I work in a warehouse with heavy machinery, so it’s definitely not a place for kids. We have two sit-on electric forklifts that can lift up to 3,000 pounds, and the forklifts themselves weigh nearly five tons each.

I’ve seen drivers come with their big sleeper cabs, and sometimes they have someone or even their family riding with them, so I don’t question when I have a driver show up with a full semi of heavy pallets of tiles and his wife and five-year-old daughter are with him.

The pallets of tiles on this truck are pushing 2,700 pounds. Combined with the weight of my forklift, I’ve got around 12,000 pounds of weight, and I can get the forklift up to almost ten miles per hour.

Driver: “Is there a restroom my kid can use?”

Me: “There are a couple of restrooms right inside the office that she can use.”

Then, I go about unloading the truck. I take a pallet off the truck, and as I am leaving the dock area and heading into the warehouse, I come across a main intersection. When you come across one of these, you honk the horn on the forklift and take it slow because you can’t easily see what might be coming from the left or right until you clear the garage door.

I move a handful of pallets off the truck and into the warehouse, and while I am doing it, the mom is standing well off to the side at that main intersection, just watching.

I make another trip through the intersection with a pallet of tiles, honking the horn as I’m approaching the intersection. Just as I cross through the garage, I slam on the brakes as the young child goes dashing across the front of the forklift. I’m only going a couple of miles per hour, but slamming on the brakes causes the pallet to slide almost completely off the forks. It’s within inches of crushing the little girl as her mom just stands there and just watches her kid running around.

I glare at the mom.

Me: “This isn’t a f****** playground. Why would you let your kid just run around a dangerous place? I almost f****** killed her!”

I just keep my dagger stare on her as she nonchalantly saunters across the front of my forklift, takes her daughter by her hand, and calmly walks her out. I go and find the driver.

Me: “If I see your wife or kid out of the cab any time while I’m still unloading your truck, I will refuse the shipment, and you can explain to your dispatch why you’ll have to bring the material 2,000 miles back to the facility.”

The wife and kid stayed in the truck and we had no other issues. It still makes me upset to this day when I randomly think of this situation that happened almost twenty years ago and how some parents are just so clueless or uncaring.

I’m the author of this story, back with another strange happening.

We decide to eat Chinese, so I look up their website. This is around 2005, so the site is one of the Geocities monstrosities the time was famous for: just a huge title, some scrolling text, an iframe with a PDF containing a scan of the paper menu, and a phone number below. This being Geocities, the site is encircled in all directions by all kinds of flashing, moving, jumping ads.

I call the number and am greeted by an annoyed woman.

Woman: “Yes?”

Me: “Is this [Restaurant]? I’d like to order [meal numbers].”

Woman: *Angry* “Who are you? How did you get this phone number?!”

Me: “I found it on your website.”

Woman: “We don’t have a website!”

Me: “I’m looking at it right now.”

Woman: “That’s impossible!”

Me: “The URL is [URL].”

Woman: “IM-POS-SI-BLE!”

After some discussion, she calmed down and, a bit grumpily, decided to accept my order. We drove over to pick it up.

The place was empty, except for one table with an Asian boy of about twelve eating a very not-Chinese-looking pizza while gaming on his laptop. We went to the woman behind the bar and explained that we’d phoned them. The boy overheard it and said something to the woman in — presumably — Chinese. Back and forth it went. Finally, he explained.

It turned out that he had made the site for his parent’s restaurant. But the parents never really understood what he did, and he used their personal phone for the restaurant.

Related:
We Wish This Author Understood Chinese!

Last week, I took my four-year-old daughter to the park. For some reason, she has been experiencing a massive resurgence of the “terrible twos” stage, regularly throwing tantrums and being especially wilful. If she doesn’t want to do something, she’ll let you know about it.

At the park, she behaved beautifully. I thought maybe today was going to be a good day — the first in a long time. As always, when it was time to go, I gave her several warnings: we’re leaving in ten minutes, leaving in five, two more minutes, etc. She seemed fine with those, telling me, “Okay, Mummy!” each time.

Her perfect behaviour rapidly ended when I told her it was now time to go.

Daughter: “Five more minutes!”

When I told her no, she shrieked loudly and tried to run back to the climbing frame. I managed to grab her. She kicked, screamed, shouted, and scratched, all while doing “the toddler flop” — when kids collapse to the ground and make it as hard as possible for you to pick them up.

I managed to get her out of the park, and we started back home, but she flopped again and again, screaming and crying. We reached a very busy road. My daughter was wailing away and trying to break free. I was concerned about making it across the road safely, so I stopped and sat down and hoped she would scream herself out eventually.

The whole time this was happening, I received glares, disapproving head shakes, and people muttering about me. Everyone was judging me for the awful parent I must surely be.

Despite my best efforts to soothe my daughter, she just wasn’t having it. I had no idea what to do.

