I am sixteen and I have type-one diabetes. I have been diagnosed for a bit more than a year and a half. I’ve kept good control over it and the doctors are always impressed when I have a checkup.

I take insulin ten to fifteen minutes before I eat so it has time to take effect. With the school lunch, there are two options: a chicken salad and a cheeseburger. I decide to go with the cheeseburger. I take my insulin and go up the line. I grab a to-go box, but before I take two steps:

Friend: “Wait, that’s a salad.”

I set the box back down and go to grab a different box, but the lunch lady shouts at me.

Lunch Lady: “Hey, don’t you dare!”

I look at her and she looks at me like I just slapped a puppy in the face.

Me: “What’s wrong?”

Lunch Lady: “You already grabbed the salad, so you have to take the salad.”

Me: “But I haven’t even opened it. I’m a diabetic and I already took insulin.”

She shakes her head.

Lunch Lady: *Sickly sweet* “I’m sorry, that’s not my problem. Take the salad and go sit down now!”

Me: “But I’m a diabetic, and—”

Lunch Lady: “Take the salad or you don’t get anything.”

I’m a little pissed at this point so I take the salad and go off to my table with my friends and tell them the situation. They removed the vending machines in the cafeteria over the summer so there is no way for me to get the correct amount of carbs without stealing another kid’s cheeseburger. One of my friends tells me I should go get the principal quickly before the insulting fully sets in.

I go to the office and tell him and the counselor the situation, a little panicked because it has been well over ten minutes since I took insulin. The principal walks me back up to the cafeteria.

Principal: “[Lunch Lady], give him the cheeseburger. He really needs it.”

Lunch Lady: “But he already took a salad. He can deal with it.”

The principal just sighs, grabs the cheeseburger box, and shoves it into my hands and tells me to go sit down. I sit relatively close to the lunch line so my friends and I can hear the principal.

Principal: “How you acted was truly out of line. I thought you understood to treat students’ health situations with care and understanding.”

He told her off for another minute before heading back to his office, and I got to eat my lunch in peace. Maybe she’ll know better next time.

Some friends and I are planning to go to a local amusement park. The original plan is for it to be my boyfriend, my roommate, her boyfriend, [Friend #1], [Friend #2], and me. Shortly before we plan to go, [Friend #1] backs out; there’s a possibility she might be pregnant, and if she is, she shouldn’t be going on amusement park rides. [Roommate] and I become concerned that [Friend #2] will feel like a fifth wheel along with two couples, so we discuss together making sure we take turns so she isn’t always riding alone. I let my boyfriend know that he shouldn’t expect me to ride with him every time, and the reason why.

Boyfriend: “Oh, I thought [Friend #1] was coming, too.”

Me: “She was, but she and her husband are trying to get pregnant—”

Boyfriend: “And the only time they can try is on [day we’re going]?”

I then explained to him that it was more about her not knowing if she was pregnant yet and rides warning that pregnant women shouldn’t ride them. But I’m still ribbing him that his immediate thought was that our friend would tell us, “Sorry, I can’t come; I have to have sex with my husband that day!”

I work as a paramedic in a small town in northern Germany, thirty kilometers away from the next big city. Sometimes we need to bring patients to the big city.

It is a hot and busy day, we roll the first six hours through the whole city, mostly taking care of small issues that just require transport. After the first real emergency, a car crash that needed transport to the mentioned bigger city, we are putting our stuff back together at the hospital.

Not even one minute after setting our status to “free for calls,” the dispatch has something for us.

Dispatch: “Woman, around twenty years old, feeling unwell, no more information.”

That means it could be anything, from toe pain to cardiac arrest.

After a ten-minute drive with “lights and music,” we arrive and ring at the door. The patient’s boyfriend comes to the door, recording video on his phone.

Patient’s Boyfriend: “Hey, guys, the ambulance came very quick. They even had sirens on!”

My partner and I exchange “What the f***?” looks.

Me: “Good day. We were called to [Patient]. Are we in the right place?”

Patient’s Boyfriend: *Still filming* “Yeah, come in, guys. That’s going to be great.”

Me: *Thinking* “What in the f*** is wrong here?”

We go in to find the young woman lying on the couch. She’s really thin — we can see some of her bones — and unresponsive. While my partner is checking her blood pressure, pulse, etc., and I am getting the monitor (EKG) ready, I ask the boyfriend what the matter is.

Patient’s Boyfriend: *Still filming us* “She was filming her sport tutorial for her Instagram followers and suddenly fainted. She is on a new diet; she just looks too fat.”

Me: “Has she eaten or drunk anything today? And could you please put the phone down?”

Patient’s Boyfriend: “Just a little bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. No, I don’t need to put it down. These ‘blue light stories’ are epic on Instagram.”

