I live in a condominium that has a pool and playground downstairs. It’s pretty communal. All the kids know one another, partially because well over half of them go to the same primary school down the road.

We also have a bunch of security guards — rent-a-cops essentially. I’m not exactly sure why the HOA keeps them around given Singapore’s nonexistent crime rate. Still, they enforce the rules in our condo.

For better or for worse, my family is very familiar and friendly with the guards. This is half because we’ve been living there for fifteen years and counting, and half because my younger brother is the biggest troublemaker on the block. He got skateboarding banned after he nearly ran over a three-year-old, and was responsible for — or at least involved in — a considerable amount of the mischief and bad behaviour the local boys got up to.

As such, it’s not the first time that the security guards have come knocking.

Me: “Hi, [Guard]. What’s the problem?”

Guard: “I’ve got complaints from two mothers downstairs about your brother flashing a butterfly knife and threatening their kids with it.”

Me: *Long sigh* “Seriously?”

Guard: “We take a very serious stance about weapons on the premises. I’m afraid that we might have to get the police involved. Knives like that should be illegal in Singapore, I believe.”

Me: “It’s a toy. He watched some movie or another and got really obsessed with getting a butterfly knife toy of his own. I don’t know why our parents agreed to get him one.”

Guard: “A toy? Can I see it?”

I dig it up and pass it to him.

Guard: *Examining it* “The things they make these days.” *Passes it back* “The blade is metal and rather sharp. I’m afraid, toy or not, I’m going to have to ban it from downstairs.”

Me: “No problem. I’ll relay this to my parents. Sorry again for the trouble.”

As promised, I tell my parents.

Dad: *In a confrontational tone* “Who are those parents? They obviously are overreacting. It’s a toy.”

Me: “Toy or no, it looks real, and that scares people.”

Dad: *Dismissively* “People are all so scared these days. It’s not a big deal.”

I could tell by his tone that he’d tuned me out and I wouldn’t be winning that argument. Instead, I got Mom to get a certain wonderfully weird idea into Dad’s thick skull; maybe, just maybe, mothers don’t like having sharp metal objects pointed at their very young children.

He conceded and agreed to drop the issue, but I still heard him grumbling about “wimpy parents being overprotective” and “teaching their kids to be sissies” quite frequently.

I was a lifeguard for six years at a municipal pool in my hometown. We had clear-cut rules, like a required swim test to go to the deep end (swim the width of the pool without touching the ground and tread water for one minute) and no life jackets in the deep end. This was upheld for everyone; swim team stars and visitors alike had to pass the test, and pass again if there was doubt. It was a small town, so the lifeguards knew who was who and it was a simple system.

Over the Fourth of July weekend my last year there, we had a family come into town. They had this a boy who was maybe four, five, or six, who insisted he could swim fine enough to go to the deep end. I told him he had to pass the test first.

Mother: “We’re from [City], and they let him swim in the deep end there! He can swim fine!”

Me: “I don’t care. Rules are rules; he has to pass the test here.”

She huffed and went and sat in the observation area. Her son failed the test more than once with more than one lifeguard.

The kid still ran right to the deep end. Naturally, he swam out to the middle, where none of the tools we use to drag people to the side can reach, and just his face was above the water. Then, he started moving his arms to push himself under and back up, since he wasn’t able to touch the ground, and started paddling frantically but not moving anywhere.

Where I was trained, this is active drowning. I was on the floor, so I jumped in and swam the kid to the side as he kicked me and yelled to his mom. I put him on the wall and said he had to stay in the shallow end. I got out, and the mom got in my face yelling.

Mother: “Why would you do that?! He was fine. That’s just how he swims.”

I simply told her that was active drowning and the other floor lifeguard backed me up. She took all her kids and left — not without getting the number of my boss, who just told her, “Sorry my lifeguard saved your kid.”

I’ll never forget that. I kept my training for nine years, and that was the first and only time I had to jump in after someone (we usually could mediate another way but mostly all the kids that came were very good swimmers because they were there daily), and the only thing the parent had to say was, “Why would you do that?”

This story is part of our Fourth-Of-July-themed roundup!

Want to read the next Fourth-Of-July-themed roundup story? Click here!

Want to read the Fourth-Of-July-themed roundup? Click here!

Some sixty years ago, Mom purchased one of those skinny sets of encyclopedias one found at the grocery store. If you spent a certain amount of money each week, you got each progressive volume for a discounted price or for free.

According to my mother (I remember NONE of this except the encyclopedias themselves), I could not get enough of those encyclopedias. I would start at A, read it through, and keep going all the way to Z. Then, I would start over. I also read them aloud to my younger brother, which means I had to be at least eight years old.

On a Sunday, after we got home from church and were still sitting in the car, my little brother piped up out of the blue to ask:

Brother: “How does the baby get in the mommy’s tummy?”

Mom said that she and Dad looked at each other, looked at my brother and at me, and then looked at each other again.

Mom: “We were expecting that question, but from you, not your brother. And we had no idea what to say.”

They didn’t have to say anything, as it turned out.

I apparently sighed with all the frustration of a very old person put through the wringer and said:

Me: “For heaven’s sake, [Brother]. Don’t you remember? I read you the article about whales. It said in the story how whales make babies, and Mommies and Daddies do things pretty much the same.”

Brother: “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

My parents heaved a huge sigh of relief. And I probably went into the house, grabbed the encyclopedia, and began another reading cycle.

I’m shopping when I see a woman with a small boy in tow. The child breaks away from the mother and, right in front of her, starts pulling jars of mayonnaise off the shelf and dropping them on the ground. She watches him shatter maybe twenty bottles before ambling toward him and slowly pulling him away. As she heads down the aisle, I see her clicking her fingers at one of the employees.

Woman: “Heeeeeey, somebody smashed a whole bunch of bottles over there. Somebody should clean it up. My kid could have been cut by all the glass!”

Me: *Passing* “If you check the cameras, you’ll see that it was her kid who broke them while she watched.”

Woman: “F****** snitch!“

And she threw a bottle at my head — in front of witnesses and on camera. I needed some stitches and she got jail time for assault.

For the past five summers, I’ve worked in a camp’s “petting zoo” room. There are many reasons I love my job, but one of them is the hilarious and adorable things I hear from the kids, especially the youngest.

This boy is about five years old.

Boy: “Where does [Iguana] go at night?”

Me: “All of the animals stay here.”

Boy: “But what if they eat each other?”

Me: “They’re fine; they all stay in their own cages.”

Boy: “But how do you keep them safe?”

Me: “What do you think is here at night that could hurt them?”

He pauses for a beat.

Boy: “Ghosts! What if the ghosts get her?”

Me: “Uh… [Iguana] isn’t afraid of ghosts.”

Boy: “Is that because she’s a grownup?”

Me: *Pause* “Yes, that’s it.”

Boy: “Okay.” *Points at a turtle* “Is she afraid of ghosts?”