Then, a lady passed by and looked at my daughter. She smiled softly and then approached my daughter.

Lady: “Wow. I love your dress. Are you Elsa?”

My daughter stopped for a moment and then looked down at the “Frozen” dress-up outfit she had insisted on wearing.

The lady did a curtsey.

Lady: “Queen Elsa, your majesty.”

My daughter sniffed.

Lady: “Do you want to see a magic trick?”

My daughter sniffed again and nodded slowly.

The lady rummaged in her carrier bag and pulled out a box filled with what looked like paper.

Lady: “What’s your favourite colour?”

Daughter: “B-blue.”

The lady’s face lit up.

Lady: “That’s a great colour. Okay.”

She fished through the box and took out a blue piece of square paper.

Lady: “I’m going to turn this piece of paper into a bird.”

My daughter sat up, looking very sceptical, but the lady set the paper down on the wall and began folding the paper this way and that so quickly that even I lost track. My daughter was so mesmerised throughout the whole thing that she forgot she was supposed to be throwing a tantrum.

Eventually, the lady produced an origami crane, which she handed to my daughter.

Lady: “This is a paper crane. They’re very lucky. But they can also get very lonely. They like to have lots of friends. Will you be his friend?”

My daughter nodded.

Lady: “Paper cranes especially love being friends with toys. Do you have any toys who would be friends with him?”

My daughter shot to her feet and practically dragged me home. I barely had time to thank the lady before we were off down the road. As soon as we got home, my daughter raced into her bedroom to introduce her new “friend” to all her toys.

She was so enamoured with making sure the crane made friends with each and every one of her toys (including all the bath toys), that I got several hours of peace to enjoy a cup of tea.

I don’t know if you’ll ever know quite how much your help meant, but if you ever see this, thank you, kind stranger. My daughter loves her new friend.

This story is part of our end-of-year Feel Good roundup for 2022!

Read the next Feel Good 2022 story!

Read the Feel Good 2022 roundup!

I’m shopping when a young boy, maybe eight years old, approaches me. He’s holding a shopping basket.

Boy: “Excuse me, miss?”

Me: “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

Boy: “I need… that.”

He points at a box of strawberries on a shelf that’s too high for him to reach.

Me: “Here you go.”

I hand him the box and he gently places it in his basket.

Boy: “Miss?”

Me: “Uh, yes?”

Boy: “I need… another.”

I hand him another box of strawberries.

Me: “Are your parents nearby?”

Boy: “I need… two more.”

I hand him two more boxes of strawberries. I’m scanning the area for anyone that might be a parent and not really thinking about the strawberries.

Boy: “I need… two more.”

I hand him two boxes.

Me: “What does your mom look like?”

Boy: “Also one more.”

I hand him ANOTHER box.

Me: “Is that your mom?”

He doesn’t answer, but he leaves with his basket. I start to flag down an employee to try to find his parents when, around the corner, I hear…

Woman: “[Boy]! You can’t wander off like that! You need to stay with— Why do you have so many strawberries?!”

I’ve been invited to a party at a coworker’s house that I really want to go to, but my wife ends up having to travel at the same time, leaving me to watch our two kids, ages three and six.

My coworker generously offers that families are welcome to come to the party, and not wanting to miss it, I take her up on the offer. This is not a raucous, alcohol-fueled party; it’s more like twenty or so people having a nice potluck dinner at her house, so I figure this is an okay parenting decision.

Things are okay at first. Another coworker brings her own two kids, about the same ages as mine, and the four kids are having fun while the adults chitchat. But after about an hour, it’s clear that all four kids are losing their minds. They’re not being destructive, but they’re definitely getting wild and requiring frequent intervention to calm down. I can’t fully blame them, since I dragged them to an event they have no interest in, and can you really expect a three-year-old to maintain perfect behavior when there’s not really anything for them to do?

I’m realizing that I was probably too ambitious to think that this would go well, and I’m about to leave, when suddenly an elderly German woman emerges from the basement. It turns out this is my coworker’s boyfriend’s mother, who lives with them in the basement apartment. 

She holds out a beat-up-looking cardboard box.

Elderly German Woman: “I have a game that is a fun game for children.”

It was very generous of her, but she said it in such a quiet voice, and the game was so decrepit-looking compared to modern toys, that I assumed the kids would have no interest. BUT NO. The moment she said this sentence, all four kids magically fell in line behind her like ducklings, and they followed her, single-file, quietly and politely, to the dining room table, where she set up the game and quietly explained the rules. I just remember that it’s some game with a German name and wooden pieces.

All four kids, who had been bouncing off the walls just a moment earlier, pleasantly played the game with [Elderly German Woman] — even the little ones — for the next hour and a half. It was absolutely astonishing.

Never underestimate the power of a kindly grandmother.