I’ve just returned home after three years of college, and I go back to the youth club I used to volunteer with. Things have changed a lot since I was here last, and since I used to be in charge of kitchen/sales, it’s only natural for me to step into that my first night back. Because we meet on Fridays, we sell, among other things, a large variety of candy.

It’s the end of the night and we’re packing up. I’m looking over the price list when the guy in charge of procurement — an old classmate and friend of mine — comes in. The real prices are in Norwegian Kroner, so the prices stated are just a rough estimate.

Friend: “You look puzzled, [My Name].”

Me: “What? Oh, no, I was just checking the price list.”

Friend: “Yeah, some of the prices are a little weird, I know.”

Me: “Yeah, why are we selling [candy bar #1] for $1.33? And [candy bar #2] for $1.56? Wouldn’t it be easier to keep it an even number? I mean, you’ve always complained about being left with so much small change at the end of the day.”

Friend: “I know, but I thought we should keep the prices close to the local stores’. I actually got the [candy bar #1]s on sale, two for a dollar.”

Me: “So, why not sell them for a dollar, then? And [candy bar #2] sells for over two dollars in some stores, so you could sell those for $1.90 or something to make up for the difference.”

Friend: “What?”

He seems really confused at this point, and I find myself actually talking slower.

Me: *Sighs* “If you paid one dollar for two bars, you essentially bought one bar for fifty cents, right? So, if you sell one bar for a dollar, you’ve made fifty cents. I can see why you’d want to try and price-match with the stores, and you could potentially make a few extra bucks a week, but if you’re offering the kids the same deal as the stores, what’s stopping them from buying in there instead of here?”

He didn’t have a good answer for that and seemed genuinely confused about the whole thing. He’s twenty-four and works at a grocery store, yet simple math still escapes him. He even suggested I use a calculator during sales, because counting is apparently difficult.

I gave birth — after two days of trying naturally — via emergency cesarean. Natural just wasn’t happening, and when the fetal heartbeat started failing, I consented to surgery, of course. The baby is fine and beautiful.

Friend: “Oh, don’t feel too bad. There’s really no shame in a cesarean.”

Me: “Huh? Of course not. I’m just glad we’re both okay.”

Friend: “I am so glad you can see it that way!”

Me: “Is there some other way of seeing it?”

It turned out that her mother-in-law had stormed into the hospital after her cesarean and extensively berated her for “not being a proper woman,” “not trying hard enough,” and “being too lazy to give birth.” If this is a site for stories of people behaving badly, I can’t think of much worse behavior than attacking a young mother recovering from a difficult birth for “giving birth wrong.”

I’m with one of my friends who’s committed quite a few petty crimes. We’re out drinking, but we can’t find a bin to throw away our bottles. After some time of fruitless searching…

Me: “You know we can just…” *mimes littering* “…the bottles, right?“

Friend: *Genuinely offended look* “Dude, I may be a liar, scammer, and cheater, but I draw the line at littering. I have standards, you know.”

Me: “Seriously?”

Friend: “Yes. There’s a long list of crimes I’m willing to commit, but littering is not one of them. And drugs. Drugs are bad.”

Honestly, he’s beaten up, blackmailed, and extorted people without batting an eye, but apparently, littering was too evil even for him. Who knew?

My mother and I are going to a craft show. Mum is driving but we have to divert from the regular route to pick up her friend from a house she recently moved to. Mum doesn’t have a Sat Nav so she is relying on me to navigate from a road map that I put beside me; I know the way as I have driven to the venue myself on other occasions.

It’s a twenty-five- or thirty-minute drive, basically on just four roads. I have no problems on three of those roads, and then we get to a fork in the road.

Me: “We need to take the right fork.”

Mum’s friend does not drive and has a very grating voice that turns high-pitched when she gets upset; it borders on screeching.

Friend: “No, we need to go left.”

Me: “No, it’s right.”

Friend: “No, left.“

Mum: “Which way do I go?”

Me: “Just go right.”

We take the right fork.

Friend: *High-pitched* “This isn’t the way my daughter goes! She always goes through [Town #1] and the sign back there said it was to the left.”

Me: “We don’t need to go to [Town #1]; we are going to [Town #2], which is to the right.”

Friend: “We have to go through [Town #1] to get to [Town #2]; that’s the way my daughter always goes.”

Me: “Yes, when she picked you up from your old house that’s the way she would go, but we are coming from the opposite direction.”

Friend: “We’re never going to get there; we’re lost. Turn around, [Mum], so we can go the right way.”

Mum pulls over and puts her blinker on to turn around.

Me: “Just stick to this road; it’s only five minutes up the road”

Mum pulls back onto the road and we keep going. All the way, her friend is ranting about how we are going the wrong way; her voice is rising to screech level. I just want to tell her to shut up. After what seems like an eternity with my ears almost bleeding, but is actually less than five minutes, we see the sign for the venue.

Me: “There it is, on the left-hand side.”

Friend: “But it should be on the right. Why isn’t it on the right? I didn’t know it moved.”

Me: “It hasn’t moved; we came from the opposite direction of what you usually take.”

Friend: “Well, how was I to know? I don’t drive; my daughter does and she goes the way we should have gone.”

Me: “It would have taken us twenty minutes longer.”

She was still ranting how we had gone the wrong way as Mum parked.

My mother is disabled and on a fixed income. One week, she is about $100 short for whatever reason and so I loan her the money. After managing to get everything sorted out, she is able to sell off some things she doesn’t need anymore to a friend in order to pay me back. The friend comes over with the money.

Mom: “Just hand it to [My Name].”

Friend: “Here you go.”

The bill is in my hand for about three seconds before I realize something is wrong.

Me: “No, give me a different one. Now.”

Mom: “What’s wrong with it?”

Me: “It’s counterfeit. Take it back and give me a different one. Now.”

Friend: “That’s absurd. I got this from the ATM on my way over here.”

Me: “There’s not an ATM on this side of the city that dispenses any bill larger than a twenty.”

Mom: “How can you tell? You’ve hardly looked at it.”

Me: “It’s crumpled up but it still feels too stiff. It’s not the right shade of green; it’s too light.”

I lightly run my nails over it.

Me: “No ridges. And I bet if I got my counterfeit pen out, it wouldn’t mark properly. It’s counterfeit.”

Friend: “I’m telling you, I got it from the ATM.”

Me: “I worked in customer service for nearly fifteen years; this isn’t the first one I’ve come across. I don’t even need to be this polite about it. If you made this and are trying to pass it off, you’ve done a s*** job and I’m surprised you’re not in jail by now. If you legit didn’t know it was counterfeit, then you got it from someone at the casino who pawned it off on you, and that makes you an idiot. Either way, I’m not accepting it.”

I ended up getting a real bill and went happily about my business. Last I heard, that “friend” was no longer welcome at my mother’s house, and she’s a lot more diligent about the cash she gets.