When I was probably six years old, I was playing “kick the crackerbox” in the kitchen with my older sister. I had my socks on, and I slipped and fell chin-first into a stool. I was taken to the emergency room and had seven stitches put in.

As this was the late 1980s, there were still cigarette vending machines in the hospitals. A guy had bought himself a pack of smokes, and with his change, he had gotten a pack of Reese’s Pieces. He gave them to me and told me he hoped I would feel better soon. Thirty-five years later, I still remember that moment.

I also remember my grandmother pouring the candy into a bowl for me the next day and how painful it was to eat them with my wound — but they were all the more pleasant because of it.

I seriously doubt that man remembers that day, but I will never forget that random act of kindness that a stranger gave to a little kid in a lot of pain.

CONTENT WARNING: Physical Injury
 

I used to work in care for people with mental health issues. On my first day I am told to work one-on-one with a man to take him out in his wheelchair. It’s all going fine until he turns around in his chair and bites my arm with teeth that are barely ever brushed!

I have blood running down my arm. I take him home and talk to another staff member who tells me to go home and get it checked out since I’ll be finishing in an hour anyway. I do, and I go to the hospital to get the wound cleaned and given an injection to stop any diseases.

The next day I get in to work and get yelled at and written up by the team leader for leaving to take care of the injury. 

I still have a scar from it a decade later.

Our store has just fully reopened after lockdowns, but management is mandating that customers be vaccinated. Of course, this goes down with certain groups of the population about as well as can be expected.

Customer: “You can’t force me to take a vaccine!” 

Manager: “No one is forcing you, ma’am, but we also don’t have to let you into the store.”

Customer: “It’s my right as an American to go where I please without being forced to be vaccinated!”

Manager: “This store is private property, ma’am, and we can exercise our right to deny you entry.”

Customer: “Freedom has been a right in this country since 1776! Vaccinations are an attack on those freedoms! George Washington is turning in his grave right now!”

Manager: “George Washington made Congress force all his troops in the Revolutionary War to be inoculated against smallpox, ma’am. Please try again.”

As a manager at a fast food chain, I was talking to myself, working out who would go to what station during the upcoming rush.

A young new hire suddenly confronted me.

New Hire: “The voices aren’t real. You shouldn’t talk back to them. I took bad acid and have been hearing voices ever since. I almost got sent to a mental hospital until I realized I shouldn’t reply unless I actually see the person talking. It’s better to not reply to someone talking behind you than to reply to someone who isn’t there at all. I’m so happy to find someone like me!”

Mind you, this was all said as one continuous sentence, and it wasn’t until she got to the “someone like me” part that it clicked, so I interrupted her.

Me: “I don’t hear voices.”

New Hire: “What?!”

Me: “I was just talking to myself.”

I found out later that she clocked out and never came back.

I am a disabled veteran, and when this happened, I was solely depending on a walking stick. I could not walk more than ten feet maximum without assistance. A friend asked me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding. She quickly proved herself to be a bridezilla from Hell, and everything had to meet her vision. Everything had to fall within her very rigid scope of what the aesthetics should be.

[Bride] made a couple of what she claimed were innocent comments about my walking stick. I offered multiple times not to be a bridesmaid and to assist in any other way I could. She refused every offer and insisted that I had to be a bridesmaid.

Then, I heard from another close friend (also a bridesmaid) that [Bride] was very upset that I was insisting on using my walking stick. She had commented that she was just going to hide it, and then I would just have to go without it. Looking at the mutual friend’s face when she said that, [Bride] tried to laugh it off as a joke.

There was no doubt in my mind that she was going to try to make my walking stick go missing, so I made arrangements.

Sure enough, the wedding rolled around, and while I was getting my hair and makeup done, my walking stick disappeared. I was not happy.

Me: *To everyone* “I have to have my stick back. I cannot walk down the aisle without it.”

Bride: “We don’t know where it is! We’ve looked everywhere. You’re just going to have to make do.”

Me: “So, after you joked about taking my walking stick, it goes missing, and you want me to make do?”

Bride: “You’ll just have to do what you can do to get up the aisle.”

Cue malicious compliance.

I texted my boyfriend. He went out to the car and brought in a mobility scooter that I had rented just in case I needed it. I had him put it out of sight but where we could get to it easily, and then he or the other bridesmaids physically supported me. We made our way to the back of the hall for the start of the ceremony.

[Bride], who had been talking to her father and not paying attention, did not see the scooter until she started to walk up the aisle. There were her three bridesmaids: two standing tall and me sitting on the most hideous-looking mobility scooter I could find, multicolored with sparkles.

If looks could kill, [Bride] would have planted me. Within seconds of the ceremony ending, my walking stick had been found. [Bride] and her new husband brought it over to me.

Bride: “Your walking stick has been found. Now you can get that god-awful scooter back out to your car.”

I mustered up a tear.

Me: “I’m so sorry, but I am in so much pain from having to try to walk without my walking stick that there is no way I will be able to go without the scooter.”

I am very proud to say that the scooter is in over 90% of her wedding photos. Unfortunately, I do not have any of the pictures. I wish I did. I know that there was one photo taken of the other two bridesmaids on the scooter with me attempting a drunken version of the Hokey Pokey.