(I’m ringing up a customer near the end of my shift. I am very obviously pregnant and only about two weeks from my due date.)
Customer: “So, when’s the big day?”
Me: *not cluing in right away* “I’m sorry? What do you mean?”
Customer: *looking absolutely horrified* “You are pregnant, right?!”
Me: “Oh! Yes! Yes, I am! Just a couple more weeks.”
Related:
Cause For Pregnant Pause, Part 21
Cause For Pregnant Pause, Part 20
Cause For Pregnant Pause, Part 19
One morning, during my first year of college, I woke up to discover I couldn’t bear weight on my left leg, nor could I bend my knee. It was eventually diagnosed as a repetitive stress injury from sports and resolved with a simple surgery, but for a few weeks, I was on crutches with no clue as to how I’d been injured.
I was also in ROTC at the time, and I took the bus to ROTC classes and other events. One day a week, all of us ROTC cadets were supposed to wear our military uniforms. I caught the bus with mine on and made my way to a seat on my crutches.
A fellow passenger near the front of the bus kindly offered me his and asked, “How did you get hurt?”
Since it was before my doctor figured it out, I replied honestly, “I couldn’t tell you.”
He looked stunned and stammered out, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. Top-secret stuff, probably; I shouldn’t have asked.”
Realizing he assumed I was active duty and had been injured in some fantastic clandestine escapade, I laughed and explained, “No, I mean I have no idea. I woke up with my leg hurting a couple of weeks ago but I can’t pinpoint any specific time that I got hurt. I’m not even active duty; I’m in ROTC and won’t be commissioned until I graduate in a few years.”
He laughed, too, and wished me a quick recovery. I decided to be sure to answer plainly and clearly if asked again!
My mother-in-law is overly creative. What I mean is that she likes to make things from her own designs for common, everyday objects, and the designs of the objects don’t make any sense. She gets VERY offended if you tell her that her designs are bad! She has decided to make masks for the family due to the recent outbreak and the following happens when I try out one of her masks.
I put on the mask and it fits really weird and I can’t breathe because the mask is so thick.
Me: “[Mother-In-Law], I can’t breathe through this mask. What the heck did you do to it?”
Mother-In-Law: “I put three layers of quilt batting in it to act as a filter and I changed the shape of the mask so it covers more of your face.”
Me: “Why the heck would you do that? This mask is useless if I can’t breathe! You do know that [My Father] got [Husband] and me a bunch of disposable masks and a few that his girlfriend made that are made out of a lightweight knit fabric?”
Mother-In-Law: “But my design is better because I added the filter!”
Me: “But I can’t breathe with the filter that you made! Why would I use a mask that I can’t breathe through?”
Mother-In-Law: “But you will hurt my feelings if you don’t wear my mask!”
Me: “So? I can’t wear a mask that I can’t breathe through!”
My father-in-law ended up jumping in and told my mother-in-law that the masks were horrible because her design sucked. He told her not to make any more masks from that design and she got REALLY offended and started to yell at him. They ended up in a knock-down, drag-out argument where she accused him of “stifling her creativity.” He got madder and told my husband and me to leave so he could “deal with the problem.”
I talked to her sister later in the day and her sister told me that my mother-in-law had ALWAYS had a problem with thinking that her ideas were superior to tried and tested methods and designs. I don’t know why she thought that making a mask that you couldn’t breathe through was a good idea!
In gym class, we are learning how to check our pulse by placing our index and middle fingers on the carotid artery, on the neck to the side of the windpipe. The teacher is having the class run laps and take our pulse.
My friend is having a hard time finding her carotid artery and can’t take her pulse. She approaches the gym teacher for help. The teacher tries to find her carotid artery on her neck.
Teacher: “I don’t know… Go see the nurse.”
Friend: “Seriously? I have a pulse. I’m fine.”
Teacher: “Well, I can’t find it. Go see the nurse.”
My friend reported to the very puzzled school nurse who confirmed that she did, in fact, have a pulse and helped her find it. I sometimes wonder if that nurse had to keep medical records for students, and what on earth she wrote for that patient encounter.
I’ve always hated going to church. Starting when I was about six, I’ve used any and every excuse I could find to get out of attending Mass on Sundays, ranging from faking sick to hiding until church was over. My parents wised up to my excuses and found all my hiding spots over the years, making it much harder to escape church.
One Sunday when I’m eleven, my mom is out of town. Thinking it’ll be easier to pull one over on my dad, I try the old fake-sick routine.
Due to several chronic health conditions, I’m prone to fainting in the right — or wrong, I suppose — circumstances. I skip breakfast that morning so that my act will be more believable. However, it doesn’t work, and my dad makes me go to church anyway. Since I haven’t had anything to eat or drink at all, I actually do start to feel faint on the way over.
I also happen to be in the process of losing my last baby tooth. It’s not quite ready to come out yet, but I spend the first half of Mass pushing at it with my tongue. If I can knock it out, I’ll be able to miss at least ten minutes of Mass. I eventually succeed and start to ask my dad if I can go to the restroom. He shakes his head immediately, knowing that there’s no chance I’ll willingly come back into Mass if I’m allowed to leave. When I smile and spit my bloody tooth into my hand, he begrudgingly allows me to go.
I go to the restroom and rinse out my mouth. But since the tooth wasn’t ready to come out yet, my gums just keep bleeding, more heavily than with any other tooth I’ve lost. Between the fact that I already was feeling faint, the blood loss, and seeing all the blood, I start to pass out. I’m used to this, so I sit on the floor against the wall to wait for it to pass.
I’m only semi-conscious for a while. At one point, I vaguely notice the sound of the door opening, and then several seconds later, I hear a bloodcurdling scream. My music teacher, a sweet old lady with a morbid penchant for true crime documentaries and police procedurals, has come into the bathroom to find one of her students collapsed on the floor, mouth hanging open with a trickle of blood leaking out. She assumes I have been murdered. She runs back to the rest of the congregation, screaming bloody murder.
My memory of the next hour or so is a little fuzzy, but I know a lot of people were packed into that tiny restroom. It quickly became apparent that I had not, in fact, been murdered or harmed in any way. I was given something to drink, and I believe an EMT checked me over while I was semi-lucid. Once everyone calmed down, they decided I just needed to eat something and lie down. I was fine within an hour.
A couple of years later, my parents finally gave up on forcing me to attend church. I’ve only been back for weddings and funerals since then. Every single time I’ve attended one of my more religious cousins’ weddings, someone has jokingly asked if I’m going to knock out my own tooth to skip the Mass portion of the wedding.
This story was featured in our May 2020 roundup!
