I got my first job at a salon out of cosmetology school and was told I’d get at least two days off every week. I ended up with a 100-degree fever the night before my two days off. My boss called me first thing in the morning to beg me to come in for a nine-hour shift.

Me: “I can’t; I’m running a fever and I feel terrible.”

Boss: “Knock back some DayQuil and get in.”

I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t usually work nine-hour days, so I assumed I’d get a break, especially since I was sick.

I did not get to sit down for the entire nine hours that I was there. I had to beg to go and buy cough drops and some soup because I was starving. My manager wasn’t even going to let me take lunch. I was young and dumb and did not know that was illegal.

I got to eat two bites of soup before my boss came in the back and yelled at me that we were backed up and they needed another stylist on the floor because SHE had to do managerial duties. I managed to get up and finish out my day.

I left with a fever of 102 AND got a ticket for running a red light because I was so out of it. I shouldn’t have been driving.

The next day, my boss called to tell me to cover for another employee who needed the day off. I didn’t answer.

I’m the owner of a larger tow company that has the majority of local police departments’ contracts for accidents and impounds. Last night, I was called out at 0030 hours for a rollover one-car accident. It was no big deal, but it was in the county’s largest city, about twenty miles from my office and home. I drove out and recovered the vehicle using a flatbed tow truck.

I am driving back from the accident scene with the totaled car on the back of the truck. I am on a two-lane highway — one lane going each direction with a double yellow line in the center — which has a speed limit of fifty-five. I come across a car going forty miles per hour and occasionally drifting toward the shoulder or the yellow line. After about five minutes of this, I see through her rear window that the person is drinking from a bottle.

I immediately pick up my phone, dial the non-emergency dispatch number, and explain the situation to them. They start an officer out to intercept the driver as, from my description, they have checked all the boxes for a DUI stop.

An officer pulls up behind me while we’re going down the road and turns on his red and blues. I flip on my white and yellow lights as I slow down, signaling the officer to go around as I have no shoulder to go to. As this is happening, the car in front of me immediately SLAMS on its brakes, causing me to lock up my air brakes and just barely miss rear-ending them. The police officer, luckily, is already in the opposite lane, and by the time he reacts to slow down, he has passed both of us.

We are now at about ten miles per hour, and the officer is leapfrogged to the front of the line. He turns his car at a forty-five-degree angle and stops, stopping the car dead in its tracks. I stop with my lights on behind him about two car lengths back, again at a forty-five-degree angle to protect everyone from any oncoming traffic as we are now blocking half of the road.

I jump out and walk around the back of my truck and up the shoulder of the road toward the officer’s cruiser. As I’m doing this, the driver jumps out of her car and starts screaming.

Driver: “That person is stalking me! I’m scared for my life! That rapist followed me from the pub I was at!”

The officer on scene is the same officer I just spent over an hour with on the road cleaning up the wreck that is still on my truck. Out of pure shock, I turn to the officer and say:

Me: “You know there is no way I was anywhere near her, right?”

Thankfully, he confirms it isn’t possible. The driver does not like this one bit. She starts cussing the officer out.

Driver: “Do your job! I pay your salary and that makes you my servant!”

A second officer arrived and parked behind my truck with lights on. I fell back to direct the light traffic that was coming through. As I was directing traffic, I listened to this belligerent woman insult these officers over and over. Of course, she failed the field sobriety test, and out came the breathalyzer. She blew a .12, and as soon as the handcuffs came out, it was like someone lubed the woman up with grease as she was slipping and sliding out of the two officers’ hands.

I watched for probably five minutes as they wrestled her to the ground and finally got her into cuffs. The first officer approached me and asked if I’d like to impound the woman’s car, too. I happily accepted and had it loaded on to my wheel lift in about two minutes.

I was just awoken not too long ago by a call about the woman. She was asking about her car at my office, and one of my dispatchers called to double-check that there wasn’t a hold on the car. It turns out the woman had to wait sixty minutes before we could release her car, as all DUI arrests in that county have a mandatory twelve-hour impound on the vehicle. I’m sure the girls working my office were thrilled to have the company.

Gardening has always been a little side hobby for me, and my backyard garden has a cherry tomato plant that has been quite prolific ever since I added it to the collection. At the peak of their ripeness, my cherry tomatoes are sweet and my father (who I got my green thumb from) claims they’re “almost like candy” as he happily eats them with the salads I make for family get-togethers. I am in contact with several neighbors and share my bounty with them.

Then, one day, I go outside to start harvesting and find that my tomato plant has been stripped completely of ripe tomatoes!

My backyard is surrounded by a seven-foot-tall wooden fence, with no gaps for animals to squeeze through, and a browsing animal would have done more than just take tomatoes. (I have other veggies, and my lettuce remains untouched, which would have been a favorite for, say, a rabbit.) The gate is locked from the inside and situated in such a way that you can’t just reach over and unlatch it.

The tomato plant keeps getting stripped as soon as something ripens enough to be picked, to the point that I am forced to save up the money to buy and install security cameras. Unfortunately, by the time I manage, the season is over and there are no more tomatoes to steal. I’m seething now because I haven’t been able to enjoy the (literal) fruits of my labor all season.

Over winter, even though I have my cameras, I decide to move my tomatoes to a safer location. I save up again and buy an indoor planter with all the bells and whistles necessary to have a happy, healthy plant.

