Before my parents met, my dad was in the army, and my mom was a civilian working at the same army base. Both were far from home. In my mom’s case, it was her first time living in an area with no family nearby.

My mom got involved in some of the women’s groups and other groups to get to know the community. One older woman in particular took my mom under her wing and repeatedly told her she wanted to introduce her to a lieutenant who worked under her husband. My mom was very open to meeting people, but the woman never really followed through.

Fast forward a bit. My parents met at a party on base, started dating, and got engaged a few months later. They had an engagement party.

At the engagement party, the woman who had wanted to set my mom up with that nice young lieutenant was there, and she came up to my mom.

Older Woman: “Congratulations on your engagement! I’m very happy for you. I’m just sorry I never got a chance to introduce you to that nice lieutenant; I really think you would have gotten along well. He’s here, though! I still want to introduce you.”

She flagged down the nice lieutenant.

Older Woman: “Here he is! [Lieutenant], I wanted to introduce you to [Mom].”

Mom: “Well, you were right that we’d get along well; this is my fiancé!”

The older woman was definitely right that they’d get along well! My parents have been married for forty-eight years.

This story takes place shortly before Halloween when pumpkins are in stock. My fiancé and I are out doing our weekly grocery shopping, and I ask him to pick out a pumpkin to carve for decoration.

Normally at this store, we use the self-checkout, but this particular day we are lazy and choose to have a cashier ring us out. As a frequent reader of NAR and once a cashier myself, I try to make sure I ask, “How are you doing?”

I am generally as polite as possible to anyone working, including our tired-looking cashier for the night.

While I am closer to the bagging/cashier, my fiancé is driving the buggy, just a little further away than I am.

I literally have my mouth open, ready to ask how this particular cashier’s day is going, when my Viking-like, bear-of-a-man fiancé grabs the pumpkin by the stem, holds it up for the cashier to see, and shouts:

Fiancé: “PUMPKIN!”

His tone isn’t rude, more informative, but I stare at him in exasperation. How exactly am I supposed to follow that up with normal conversation?

As if showing how beaten down by these kinds of things the cashier is, without a blink, he looks at my fiancé and replies:

Cashier: “Is there a sticker on it?”

There isn’t, so he has to type in a code, and the rest of our (thankfully) short shopping trip is over.

I wait until we are out of earshot to tell my fiancé, despite how bear-like he is, as well as a descendant of Vikings, that he can’t just barbarically yell what he has in the cart at a cashier who has probably been yelled at enough. His response?

Fiancé: “Why use many words when few do trick?”

Every day when he comes home from work, I now shout, “PUMPKIN!” at him and hope the cashier at least found SOME humor in it.

My brother-in-law got engaged to a girl after dating her for six years. The entire relationship, she had been not-so-subtly hinting at getting married and renovating the house he owned. She was there five nights a week and had a lot of say in who was allowed over and who wasn’t, but she adamantly denied living there because it wasn’t Christ-like to cohabitate before marriage.

When they finally got engaged, [Girl] immediately went out and booked a high-end venue, purchased an expensive dress, and started renovating [Brother-In-Law]’s house. She purchased all new furniture and dishes, had the deck completely rebuilt, and repainted the walls so they were all white instead of the pale blue and green they had been. All of this was either done with my brother-in-law’s savings account or his credit cards. She didn’t pay a penny because she didn’t have a job; she spent her days going to a community college and volunteering at a local drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.

About two months before the wedding, [Girl] started staying late at the center. Then, she would go in early. Then, she wouldn’t come back for days at a time. Her phone was always turned off, or she claimed it had died.

Then, a month before the wedding, after being unavailable for four days in a row, [Girl] showed up while my husband and I were over. She pulled [Brother-In-Law] aside and said that God told her they shouldn’t be together.

Brother-In-Law: “Get out of my house. Immediately.”

She gave him the biggest puppy dog eyes.

Girl: “Please don’t! Sleep on the couch, and I’ll take the bedroom until I find a place! Please!”

Brother-In-Law: “I’d like to remind you that you’ve always said you don’t live here. You have no choice but to leave or I’ll call the police and press charges for trespassing.”

[Girl] left that night and moved in with someone she met at the rehab. Two weeks later — two weeks before she was supposed to marry [Brother-In-Law] — she was engaged to this new guy and planning on getting married the same day she was going to marry [Brother-In-Law].

[Brother-In-Law] called the venue she had booked and asked if he could get any of his money back at all. The person who answered seemed very confused.

Coordinator: “The wedding is still on, correct? I just saw [Girl] two days ago, and everything was great.”

Once the coordinator was up to speed with everything, he refunded [Brother-In-Law] most of his deposit and canceled the reservation; after all, it was still in his name. [Brother-In-Law] then called the company that was holding her wedding dress and repeated the same thing. He called the caterer, the DJ, and everyone who had been hired for their wedding. They all said the same thing; they had just spoken with [Girl] and she had never hinted that anything was different. All total, [Brother-In-Law] got back about $75,000.

The day of the wedding came and [Brother-In-Law]’s phone would not stop. [Girl] called, she texted, and she tried reaching him through every single social media he had. Then, she tried to publicly shame him, tagging him in post after post. Her life was ruined because of him! How dare he cancel her dream wedding with the love of her life?! What a monster!

[Girl] married her new fiancé at the courthouse the following week. She seemed much less enthused about this little wedding but went through with it. None of us were invited, of course, but we have mutual friends who kept us updated.

They were together for less than six months before they quietly divorced and [Girl] moved in with someone else. [Brother-In-Law] now has a beautifully renovated house on the market, worth twice as much as he bought it for.

I once had to deal with a frantic and angry bride-to-be.

Bride: “You sent my fiancé a message demanding immediate payment or you’d cancel his order! You told us when he ordered that he only had to pay the deposit! We don’t have that kind of money!”

Me: “We don’t send out messages like that. What did it say exactly?”

Bride: “I don’t know, but that’s what he told me it said.”

Me: “Could you get him on the phone?”

Fiancé: “Yeah, you sent me a message demanding immediate payment!”

Me: “Can you read it out to me?”

Fiancé: *Reading* “’Your order is now placed. As discussed, if you would like to make any changes, you have until seven days prior to the delivery date to do so. Changes after this date may be possible but could also attract an additional charge.’”

Me: “That… doesn’t say anything like what you said it did.”

Fiancé: “No.”

My fiancé and I are moving in together and are picking out pieces of furniture that we need. We find a mattress we like and call my fiancé’s dad to see if we can borrow his truck.

Fiancé: “Hi. We found a mattress we like and were wondering if we could please borrow your truck to bring it to the apartment?”

Fiancé’s Dad: “Why did you do that?”

Fiancé: “Do what?”

Fiancé’s Dad: “Buy a new mattress!”

Fiancé: “Because we don’t have one?”

Fiancé’s Dad: “You should have talked to me first. You could have taken your old mattress!”

Fiancé: *Long pause* “You mean the one that’s fifteen-plus years old?”

Fiancé’s Dad: “Yes. It was an expensive mattress when we bought it. Tell them you don’t want it anymore and get your money back. You can just take the one from your room.”

Fiancé: “We’re not going to do that. Can we borrow the truck or not?”

Fiancé’s Dad: “You should have discussed it with me and your mother first.”

Fiancé: “I don’t need to discuss any purchases I make with you. Never mind. We’ll figure something else out.”

The mattress ended up actually being in a box since it was a memory foam one, and we were able to fit it in our car. Later, we found out that [Fiancé]’s parents wanted to get a new mattress in [Fiancé]’s room to be a guest bedroom but didn’t think a fifteen-plus-year-old mattress should be thrown out.