I’m a teenager working my first job in a fast-food place. I’m running around in the kitchen keeping a few jobs going at once, when I hear a commotion at the cashier station. We’re in a rough and low-income neighborhood, so we have a security guard at the door. He’s walking over.

Customer: *Shouting at the cashier.* “F*** you, you f****** piece of s***!”

Security Guard: “Calm down, sir.”

Customer: “You can’t f****** tell me to calm down! This mother-f****** needs his a** beat!”

Security Guard: “Sir, you need to leave right now, or I’m gonna make you.”

Customer: *Pointing at the cashier.* “You don’t f****** understand! This mother-f****** slept with my wife both times I was in prison!”

Cashier: “Yeah, ’cause each time I got out of there before you did!”

The security guard eases the customer out of the place, and my sixteen-year-old self got a very early lesson that older fast food workers in rough neighborhoods have got some stories…

This story starts when my daughter was in kindergarten. Her school allows all the kids to wear their Halloween costumes on the Friday before Halloween every year. When [Daughter] got back from her first school dress-up party, she was excited to tell me the tale of witnessing a knight in shining armor rescuing a damsel in distress.

It seems that the two teachers who handled kindergarten classes had dressed up as a knight and a dragon, respectively. During lunchtime, their principal had shown up dressed as a princess and was “captured” by the teacher dressed up as a dragon and then “rescued” by the one dressed as a knight. This show was apparently the highlight of my daughter’s day, and it made me smile a bit just hearing her excitement retelling the tale.

I should probably also mention that while her teachers were both female, her principal was male.

A year later, my daughter got to do her second school Halloween dress-up. That year, her principal was dressed up as a princess once again, and at one point, one of her peers, who was dressed as a dinosaur, was encouraged to capture the principal. To [Daughter]’s surprise, her teacher then came running up to her with a foam sword and told her that she could rescue her principal by “slaying” the dinosaur. [Daughter] was ecstatic as she told me how she got to rescue her principal that night.

At my next conference with [Daughter]’s teacher, I learned that [Teacher] had been assigned the duty of selecting the child who would be entrusted with a foam sword. Apparently, it was a special privilege that was only offered to a girl who did well in classwork and could be entrusted to be restrained and not go too wild, assaulting her peers with a sword. I was assured that it was a tremendous compliment that my daughter was the one selected.

I assume you all can guess what happened the next year. By fourth grade, all the kids knew that their principal would be dressed as a princess, and the moment he came out to the playground, all the boys rushed out to join in “capturing” him. Then, out came a teacher to “knight” a handful of girls — and it was always only girls who were knighted — who promptly slew their peers and rescued their principal. The kids all looked forward to this routine by then.

I finally got to talk to [Principal] about his damsel-in-distress act recently. Apparently, it started out as a joke. His kindergarten teachers had been jokingly arguing over what thematic costumes they should wear when [Principal] had offered to be the princess to complete their theme. His original capture — and rescue — had not been planned and was just the adults having a bit of impromptu fun, but the kids loved it so much that they decided to make it a routine.

Eventually, this branched out, and [Principal] is now committed to one capture and rescue for each grade in his school. [Principal] joked that he regrets starting the routine as it’s impossible to get any work done on dress-up day when he has to somehow fit in six captures along with his usual workload. But the kids love it so much that he doesn’t dare stop it now.

He also said that while it was not his intention originally, once he realized he had the opportunity to subvert standard gender roles, he figured he would lean into it. So now, once a year, the big, strong man who leads the school wears a dress and gets captured, and it’s up to the girls, and only the girls, to rescue him from his untimely demise.

By now, the whole school is getting into it. My daughter had a project not too long ago where she had to participate in a mock debate on whether the school should keep its actual mascot or replace it with a very masculine-looking princess. Another teacher apparently always does a test around Halloween on which the questions include multiple examples of their principal being dragged off by various threats while wearing increasingly ridiculous outfits, and the only way to rescue him is to correctly solve the appropriate math problems.

My son will start school in two years. My daughter and I have discussed it and decided not to tell [Son] what to expect during his first school dress-up party, as it will be more fun for him to be surprised. [Daughter] is adamant that she wants to try to convince [Son] to dress up as a princess that day in hopes that the teachers will decide to “capture” him along with his principal. I highly doubt she’s going to succeed at this plan, but it’s more amusing to me to sit back and watch than to try to talk her out of it. Whatever happens, I’m sure [Son] will enjoy the show as much as [Daughter] did.