One day, I get off work and come home. I finally have the time to check my cameras, and I find that I’ve gotten an alert. I watch, first in shock and then in rage, as my neighbor directly behind me uses a ladder to scale my backyard fence. The feet of the ladder are very carefully positioned on some retaining wall blocks to avoid leaving marks in the dirt. She climbs down and heads straight to my garden, where she walks around, first confidently, and then in confusion and frustration as she cannot find my tomato plant. She then prowls around the outside of my house, peering in all the windows, and spots my vibrantly healthy tomato plant in all its glory in the room where it is set up. She throws a mini stomping fit, then storms angrily back to the ladder, and returns to her own property.

I have just finished watching the footage when someone knocks loudly and aggressively on my door. Who is it? Why, none other than my thieving neighbor!

I barely have the time to acknowledge her existence after opening the door before she thrusts her hand in my face in a “hand it over” demand.

Neighbor: “I want a key to your house so I can help myself to my tomatoes when you’re not home!”

This is not a mistype; she really did call them HER tomatoes, even though they’re on my property and I’m the one caring for them.

The audacity and entitlement are so high that I just stare at her, speechless, for a moment. Then, I unleash. In no uncertain (and definitely loud) terms, I call her a slew of names, including “thief” and “creep.”

Me: “I have you on camera trespassing on my property. You need to keep your a** out of my garden!”

Neighbor: “You need to stop being so selfish! You need to give me the tomatoes because they’re the only tomatoes my kids will eat!”

Me: “Not my problem! I would have been happy to share my tomatoes if you had talked to me.”

Neighbor: “I need them all! It’s not too much trouble for you to just grow tomatoes for me since you have so many plants that you already care for.”

We basically had a screaming match before I told her to get off my property and that if she ever set foot in my yard again, I would give the police my footage and press all the charges I could legally hit her with.

She tried to say that I didn’t have permission to film her (trespassing in my own yard!) and was taken aback when I told her that I didn’t NEED her permission and could film whatever I [expletive] wanted on my own property. She finally threw names, blame, and guilt trips before leaving.

My crop of tomatoes tasted extra sweet that year, and all my neighbors benefited yet again from my surplus. Well, all of them except for her.

I had to move due to work somewhat recently but before the global health crisis. Since I moved several hundred kilometers, I opted to hire a moving company instead of organizing friends and family to help.

The move was arranged so that they picked up my belongings on the first day, had them in storage overnight, and sent them over early the next day for unloading at the new address. There were two truckloads of stuff in total.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at my new home the next day at 8:00 am and quickly realized that half of my stuff hadn’t arrived! The driver on the scene had no clue about my missing belongings, so I called the company’s office.

Representative: “Hello, [Moving Company], how may I help you?”

Me: “Hi, this is [My Name] calling. I’m moving from [address #1] in [City #1] to [address #2] in [City #2], but half of my belongings haven’t arrived.”

Representative: “Hold on a moment, please.”

Me: “Yeah, sure.”

A while later…

Representative: “Okay, I see you have a move scheduled for today with two trucks and crew.”

Me: “Yes.”

Representative: “Can you explain the issue you’re having?”

Me: “As I said, when I moved out, I had two trucks full of my belongings. I only have one truck at the address I’m moving to. I’m missing half of my belongings!”

Representative: “Uh… Hold, please.”

It takes a few full minutes until the line opens up again.

Representative: “I, uh, may have tracked your missing belongings.”

Me: “Okay?”

Representative: “The earliest I can get them to you is tonight at around 7:00 pm. Would that be okay? And, of course, we will compensate you half the costs for this delay.”

Me: “I guess I might make that work. What happened?”

Representative: “I’m sorry, but I am not at liberty to say.”

I left it at that and resigned to wait for the rest of my belongings to arrive. Once they did, I was a bit cross already and just told them to carry everything into whatever room they found a place in. I had my mattress on the floor and would reorganize things whenever I had the chance. But I did overhear a worker say the following:

Worker: “Wait, how much? And he seriously didn’t think he’d get caught? He should be lucky he doesn’t end up in jail!”

I guess that solves the mystery of my missing belongings. At least nothing was missing or broken in the end.

One rainy afternoon, I was on my way back from the pet store where I had just gotten Zeus and Baldur fitted for new harnesses. Zeus and Baldur are our German shepherds. Combined, they tip the scales at just under 160 pounds.

I am sixty-six, and most days, I resemble Grandma from a 1980s sitcom — silver hair, glasses, pastel tracksuit. I also drive what the younger members of my family scornfully refer to as a Boomer car — in other words, a solid, American-made four-door sedan. It’s nothing flashy, just respectable.

On this particular day, the boys are lying curled up in the back seat and I am concentrating on the slippery road conditions when we are passed and intercepted by a white Hyundai. The driver cuts in front of me and steps on his brakes, and by sheer luck, I am able to stop with my front license-plate holder just tapping the Hyundai’s rear bumper.

The other driver gets out and is on his way back to confront me when two things happen almost simultaneously.

1. Zeus and Baldur stand up in the back seat.
2. Mr. Swoop-And-Squat does an abrupt about-face and marches very quickly back to his Hyundai.

For readers who live in places where this particular type of crime is not common, “swoop and squat” is an insurance fraud involving someone driving a small, cheap car who stages an accident by pulling abruptly in front of the target vehicle and forcing a minor collision.

Fortunately, I get a photo of the Hyundai — complete with license plate — before he drives away, and I am able to hand it off to the police.