I work security at a hospital. On this day, I was posted in one of the lobbies when an older woman came storming in angrily.

Lady: “Give me my keys!”

Me: “Ma’am, I don’t have your keys. What can I—”

Lady: “—Yes, you do! I gave them to you!”

Me: “I haven’t taken keys from anyone this morning. Please, let me try—”

Lady: “—Not today, Saturday! I was just released from Emergency!”

Me: “You came in on Saturday? What time did you—”

Lady: “—Six-thirty in the morning! I gave you my keys when I came in!”

Me: “Okay, ma’am, this lobby was closed on Saturday, and I was in a different spot—”

Lady: “—I gave them to someone!”

Me: “Ma’am, I can’t help you if you won’t let me speak. The guys at the Emergency desks right now weren’t here Saturday, and I was at a different post. Valet is closed on the weekends.”

Lady: “Then who has my keys?!”

Me: “I don’t know who you gave your keys to. Have you asked the guards at the desks if they’re there?”

Lady: “They’re useless! I’m calling the police! My house and car keys were on there!”

Me: “Go for it. While you’re at it, explain to them that you gave your keys to a random person instead of asking Security to hold them or holding on to them yourself.”

She left to go back to Emergency to use the phone. About ten minutes later, I saw her get into a car and leave. I called one of the guards in Emergency, and he said they were in the Security safe in a bag labelled “found in triage on (date).” She should be glad that whatever random person she gave them to chose to turn them in instead of stealing her car and raiding her house.

More than twenty years ago, my sister had her third baby. (She had three children before twenty-five, which is, you know, another issue.)

My then-baby niece was born with a bruise below her chest (it’s something vascular, I believe, and, as far as I know, she still has it). Before the hospital sent my sister and her newborn home, they said that my niece should have an ultrasound.

The next day, my mother answers the phone. “Hello?” Then she says, “She’s two days old!”

Apparently, the scheduler had asked for my niece to come to the phone!

I was a pretty quiet kid throughout most of my childhood. I was bullied sometimes, but most of the time, people just kinda left me alone (I was lucky, as I learned, since having made friends with kindred spirits in college, I learned my middle/high school experience was somewhat unique in this regard).

I grew up in a town away from the coast. When I was fifteen, the summer before my sophomore year of high school, my best friend and I went to the beach in the neighboring town together. Her eighteen-year-old brother was going with a few of his friends, and my friend and I were just tagging along. My best friend has a similar temperament to mine. It was exciting for us, however, since it was our first time wearing a two-piece bathing suit. We felt like proper adults.

My friend and I got there and went down to hang out in the water for a bit. We had been playing, not far from shore, when something knocked me over. My prescription sunglasses flew off. I can barely see anything without my glasses, so this was a big deal. My friend tried searching for them as I started to panic, and eventually she had to lock arms with me and start guiding me back towards the shore so that we could go to the towel/umbrella area guarded by two of my brother’s friends, where I had my normal glasses waiting for me.

As we were emerging from the water, a guy walked over to us. He was older – maybe eighteen, nineteen, twenty? – at any rate, older than my friend’s brother. He started talking to us, but me in particular. He rapidly switched back and forth from complimenting me to insulting me, and so covered a wide variety of topics – how the bathing suit complimented the shape of my body, the size of my breasts, and how pretty my eyes are, and how pale my skin is were just a few of the topics he covered. My friend and I were immensely uncomfortable, and we both told him to stop a few times, but being that we were very anxious people (and I was still nervous because I wasn’t able to see), this was very difficult for us, not that it would have been an easy situation for most teenage girls.

Eventually, some guy showed up, probably his friend, and said something like “hey dude, Schmidty wants to talk to you about the party tonight” or something else really fratty, I don’t quite remember. As the guy walked away, I heard him ask his creepy friend, “Don’t you think those chicks were a bit young for you?”

Eventually, we made it back to the towel/umbrella area. My friend and I relieved her brother’s friends, who went to join up with her brother and his other friends. My friend and I, I with my regular glasses, were finally able to see again, and we were lying on the towels under the umbrella just reading books.

Then, the creepy guy returned. He started his mixture of insults and compliments directed at me, my body, and my appearance. My friend and I were really scared. Her brother’s friends’ stuff was all with us, so we couldn’t easily pack up and move. We kept telling him to leave, but clearly it wasn’t working. Then a girl ran into the scene, nearly knocking me over. My friend and I recognized her as a popular girl at school, a cheerleader. I don’t think she’d ever interacted with either of us at school, despite us all knowing each other since the age of 6.

