I work in a kind of divey bar, and as such, we have a bit of wiggle room with rude customers. I love it that way.

I am serving a table. From what I can gather, it is a woman, her boyfriend, and a friend of the woman’s. I go to take their orders, and the friend orders a bacon cheeseburger with fries (we offer a choice of fries or salad with most items). The girlfriend orders a bacon cheeseburger, too.

Me: “Would you like fries or salad with that?”

Woman: “Fries.”

Cue her boyfriend looking at her and loudly asking:

Man: “Oh, seriously? Are you sure you want fries?”

He then grabs his stomach and starts shaking it at her in a very obnoxious way. Her friend looks absolutely shocked and the woman looks super humiliated. I just ignore it.

Me: “Yep, fries, no problem!”

I look at the boyfriend.

Me: “What do you want?”

I kid you not, he asks for the exact same thing.

Man: “Can I get a bacon cheeseburger with fries?”

Without skipping a beat I grab my belly, shake it at this guy, and say:

Me: “Oh? Fries? Really? Are you sure?”

The two women absolutely die laughing and the guy goes scarlet and starts yelling.

Man: “Oh, no! I didn’t mean it like that!”

I told him I didn’t care, and I walked away. I got a massive tip from that table!

My boyfriend talks in his sleep. It’s rare and only for a couple of minutes but always funny. Sometimes, I like to argue with him when he’s sleep-talking because it’s funny.

I wake up one night because I hear my boyfriend talking. He’s sitting upright in the bed, staring at the wall.

Me: “What?”

Boyfriend: “Stupid gopher.”

Me: “What are you talking about?”

Boyfriend: “That gopher.” *Points at the wall* “It’s driving the dog crazy and it’s messing up my woodpile. I need to get rid of it.”

It finally clicks. We don’t have a woodpile and there are no gophers anywhere near where we live.

Me: “No, that’s a muskrat.”

Boyfriend: “No, it’s a gopher. He’s an a**hole.”

Me: *Laughing* “I think it’s a beaver.”

Boyfriend: “What? Beavers have a big tail. Look at it.” *Gestures to the “gopher”*

Me: *Holding back laughter* “Okay, babe, you’re right. You can get it in the morning. Come back to sleep.”

Boyfriend: “Okay.” *Lays back down* “He mocks me.”

He went back to sleep after that and had no recollection of it in the morning.

My boyfriend and are closing in on our one-year anniversary. He is very good with his hands and keeps himself happy by always having some project to occupy them. Knowing this, I go out of my way to buy the most complicated modeling kit I can find. It’s of a famous clock tower and has hundreds of tiny, intricate pieces, so I know it will take him a long time to complete.

Our anniversary rolls around and I give him his gift. He is delighted by it. He then presents me with his gift: a pair of socks with a couple of cartoon characters on them. While they are from my favorite cartoon and the gesture is sweet, when comparing them to the modeling kit, I’m unable to keep from looking disappointed. He only seems amused by my reaction.

As I awkwardly thank him for the gift, he asks me:

Boyfriend: “Do you want to know a secret?”

I say, “Sure,” not expecting much.

Boyfriend: “Well, you know how you always have trouble finding clothes that fit?”

I had emergency surgery after an accident that left my torso with an unusual shape.

Boyfriend: “I decided to learn how to knit, sew, and crochet, so now I can make you anything you want. I made those socks in a day.”

Now, I was looking at the socks in amazement. They looked professionally made. He had taught himself how to make professional-looking clothes in less than a year! I think I might have started crying if I wasn’t so blown away.

Last month, my now-husband and I celebrated three years of marriage. For our anniversary, he taught himself metalworking so he could make me authentic items for when we go to the Renaissance Faire.

The coworker in this story has since left our workplace, but this is one of my favourite memories of her.

Introverted, unadventurous twenty-two-year-old me had just moved away from my parents’ house at the beginning of the month, and I’d regretted it instantly. I was incredibly homesick, not really adjusting well to my (nice but very boisterous) new roommates, and between work and my college classes I hadn’t had the chance to do more than speak to my mother on the phone a couple of times in the past three weeks. I was a lonely, anxious mess. However, it was a holiday and I finally had an early shift with nothing to do afterward, and my parents were going to have me over for dinner.

Just the prospect of going home again had me near tears the whole morning — part of the night before, too. I was feeling so fragile and wound up that, instead of dressing for work like I usually did, I’d thrown one of my boyfriend’s massive hoodies on for the extra comfort factor. I’d shown up and done the opening duties without even really acknowledging anyone else; as an opening shift, it was very quiet, and I’d managed to go three hours without saying a word. When my coworker showed up for her shift, I just gave her the best smile I could and continued quietly.

Then, my boyfriend showed up and came over to stand by my station and say hi.

Having to actually speak, and being able to speak to someone who is a massive source of comfort for me, burst the floodgates wide open. I tried to say hi back and started crying right there in the middle of the floor.

It was at this point that I realized that my coworker had been incredibly worried about my uncharacteristic behaviour, because she literally dropped what she was doing and ran over, grabbing me and putting herself between me and my boyfriend.

Coworker: “Are you okay? Is everything all right?”

My boyfriend, now worried as well, tried to come over to see what was going on, and she barked at him:

Coworker: “Stay back!”

She bent over, physically shielding me with her body.

I realized that she thought I was reacting to him instead of to my own mental state, and I burst out laughing. Once I’d explained that I was just a homesick mess and didn’t really know why I was crying, fortunately a very easy correction to make because I’d been homesick all week, we all had a good laugh.

I count myself very lucky to have not needed that kind of intervention, but even luckier to have had someone — a coworker, even, who didn’t know me that well and rarely interacted with me outside of work — who would have reacted to such a situation with such instinctive protectiveness.

Me: “Did you finish all the vanilla ice cream?”

Boyfriend: “Yes.”

Me: “The whole gallon?”

Boyfriend: “We didn’t get any last trip to the store.”

Me: “You have an ice cream problem.”

Boyfriend: “No, you have an ice cream problem.”

Me: “Huh?”

Boyfriend: “You have an ice cream problem. I am the ice cream problem!”