Name] does for a living? She works from home, so I listen to her when she works. Cleo might think she got a nice conversation, but I know what she really got: the world’s longest technician service call! [My Name] pretended it was a work call; she even used her script to prompt her in between. Cleo didn’t know it, but she called her Internet provider today and got troubleshooting. What you heard was her giving her technician a top rating. I just waited all the time for [My Name] to tell her to restart her router.”

And what could I say? She was right; that’s exactly what I did. I never thought that eight years as a tier-three service technician working escalations at a call center for a service provider would pay out this way. But I guess if you’re able to get a non-cooperative idiot to follow your instructions to get his equipment to run properly without shouting at him for his stupidity, keeping a delusional wannabe vegan with a mission to tell everyone their opinion away from your mom is a piece of cake.

The story has a happy ending; my nephew ditched her later. He’s now dating another girl. She’s a vegan for real. She really enjoys barbecues, and guess what? She’s always happy with the food because she helps with preparations and cooks her preferred food herself.

I’m visiting my boyfriend at his family’s house one day when they get a call saying his father has had a heart attack and is in hospital. Naturally, they all want to rush to leave, and I volunteer to stay and look after the dog.

I am a cat person and have had little experience with dogs. The family is gone pretty much all day — as you could guess with something like this — and the dog starts reminding me that it is nearly dinner time.

I text my boyfriend.

Me: “What do you normally do with food for [Dog]?”

Boyfriend: “Give him two scoops of the dry food we have in the cupboard.”

I do. [Dog] ends up sleeping happily on the sofa until they get back, all is well, and [Boyfriend]’s dad is recovering at the hospital after emergency surgery.

When they return, [Boyfriend]’s mum looks at a very happy dog.

Boyfriend’s Mum: “Was everything okay?”

Me: “Yes. I was surprised how quickly [Dog] wolfed down his two scoops.”

Boyfriend’s Mum: *Frowning slightly* “But that’s his food for the whole day.”

No wonder the dog was so happy that evening.