Every year on my son’s birthday, I think about what happened on his second birthday.

My sister-in-law just found out that she is infertile and she’s having trouble accepting it because of her wish to become a mother. 

I’m grabbing snacks when I suddenly hear [Sister-In-Law] talking in that high, sweet way you speak to toddlers. I can’t make out what she says, so I turn around, and I see her putting her fingers in my son’s mouth!

Of course, I come to check things out, and I see [Sister-In-Law] handing over a large truck toy to my confused but calm child. 

She gets up and shows me the toy he has been playing with: a little airplane… and a separate — wet — wheel.

Sister-In-Law: “I’m so sorry, but I saw this wheel snapping off in his mouth, and I was just scared he might… I’m so sorry. I should have called you, instead.”

Me: “No, no! I’m so grateful you did that! Thank you, thank you so much! I can’t imagine… Thank you!”

My mother-in-law — who is not related to [Sister-In-Law] or me — joins us.

Mother-In-Law: “What’s the fuss?”

Me: “[Son] had this little wheel in his mouth, but [Sister-In-Law] caught it in time.”

Mother-In-Law: “And?”

Me: “He could have choked on it.”

Mother-In-Law: “Ugh, that thing? The kid is two, not stupid. They know not to eat stuff like that. Seriously, you two are overreacting! I’ve raised four kids. They all survived, and I let them play with smaller things.”

Me: “Well, I’m grateful, anyway.”

I smile at [Sister-In-Law].

Mother-In-Law: “You are just a new mom. And it’s a good thing [Sister-In-Law] can’t have them, because I’d feel sorry for those kids with such a helicopter mom!”

[Sister-In-Law] looked at the floor, and I could see that she was pushing back tears. I told her again that I was grateful for what she’d done. And I still am.

I played hockey from the time I was able to stand until a horrific injury at age thirteen caused a stop to my promising hockey career. I was wheelchair-bound for months with an injured leg and had intense physiotherapy until I was twenty. I was able to regain the ability to place weight on my leg, but I now have a limp if I walk for long distances and am considered disabled because of this. Because of this disability, I am exempt from physical education in school. 

When I am fourteen, I am back to walking semi-normally, though I am still attending physiotherapy twice a week after school. I am walking through the hallway one day on my way to lunch when I am stopped by one of the club teachers. She holds out a form to me, which happens to be the hockey team sign-up form. At the very top of the sign-up sheet is my name, crudely written as if a toddler had written it.

Teacher: “Are you well enough to play hockey?”

Me: “I’m not, and I never signed up.”

Due to several incidents in the past where students signed up for teams and activities and didn’t follow through with fees for equipment and uniforms, our school has a strict policy that if these fees are not paid, you will be given detention until you pay the school back.

Teacher: “Okay, I’ll omit you from the form.”

Thinking my friends have pulled a prank on me, I ask them if they signed me up. All of them say no, but a week later, my name is on the sign-up sheet for the ski club in the same crude writing. I am getting suspicious, and I ask my friends again, but all of them repeat that they aren’t responsible for my name being on the sign-up sheet.

I have just gotten back into snowboarding at this point, but I am nowhere near ready to return to doing it on a club level. I go to [Teacher].

Me: “Someone put my name on the ski club sign-up sheet, but I’m not interested. Someone must be signing me up for things without my permission.”

Teacher: “I’ll look into it, and I’ll tell the rest of the athletic faculty that if they see your name, they should ignore it.”

Things seem to be back to normal, but after a few months, I am called to the principal’s office. Sitting there is the head teacher of the athletic faculty, my dad, and the principal. I am told to sit down, and the principal produces a startling amount of forms — each one of them an athletic sign-up sheet with my name on it.

Principal: “Why are you signing up for so many clubs and teams but not following through on them?”

I tell them my side of the story, complete with how I spoke with another teacher about it.

Head Teacher: “You’re wasting people’s time and money. I’ve already ordered three uniforms for you, and you’ve never shown up for practice!”

The principal agrees, but my dad, who has been looking over all the sign-up sheets, speaks up.

Dad: “I can tell [My Name] didn’t sign these. I know their handwriting. If we can prove their innocence here, we shouldn’t be on the hook for the fees.”

The principal believes this is a good idea, but the teacher is stewing in anger. The principal hands me a sheet of paper and a pen.

Principal: “Write your name, please.”

I do so and show him.

Head Teacher: “You must have written your name on those sign-up sheets with your other hand to get out of paying! This must be some prank you’re pulling!”

I shrugged and switched hands, writing my name with my other hand. I turned the paper and showed the principal, my father, and [Head Teacher] my writing. This satisfied the principal, and my father was just sitting with a big grin on his face. 

