My mom worked for a big retail company. At the time, you could get a few cents off per gallon of gas if you paid with a store gift card.

One year, just before Mother’s Day, my brother went into the store to buy a gift card for gas and stopped to talk to my mom. She very blatantly steered him toward a flower display and said how nice it would be to get a bouquet for Mother’s Day.

Brother: “Mom, will you buy my gas?”

Mom: *Jokingly* “You have a job; buy your own d*** gas!”

My brother laughed and went on his way to purchase his gift card and fill up his car. 

On Mother’s Day, Mom opened her card from him to find a [Store] gift card for $10 on which he had written, “Happy Mother’s Day. Buy your own d*** flowers.”

I work in a corporate call center for a big chain grocery store. Today is Father’s Day. It’s my first call of the day and I can tell immediately that it’s gonna be one of those calls by her tone when she says:

Customer: “I need to make a complaint. I don’t usually like to complain, but this is unacceptable.”

She called her store’s bakery for a same-day cake pickup of a simple cake, lemon filling. It didn’t even need writing on it. The employee she spoke to said that she couldn’t take the order today because she was the only cake decorator in today and she was already very busy.

Because it’s Father’s Day.

Customer: “I’ve never felt so disrespected! She turned my order down! How dare you not take an order?! Do you not want my money? I decided to call the bakery back and tell the employee that I was gonna call corporate because I didn’t like that they weren’t able to do my order. The employee got her manager, and the manager said they could have the cake ready after three, but then they checked the inventory and there wasn’t any lemon filling. I’ve never been denied a cake before! It was inappropriate and disrespectful for them to be out of lemon filling and for them to tell me that they couldn’t take my cake order!”

They were understaffed, and it was Father’s Day, and she wanted a same-day order. I so wished I could’ve reached through the phone and smacked some sense into her.

At my old store, employees received nine paid holidays throughout the year. Eight were determined by the corporate honchos (they included things like Christmas), but the ninth was a floating holiday that you could use on whatever day you wanted. Most people selected their birthday or a similar personal event. This included me, but…

Me: “I’d like to take my floating holiday every year on Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s my wedding anniversary.”

Manager: “That’s fine, but you know I’d give you off for your anniversary if you requested it, right?”

Me: “Oh, I know. But I like telling people that I get Saint Patrick’s Day as a paid holiday. It confuses them.”

I don’t know where my mom got the idea that I like Peeps — those gross, colored marshmallow candies that taste awful and are very popular for Easter — but I hate them. They taste awful. I’ve never liked them.

For some reason, my mom just thinks I do. I am sixteen or seventeen, and my mom goes Peep-buying crazy. She purchases dozens and dozens of these awful marshmallow candies. My younger brother eats one every now and then, but he doesn’t really care for them.

Here we are, Easter weekend, and my mom is so proud of all the different colors and different shaped Peeps we have. No one eats the Peeps outside of maybe one package that my brother opened. All the other dozens of Peeps are never opened. The packages just get moved to a cabinet and sit in there for months.

One day, I have a group of friends over. It’s summer, and we’re bored, so we’re always looking for something stupid to do. One of them starts going through the cabinets in the kitchen because he’s hungry. He sees all these packages of Peeps.

Friend: “I love Peeps! Can I have some?”

Me: “Help yourself!”

He opens up a package, but the Peeps are stale and pretty hard. He tries to eat one.

Friend: “Ugh, these are really chewy. I don’t think I want to eat these.”

He tossed the others at the group of us just hanging out. A light bulb went off in all our heads at the same time. PEEP WAR!

We all scrambled to the cabinet and started loading our arms up with packages of Peeps. We took off outside and had an all-out Peep war. We threw Peeps at each other and had a heck of a time. Pretty soon, the yard — front and back — was littered with a rainbow of Peeps in pink, yellow, green, blue, and orange.

The Peeps were hard enough to leave some minor bruises from throwing them at each other, but we had a good time. We picked up all the packaging garbage and threw it away, but we left the Peeps in the yard. We left my house to find something else to do and forgot all about the Peeps that were now scattered around the yard.

A few hours later, it rained. My mom and stepdad got home a short time later after it rained, and when they got home they saw a yard with melted pink, yellow, green, blue, and orange Peeps. They were pretty pissed, but at the same time, they thought it was pretty funny.

I had to do a few passes with the lawnmower to get most of the Peeps cleaned up. I also had to help clean the mower blades to get all the marshmallow off them. It was still worth it.

To this day, nearly twenty-five years later, my mom still thinks I like Peeps. I tell her every year that I don’t like them and I don’t want any. Any Peeps she gets me I just give to my eight-year-old son; he likes them for some reason.

My friend loves April Fool’s Day. Just this year, she posted ads online for bogus stuff — one with goats for sale and the other for an animal impersonation contest.

On both of them, she included her husband’s phone number and encouraged people to call pretending to be responding to them.