“(I’m in a cashier’s line behind two others, [Customer #1] is a woman on her phone who looks like she’s in a hurry, buying frozen TV dinners. [Customer #2] is an older woman who appears to have nothing to purchase.)

Cashier: “That’ll be [total], please.”

Customer #1: *on the phone* “Yeah, yeah, I’ll have 15 minutes to get there.” *to cashier* “Thanks.”

(Just as she’s bagging, [Customer #2] interjects.)

Customer #2: “How could you do that to yourself?!”

Customer #1: “Excuse me?”

Customer #2: “Those food trays! Do you know how many horrible chemicals are in those? So many preservatives! They’ll kill you!”

(The bagger starts helping her bag faster.)

Customer #2: “How can people eat that stuff? I would never poison myself like that.”

([Customer #1] rolls her eyes and leaves.)

Cashier: “How can I help you?”

Customer #2: “Three packs of [Cigarettes] and a bottle of tequila, please.”

(My company has these ridiculous remote kiosks with four buttons on them, each of a different smiley face ranging from happy to sad, green to red, respectively. Attached to them are signs that read, “How is your day going?” They track responses in our company portal. My wife takes our newborn daughter to a wellness visit a couple miles from my office and takes our five-year-old daughter with her. On the way home, she stops by my office so I can show off the new baby to my coworkers. As we wait in the lobby to sign them in, my older daughter sees the kiosk and, having seen them before on her visits to Daddy’s work, knows what it is about.)

Daughter: “Daddy, can I press the button?”

Me: “Sure, honey!”

(She presses the bright green, happiest smiley face.)

Daughter: “Daddy, can I press it again for [Baby Sister]?”

Me: “I think that’s fine, yes.”

(She presses the bright red, saddest frown face.)

Daughter: *to me* “Because she had a doctor’s appointment today.”

(I suffer from psoriasis and so my knees often appear scraped up and scabbed over. Most people who don’t know my skin condition assume I’ve fallen and hurt myself, which doesn’t bother me. This assumption, though, I just can’t even fathom. I am sitting at a park watching my siblings play when someone comes up and asks me this gem:)

Stranger: “Excuse me. But do you have leprosy?”

On holiday, beside the pool, my partner slipped on the marble poolside. While I am a qualified first aider, I am disabled, and was therefore unable to move to get supplies as I was not in my wheelchair. Luckily, I was close to where my partner fell.

Immediately after he fell, three or four people came to us. One brought towels to stop the bleeding as there was an awful lot of blood from his head wound, another found the first aid kit, and a third found the resort first aider. It was obvious my partner needed an ambulance, and that was arranged. While we waited, I needed to collect passports and visas for insurance purposes, and this man who we had never met before, another holiday maker, held my partner’s head together and staunched the bleeding while someone else helped me to my wheelchair so I could collect the necessities.

When I arrived back at the scene, I found just a pool of blood; my partner had been transferred to the ambulance, strangers had gathered our things into bags and put them in the ambulance for us, and they stayed to help get me and my wheelchair into the ambulance and even offered to come to the hospital with us to help at the other end.

The fact that these strangers were willing to get covered in blood and take time out of their holiday to help us made the experience much less terrifying, and meant I was actually able to get my partner the treatment he needed and come to the hospital with him.

His head injury was less severe than it appeared, but he still needed surgery. He came back to the hotel with me and was recovering well when the strangers who helped us came to check in and see how he was doing.

The moment in the ambulance when that stranger clasped my hand and told me it would be fine made me believe in humanity again.

(An online acquaintance is transitioning from male to female. We chat, after not communicating for a while.)

Me: “So, what’s new on your front?”

Friend: “Breasts.”

Me: “I walked right into that, didn’t I?”