We are interrupted by an alarm sound from the monitor. The patient’s blood pressure is worryingly low. And the rest of her vitals don’t look good, either.

Partner: “We need a doctor here.”

In Germany, we can call doctors to the scene if we need to give special medications or make invasive treatments. I call the doctor.

Me: “Mr. [Patient’s Boyfriend], stop filming. Your girlfriend is in critical condition.”

Patient’s Boyfriend: “Nah, man, this is going to be huge. She will love it to put it on her YouTube.”

Partner: *Sarcastically* “Yeah, the ‘How I Nearly Died’ vlog. Absolutely great idea.”

I prepare to put a needle in the patient’s arm. The boyfriend comes so close that he hits me and I nearly stab myself. That is the boiling point. I am now really pissed.

Me: *Calm but a bit louder and clearer* “If you don’t back off and put the phone down, I will get the police here and they will take care of it. You don’t understand, do you? Your girlfriend is lying here with bad blood pressure, oxygen, and pulse. I’m really worried that we are close to needing CPR. Even our doctor is on the way. So back off and put the phone down or the police will really take care of it.”

Patient’s Boyfriend: “Sorry, I can’t. This is my work.”

My partner and I exchange looks again.

Me: “All right, I’m calling the police.”

A few minutes after that, the doctor arrived. He was annoyed by the boyfriend, too, and told him to go away, but he still didn’t listen.

A few more minutes later, the cops came and made him delete all the footage. They stood with him outside until we went to the hospital.

We managed to get the patient to the ICU. She made it and is now in good hands. Hopefully, she dumped her boyfriend.

My periods are INSANELY painful. I’ve been hospitalized because of them. When I am around fifteen, my stepmom and my dad go to a barbecue. They ask me to come along, but I don’t feel that great, so I stay home.

About two hours after they leave, I fall to the floor in COMPLETE pain. My dogs find me; my pit bull stays next to me while my boxer runs around looking for someone to help me. I text my dad, telling him he needs to come home, but he doesn’t answer. About five minutes later, I get a call from my stepmom.

Stepmom: “Why did you text your dad that?”

Me: “Because I’m lying on the floor in pain and can’t get up.”

Stepmom: “Why can’t you get up?”

Me: “I’m on my period and this pain won’t stop unless I stay curled up in a ball like this.”

Stepmom: “Ugh, fine, we are coming home. But don’t ever text your dad with that again.”

She hangs up. They arrive fifteen minutes later. My boxer runs over to them and shows them where I am. My dad picks me up and carries me to my room. My stepmom gets some painkillers and a heating pad and tells me to sleep. She is mad the rest of the day and won’t even look at me.

The next day, we meet my mom, and my dad tells her everything that happened. My mom and I decide to start looking into birth control. We find out I can’t have the pill because I have epilepsy, so we end up going with an implant.

I later tell my dad and stepmom that I got birth control to help and my dad is happy.

Stepmom: “I hope you know that means you can’t go around sleeping with everyone.”

I sit there in shock that she said something like that IN FRONT OF MY DAD.

Around dinnertime, I still can’t stop thinking about what she said. My dad knows that something is troubling me.

Dad: “She didn’t mean it, you know. That’s not how it was meant to come out.”

I believe my dad, of course.

When dinner is finally served, my stepmom keeps giving me dirty looks and looks at the food like I just gave her a severed human head to eat.

Stepmom: “Did [My Name] help make any of this?”

Dad: “Everything except the vegetables that you made.”

My stepmom then proceeded to only eat the vegetables, like I was going to give her some sort of disease because I got birth control. I ate about half my food and then cleaned up. My dad apologized for her, but I didn’t believe it this time.

I used to work in a smoke shop. We had shelves sitting in the middle of the worker area, holding dip and chew and cigarettes. They went nearly to the ceiling. Those things were rickety, and a stiff breeze would have toppled them.

So, you can guess what had happened when I came in one day and saw that the shelves were all gone. Someone told me the details of what happened, and it was an “OMG!” moment, to be sure.

The shelf decided to let go at the least opportune moment and fell over onto [Coworker]. It slammed her into the register and actually pinned her head there.

Bless the customer she had been waiting on; he got a rush of adrenaline, jumped clean over the counter into the worker-only area, and lifted it off of her.

A couple of big, burly security officers had to come in, pull everything off the shelves, and drag those menaces out of the building one at a time.

This was decades ago before the world got more lawsuit-savvy. Sadly, not much else was done, not even to check out other displays to make sure they were safe. To this day, [Coworker] STILL has back problems from the incident. 

Management didn’t even close the store. They just kind of shrugged with a blank face and a “Meh. Oh, well,” attitude. Oh, wait. I nearly forgot. They did do something: they griped for weeks about losing a display and having to pay for another one.

I’m so very, very glad I don’t work there anymore.