The cheerleader got between the creep and my friend and me, and she started berating him. She switched between shouting at him and insulting him in a way which I can only describe as a stereotypical cheerleader cattiness. He kept up his suave demeanor until it became clear that other people were listening to the cheerleader berate him, and especially when it became clear that other people knew he was hitting on underage girls. Obviously, you can’t always tell someone’s age from their appearance – I’m a prime example, even now, I’m in my twenties, people think I’m in middle school sometimes, but I was underage, and he clearly was not. He scowled and left, tail between his legs.

The cheerleader promptly sat down in a folding chair, crossed her legs, and stared after him until he was truly out of sight, then asked if we were alone here. Upon hearing our situation, she told us that she was staying with us until my friend’s brother and party returned. We asked about her friends, but she waved at a group of girls in bikinis, probably a furlong away, who waved back. She said they knew she had come to help us so she was going to stay as long as necessary.

And we got to talking. And we talked for nearly an hour until my friend’s brother and party returned.

We had very little in common; my friend and I had exclusively nerdy and/or old woman taste in media and everything. Also, this girl’s family was definitely in a much higher tax bracket than either of ours. But still, we walked away from that conversation having exchanged numbers, with promises of meeting up again. And we did. We never became super close friends, but the cheerleader is one of a handful of people from high school that my best friend and I are still in contact with.

Back when I was in elementary school, in the 1980s, our school was incredibly strict about ‘bagged lunches’ for field trips.

A bagged lunch for a normal day at school had few to no requirements. But each field trip we went on came with a permission slip listing exactly what was required for the trip.

Sometimes the requirement would list ‘No thermos’, other times ‘No lunches that require heating’. Sometimes there would be a minimum calorie requirement or a maximum size of lunch box permitted. These requirements were as random seeming as they were arbitrary, and students who failed to match the requirements would, at best, not be permitted on the trip and, at worst, have their lunch confiscated but still be brought along… without any food.

My parents were busy people, and rather than risk them misunderstanding the requirements, I regularly just… made my lunches myself so I wouldn’t have to suffer the humiliation of being left behind or the humiliation and hunger of being brought along without lunch. I’d already witnessed a child suffering like Oliver Twist at lunch time, trying to beg scraps from their fellows just because their mom had accidentally used a lunch box that was a quarter inch too long.

Dad got an injury at work, so he was off with pay for four months while they investigated and he recovered. He wanted to spend more time with me, so he decided he’d make me lunch for one field trip. 

While he’s working on it, I watch anxiously over his shoulder, occasionally interjecting with the rules from the permission slip to make sure I don’t get left without food. Each time I mentioned another rule from the slip, Dad got more agitated.

Finally, he exploded:

Dad: “Is this a f****** logical puzzle?!”

He angrily snatches the list out of my hand and reads through it. He says, finally:

Dad: “Absolutely not.”

He storms off to the living room to call the school. After some argument, he says:

Dad: “I’m keeping you home from school today. You won’t be going on this field trip. Instead, we’re going to go out fishing.”

And you know what? I had a lot of fun with Dad. It was relaxing, and we cleaned and cooked up the fish we caught right there over a small fire.

After that, whenever I had a field trip at that school, Dad would take me out of school for the day of the trip, and we’d do things together instead. Riding horses, picking berries, fishing, stuff like that. 

In the background, Dad had gotten Mom to talk to the other parents, and the school was fielding more and more complaints about their lunch rules. Finally, the school decided the best way to square the circle was to stop having field trips.

I never did learn why they thought such stringent lunch requirements were necessary.

I’m cruising along a quiet suburban road one weekend with my mom-in-law, chatting about a bunch of things. My toddler is humming to herself in the back.

Suddenly, a car swerves ahead of me, cutting across two lanes to make a turn.

Me: *Muttering.* “Real genius move there.”

Before I can even finish the thought, a tiny voice pipes up from the backseat:

Daughter: “Ah, look at this f***in’ guy!”

The car goes dead silent. My mom-in-law slowly turns her head to look at her granddaughter, eyebrows raised.

Me: “So… [Husband]’s been doing the school run lately.”

My daughter smiles and kicks her feet happily. [Mom-In-Law] decides she will be having some ‘words’ with her son that evening.

Related:
Do NOT Say Anything In Front Of A Child You Don’t Want Everyone To Hear