I had a difficult childhood. Both of my parents were alcoholics, my dad bordered on abusive, and my mom eventually became a crazy cat lady. I went to a school in my county where most of the students were incredibly wealthy and their parents were still married. I was the child of a single mom who received no child support and refused to remarry as many of my classmates’ parents did. Needless to say, I was bullied and tormented on a regular basis. Since then, I have never been comfortable with the wealthy crowd.

I met my ex-husband while working in a restaurant, and later, we had two children. I finally got to go to college in my early twenties, and I eventually became a teacher. In that time, my marriage fell apart. I decided dating wasn’t for me and focused on my kids, coaching, and my career.

While coaching, I run into a former customer from my days working at the restaurant, and he asks me out. I am hesitant because his family is incredibly well-off. I should note that I have PCOS and I’m not skinny despite being very short, so I think I’m unattractive.

I finally agree to date him, and things are going better than I thought. He really likes me, I like him, and frankly, I don’t give a d*** about his money. Even better, our kids get along great and act like they were raised together.

I spend a lot of time trying to avoid the circle of friends he has, worried that I might embarrass him because of my “lack of good breeding,” but he tells me that if his friends can’t accept me, they can stuff it.

On one occasion, [Boyfriend] decides to throw a party at his lakehouse in a gated community. I’m so nervous, it’s ridiculous. I’ve never been in a house this big, let alone to a party like this. I haven’t been to the lakehouse before, but most of his friends have now met me, and they encourage me to come out of my shell and relax.

The night of the party, I walk out after the main guests arrive, shy and still a little worried. I’m still trying to adjust to the new social cues of this crowd. As I walk out of the bedroom toward the table where the food is, I’m stopped by someone who calls my name. It’s a girl I went to high school with.

Classmate: “Hey, [My Name]! Glad to see someone here from the old days! It’s a big house, right? I hear it’s, like, the second biggest in this neighborhood! Anyway, can you get me a new drink?”

I’m a little confused as we have people here to help with food and drinks, and I am not dressed like them. They’re wearing black shirts and slacks, and I’m wearing a white cotton sleeveless dress.

Me: “I’m sorry, [Classmate], but I need to go find [Boyfriend]. Ask one of the people in the black shirts to get you more.”

She doesn’t like that answer and got all huffy. She basically screams the roof down about my poor service.

Classmate: “You need to learn your place!”

And then she throws her partial glass of red wine in my face. This obviously stains my dress and embarrasses me. Remembering all I went through, I bolt out of the room and into the bedroom crying.

My boyfriend apparently finds out what happened and comes into the bedroom looking for me. I tell him my version, and he marches back out and tells [Classmate] she needs to leave. She becomes hysterical.

Classmate: “Why am I being tossed out when that waitress was the rude one who wouldn’t get me a new drink?!”

My boyfriend rolls his eyes.

Boyfriend: “If you had been paying attention, you would’ve noticed that [My Name] entered the party from upstairs, and she exited that way, meaning she isn’t working here. She’s also wearing something completely different from what the people working are wearing.”

Classmate: “You know, most rich men pick someone more attractive than [My Name] with an actual figure!”

Boyfriend: “If you mean someone like you, I’ll pass. Spoiled women hung up on their looks are plentiful. I would rather have someone who loves me and knows how to have a good time.”

Several people later assured me that [Classmate] knew good and well who I was and that I wasn’t working. She was just mad because [Boyfriend] never paid her any mind.

Is it any wonder I said yes to this man?

I’m a young male working behind the counter of a well-known clothing store. A young woman walks up with who I assume is her boyfriend since he’s got an arm around her.

Me: “Hi. How can I help—”

Before I can even finish, she grabs the guy by the collar and begins hardcore making out with him, all with overly nasty, wet noises and sloppy tongue action that I feel like I would expect from a comedy flick. I stand there dumbfounded, trying to figure out what’s going on. She then finishes and nearly pushes the guy off. She turns to me and gives me a very smug look. And I’m just wishing she would wipe her face.

Woman: “See? That’s how a real man kisses his girlfriend!”

Me: “Uh… okay?”

Woman: “Bet you wish you were him, huh?”

Me: “I’m sorry, did you need help with anything?”

Woman: *Gives an exaggerated scoff* “Please! I have him now! I don’t need you anymore!”

Me: “Do I… Do I know you or something?”

She’s about to say something but stops and begins staring at me with a puzzled look. She looks down at my name tag and goes bright red. She whispers something to her boyfriend and then quickly runs off, leaving us both in awkward silence.

Guy: “So, uh… She mistook you for her ex and forced me to come in here and make him jealous. I guess she saw you yesterday while shopping and was certain you were him. To be fair you do look a lot like him.”

Me: “I see…” *Motioning to his chin* “You got a little something there.”

Guy: *Wiping his face with his hand* “Thank you.”