Me: “…and if your insurance doesn’t cover everything, we’ll bill you at that time. Now, as the receptionist at this dental office, I wanted to ask you: would you like to schedule your next routine cleaning in six months?”

Patient: “Sure. Let’s—”

The phone rings. Glancing at the landline’s display, I see that it is a caller who had urgent questions earlier that day but has since resolved them. I’ve been at work for only forty-five minutes and already spent ten of them on the phone with this caller.

Patient: “Do you need to get that?”

Me: “No. The business-owner’s instructions are to work with the patients in front of me before answering the phone. Besides, we have an answering machine.”

As I schedule the patient, the same caller calls three more times. They are not leaving messages.

Patient: “Thanks, see you later!”

Me: “Have a great day!”

As I finish, they call a fifth time.

Me: *On phone.* “This is Dr. [Doctor]’s dental office, my na—”

The caller hangs up. I shrug off my confusion and return to my other responsibilities.

After the caller calls a SIXTH time…

Caller: “Hello, I have a question.”

Me: *Wondering what kind of question is important enough to call six times about but NOT important enough to leave a message about.* “Well, I’m certain I can help you answer your question…”

I work in a big-box type store. My manager and I spot who we’re convinced is a Hollywood celebrity.

Manager: “It’s him! I’m sure it’s him!”

Me: “Yeah, it totally is. So weird to see him in person.”

Manager: “His last movie was so good. I’ll hold off on telling him that, though. I bet everyone tells him that. He must be so tired of having the same conversations with complete strangers over and over again.”

Me: “…I work checkouts for minimum wage.”

Manager: “Yeah, but have you won an Oscar?”

Me: “Every time I smile and look like I’m happy to serve my customers, I’m out-acting Meryl Streep.”

I submitted “The Secretest Santa That Ever Secreted“:

I had a field trip that happened in that same school year that I mentioned in the comments as an example of how I was one of the few impoverished students in a program full of wealthy (or wealthy-in-appearance) students and classmates–here is an elaboration on it.

We were sent downtown for this field trip. Rather than going on a school bus, this program preferred to have parents volunteer as chaperones. For this one, students were randomly assigned to a group of four to five, plus a parent. I had been given $5 for this field trip to buy lunch. We were poor (I was on the free lunch program), so while it wasn’t much, I appreciated it. The field trip was divided into two parts, with an hour-long lunch break in between.

When it was time for lunch, we got in the parents’ car and drove off; she asked the group if there was anywhere they’d like to go. We passed by an interesting-looking place, which I now know is the Grand Central Market. I suggested we get lunch there. The parent, knowing what I was referring to, said:

Parent: “No, that’s poor people’s food.”

Ultimately, she made the final decision as no one else in the group had suggested anything, none of the others being too familiar with the area either. We went to an area in the business district with no one else around that I could see and except at a Starbucks attached to an office building; we went there. Now, this was the late 2000s. In this area, at the time, Starbucks hadn’t been around for too long, so it was locally known as a place to get coffee more expensive (that is, classier and more sophisticated) than at other places, so it was popular among the wealthy and those who liked to appear wealthy, especially teenagers who wanted to look mature.

We all went inside. I don’t know if this was because Starbucks was more limited in its menu at that time or if it was a small location with a deliberately limited menu, but all it had for non-coffee items were cookies, some simple pastries under a heat lamp, and muffins. The only thing I could afford with the $5 on me was a cookie. Not in the mood to have a single cookie for lunch and nothing else, I walked out looking for anywhere else to eat in the area. There was nothing within sight except for this one place that was not only closed at the moment, but the menu posted outside had even more expensive stuff. I just sat on an unused chair in front of the Starbucks.

Eventually, everyone else in the group walked out with coffee. They had no solid food. The parent turned to me.

Parent: “You didn’t get anything?”

Me: “I couldn’t afford anything there, and I didn’t want just a cookie by itself.”

Parent: “I see. Well, I’m shocked. Shocked that you didn’t get anything. Oh well.”

She turned to the rest of the group and chatted about what they experienced in the first half of the field trip, while I continued to sit in that chair to kill time for the lunch break to end. They sat together at another table. I wasn’t going to tell anyone else during the second half of the field trip, knowing I would be mocked and teased about it to the end of the year over it.

I should’ve just accepted the cookie.