On the paper were two nearly-identical signatures: one with my left and one with my right. Being ambidextrous, I learned how to write with both hands very early on.

The principal dismissed my dad and me, but my father hung back to speak with the principal and [Head Teacher] before we left. I didn’t know what happened until we got home later that night.

My dad had recognized [Head Teacher] as someone he had gone to high school with, who had bullied him relentlessly. Once I had left the room, my father asked if maybe he could test a theory he had. He placed a paper before [Head Teacher] and asked him to write my name. Humoring my dad, [Head Teacher] did so using his left hand. My father told him to use his right hand instead, knowing that [Head Teacher] was left-handed. 

The handwriting matched.

[Head Teacher] was placed on administrative leave, and an investigation ensued. [Head Teacher] had seen my last name and knew I was my dad’s son because I was born while my parents were still in high school. He hadn’t intended for me to find out about the forms, but when [Teacher] told him that she had spoken to me about it, he doubled down and began signing me up for all athletic clubs, hoping that I wouldn’t find out and would have to pay the fees.

[Head Teacher] was still on leave by the end of the school year, and by the beginning of the next, he had been transferred to a school at least two hours away.

Client: “My website is all blurry; I can’t read any of the text.”

Cue fifteen minutes of debugging questions: “What browser are you using?” “Is it the whole site?” And so on. Finally…

Client: “Oh! Google’s blurry, as well! Wait. where are my glasses?”

I’m lounging around my register when a family of four — a father and three sons — approaches to purchase a few plants. One of the sons, who looks to be eight to ten years old, is softly going “ow” and studying his finger intently. Once the father has set all the plants on the counter and I begin ringing them up, he turns to his injured son.

Father: “You touched a cactus?”

Son: “Yeah.”

Father: “That’s the second time you’ve done that.”

Son: “Third.”

Father: “Well, I hope you learned your lesson this time.”

Son: *Thoughtfully* “No…”

I live in a ground-floor apartment near the downtown area. My only door opens directly outside, and I have a small light over the door. My street is very dark and has very few streetlights for a street so close to downtown. I like to leave my door light on so I can see at night.

Some college student starts making a habit of punching out my light. He’ll walk past my apartment with a group of drunk loud people, and he’ll punch out my light. I don’t ever get a good look at him, but he always has short black hair with frosted tips.

I basically have to buy a new lightbulb every day for about a month, and I’m getting extremely fed up with this. So, I do something a little naughty. I go to a home goods store and buy an “’insect zapper” lightbulb.

“Insect zapper” lightbulbs were a bit of a short-term fad, and I remembered them being sold by the local home goods store, but by the time I go in, these things are hard to find! According to the manager, they discontinued sales due to liability issues!

It takes a lot of work to find one, on clearance, hidden in the back, and the manager almost refuses to sell it to me because it’s dangerous, but I convince him that I understand electricity well enough that I won’t kill myself.

I install it in my door light with the hope that the moron will electrocute himself, but if I admit this fact to anyone, it could leave me open to being charged with a felony. Booby traps are very illegal.

It doesn’t take long before the light bulb breaker takes the bait. I’m not there for the event, but I get home one day to find the light bulb smashed.

A few days later, the cops are at my door asking pointed questions about my light bulb.

Did I know that the zapper bulb was potentially dangerous? No, if it was dangerous, why would it be available for sale?

Someone could have gotten hurt very badly by touching the bulb, and it was exposed in a public space? I didn’t know that hanging over my doorway twenty feet away from the sidewalk was a public space, and I certainly didn’t know that someone could have been hurt.

Someone was hurt? No! Are they okay?

He had to go to the hospital?! Oh, no! I hope he’s all right!

Did I know that he would touch the light bulb? No. How can I predict someone’s behavior?

I’ve been making police reports all month about my lightbulbs being smashed? Yeah, I have, but this wasn’t a lightbulb; it was a bug smasher.

Do you think that the person who touched it is the same person who smashed the lightbulbs? How would I know? I didn’t witness the event. Does he have short black hair and frosted tips? Oh, he does? Yeah, that’s the person who’s been smashing my bulbs.

Did I deliberately install a dangerous bug zapper to hurt him? No. I would never. I had mostly given up. The bug zapper doesn’t even project much light. I didn’t think he would even notice it. I also thought that the wire cage would protect it.

The attorney general declined to press charges against me, but the lightbulb smasher came after me in civil court for his hospital bills. I responded with a countersuit for the cost of all of the bulbs he smashed.

In the end, the judge threw out both his claim and my counter-claim with no option to re-file.

And my front door light was never smashed again. I feel comfortable sharing this story online as the statute of limitations for booby-trapping my lightbulb has expired.