He walked away awkwardly. I decided it was time to take my break.

As a general rule, “food delivery didn’t turn up” makes for a statistic more than an interesting story, but this one really buttered my biscuits because, out of absolutely nowhere, my ADHD diagnosis got dragged into it. This story also mentions a well-known symptom of ADHD called hyperfixation, which is actually two things: flow state, which is where you’re doing something challenging that is interesting, and perseveration, which is where you focus on something to the exclusion of other things.

This story takes place not long after the anonymised popular worldwide illness was becoming unfashionable. Working from home and takeout were both common. Due to unfortunate circumstances that I won’t go into, my home office also contained my girlfriend’s desk, and therefore, often her phone when it was charging. I was working some odd hours because I live in the UK and the bulk of my team operated out of the Bay Area in the US. I had meetings with my coworkers between 5:00 and 6:00 pm, and my girlfriend’s work officially finished at 4:00 pm, so that window was when we usually timed dinner.

One day, we were doing our “Friday takeout” household tradition, born from my company’s £25-a-week support-your-local-eatery expense allowance. We commonly ordered from a company that sounds like somebody jammed the words “delivery” and “kangaroo” together and lost a few characters in the process. Yeah, “Kangarivery”, exactly. We could order from a range of eateries via Kangarivery, and we scheduled one well in advance (for 4:00 to 4:30 pm).

One of the great features of Kangarivery is that you can watch your delivery driver as they approach, so I was tracking the imminent Kangarivery delivery (or perhaps I should say “Kangariverlivery”).

I watched the delivery driver on the map. He stopped on the road outside my block of flats and waited there for a couple of minutes. Then, he buggered off. “That’s strange,” I thought.

“Did the doorbell ring and I didn’t hear it?” you may ask, and no, it didn’t. And I know this because some days I can barely concentrate for being pulled away from my desk all day due to constant doorbell-ringing deliveries (one of the few legitimate anti-WFH arguments).

I went outside to see if the driver was coming back. Then, I observed that the order had been cancelled. My girlfriend had come out to join me, looking equally quizzical, and I confirmed with her that she had not collected the food already when I wasn’t looking.

This was already low-key annoying, as is any process where somebody just kind of doesn’t follow the process and leaves you with work to do, but now we get to the part which really tiddles my weasel. My girlfriend had a missed call from her phone which was charging on her desk (next to my desk). She proceeded to inform me that the reason I didn’t hear it go off was because of my ADHD, and I must have been hyperfixating on my work or something.

Me: “What’s your ringtone set to?”

Girlfriend: *Silence*

Me: “I ask because if it’s at a low volume or sounds like a lorry reversing in the petrol station next door, that might explain why I didn’t notice it go off.”

Girlfriend: “I don’t know!”

I let it go because I didn’t want to fight with her, despite how infuriated I was with the fact that my ADHD was somehow to blame for the fact that the delivery driver was allergic to doorbells.

I confirmed that the order had been cancelled and I had still been charged for it, and I got in touch with support. The conversation was longer but boiled down to this.

Kangarivery Support: “The delivery driver called but could not get through.”

Me: “Why didn’t they ring the doorbell?”

Kangarivery Support: “They didn’t ring the doorbell?”

Me: “They did not.”

Kangarivery Support: “One moment, please…”

A moment passed.

Kangarivery Support: “We’ll have your order resent to you.”

And so it was that we eventually received our lukewarm order at around 6:15 pm in the evening, almost two hours after the scheduled delivery, because the rider was allergic to doorbells. The fact that somehow my ADHD got dragged into someone else’s inability to follow a simple process is the reason why, to this day, despite all our modern technology, I wander into the street awaiting my Kangarivery like some kind of caveman trying to tell time by the moon, and why this story still really apples my pears.

When [Friend] told me this story, I just HAD to get her permission to share it. She gave it, so here we go. Fair warning: I fear the number of IQ points that may be lost in reading this.

[Friend] started dating [Idiot] about two years before this incident. Things seemed to be going all right between them. She told me he was a bit of a derp and sometimes incredibly oblivious to some things. He couldn’t pick up subtle cues, and even suggestions flew over his head with about a mile of airspace between his skull and the suggestion. She originally chalked it up to him being on the autism spectrum, as she has a few other friends who have similar problems picking up cues. So, she just switched her behavior from “talking to neurotypical” to “talking to neurodivergent”, and the bumps smoothed out for a while.

All was well and good.

Then, the talk of taking the relationship seriously came up — marriage, becoming a family, etc.

And that’s when the relationship began to die.

[Idiot] announced that he wanted to DNA test [Friend]’s kids to make sure they were his — the kids who were five and three when [Friend] and [Idiot] started dating.

[Friend] said she had to come to a full stop in the conversation for several seconds while her brain rebooted.

Friend: “They’re not your kids. You know they’re not. My ex-husband and I had them together before I ever met you.”

Idiot: “Yeah, and now that we’re getting married, they’ll become mine. I just want to DNA test them to be sure of it.”

Friend: “Let me see if I understand this. Do you… Do you actually think my children’s DNA will… change… to become biologically yours?”

Idiot: “Obviously. I just want the confirmation on paper, is all.”

There was a long conversation about how DNA didn’t work that way, with his rebuttal that adopting them would make them BECOME his. Then, there had to be a conversation about how becoming his children would only happen on paper, and in the legal system. She had to explain that, no, the children would NOT magically transform into his own biological children once the paperwork was filled out. He kept insisting that EVERYBODY said the kids became theirs once adoption happened. She explained the concept of “adopted children are loved just as much as if they were biological”, and that was what that meant. He insisted that everything pointed to kids BECOMING “theirs.”

[Friend]’s mom eventually had to become involved to back [Friend] up. His DAD had to become involved to back [Friend] up. A few books had to get involved to back [Friend] up.

[Idiot] was furious! He couldn’t understand why people would EVER adopt a kid if the kid didn’t “become” the actual, biological child of the people who took them in. He went on about how stupid and selfish it was for kids to retain the DNA of the sperm or egg donor! How could any kid who wanted to be adopted REFUSE to change one little thing so they could have parents?! “DNA doesn’t work that way” is a bulls*** excuse!

He ranted and raved, and right in front of his own parents, he told her that if her kids weren’t going to become his kids, then the marriage wasn’t going to happen.

He told her that he would give them all a week to change their minds and agree to be his biological kids. He said that WHEN they stopped being selfish, and WHEN the DNA test proved it, he would take the kids in.

Friend: *To me* “And that’s how the relationship ended.”

Me: “Uhhhh, wait. Hang on. Was he just looking for an excuse to break it off? Did he just get cold feet, or want to date around some more, or…?”

Friend: “Nope. He really is just that stupid. His mom called me on the sly and very gently suggested that I just break it off with [Idiot], because no matter how much she and his dad talk to him, he’s adamant about it. He’s even saying that he will never date a woman with kids from here on out unless they agree to change their DNA to become his if the relationship becomes serious.”

So, [Friend] is single again, having dodged a tactical nuke.

For the record, the father of [Friend]’s kids is still fully in the kids’ lives, has full parental rights, and has 50/50 custody, so adoption wasn’t even on the table. It just didn’t come up in the conversation due to the stupidity of the DNA topic taking over [Friend]’s brain space.

One of my biggest pet peeves is being told to do something that I am already doing. My second biggest pet peeve is being cut off when I am trying to talk. My at-the-time girlfriend did it CONSTANTLY, and it pissed me off to no end.

One day, I am dealing with customer service for a certain delivery company that delivers both food and people.

Me: “Hi. I recently placed a wrong order, which I cancelled, followed by the correct order. I have not yet been refunded. How much longer will it be?”

Company: “We do not issue refunds after two days.”

Me: “I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. I am not asking for a refund for my second order; that one was fine, no complaints. I am asking about the first cancelled order. I just need to know how much longer it will take for the refund to be processed?”

Company: “Yes, we do not issue refunds after two days.”

Me: “I’m not sure you understand. I cancelled the order within seconds of placing it. The order was never made, never delivered, never happened.”

Company: “Yes. Out of fairness to our restaurant partners, we do not issue refunds after two days. In the future, you should contact us immediately if you want a refund.”

Just then, my girlfriend comes into my apartment. We both live in the same building and have keys to each other’s units, and we’re both used to just coming over when we want.

Me: “So, I’m talking with [Company] customer service, and they’re saying they don’t do refunds—”

Girlfriend: “Just tell them you’re not talking about the second order, you’re talking about—”

Me: “Do not tell me to do what I am already doing!”

Girlfriend: “Just tell them you’re not talking about—”

Me: “Do not tell me to do what I am already doing!”

Girlfriend: “Just tell them—”

Me: “Do not tell me to do what I am already doing!“

Girlfriend: “Just let me talk, just let me talk…”

So, I pause. I let her talk on the off chance that she is going to say something — literally ANYTHING — that is not exactly what I know she is going to say.

Girlfriend: “Just tell them that you’re not talking about the second order, you’re talking about the first—”

Me: *Pointing at the door* “Leave.”

Girlfriend: “But I—”

Me: “Leave.”

Girlfriend: “I just—”

Me: “Leave.“

She made an exasperated sound and finally left. Before she arrived, I was mildly frustrated. After she left, I was so mad I was SHAKING.

She later refused to apologize, even after I spelled out exactly how she had crossed my boundaries while I was literally BEGGING her not to. In fact, she expected an apology from ME. The kicker? SHE is the one that made me cancel the order because she changed her mind after the order was placed!