During the recent health crisis, my husband is minding and homeschooling the kids while I work from home upstairs. I was a stay-at-home mom when the kids were very young and he was away for work, and I found it extremely hard, which he knows.

“This is a piece of piss,” is Irish slang for, “This is really, really easy.”

Husband: “This stay-at-home parent thing is a piece of piss.”

Husband: “Of course, I haven’t transferred the money [to joint account] yet. I haven’t had time to do any of my personal admin!”

Husband: “You need to take a longer break in the middle of the day so I can go for a run.”

I answer the phone.

Caller: “The system you sold us isn’t working!”

Me: “Okay, try [basic troubleshooting].”

Caller: “It still isn’t working; we desperately need it working today!”

Me: “Okay, no problem. We are only five minutes away. Could you drop it off?”

Caller: “Oh, well… I’m going home in like thirty minutes. I guess it can wait.”

The next week he turned up, only after making sure that he got a paid lunch for doing it.

I am about to turn thirteen. My mother wants to get a desk from a popular shipping site for me, so she goes on a popular company’s store website and orders the desk, complete with a hutch.

Desk #1 looks nothing like the one we ordered, so we call the company and they offer to send us a new one, just like the one we ordered, for free.

We have high hopes for desk #2, but when it arrives it is dinged up and things are off-center, so we take pictures of the damage, and the company again offers to send a new one at a reduced price. I joke to my mother and tell her that if it keeps going like this, we’ll have a free desk.

Lo and behold, desk #3 is damaged, and the hutch is even worse off. The company apologizes profusely, and my mother, being a patient person, tells them that if the next one is damaged, we will be taking our business elsewhere. The company offers to have somebody inspect it personally moments before it is packaged, to which we agree.

Five days after my thirteenth birthday, the desk arrives, and in no condition to be used. The workers that brought our desk upstairs — also provided as compensation by the company — even say we should ask for a refund.

My mother gives up. We’ve never ordered from that company again.

I am studying to become a teacher and we’re learning about music class. We are supposed to learn how to teach music, but all the teacher does is sit behind the piano and let us sing children’s songs. She scolds us if we can’t reach the high notes, which causes the only man of our group to just stop coming. 

Halfway the term, the teacher once again rounds us up around the piano and asks if we have any requests. One of my classmates raises her hand.

Classmate: “Yes, I have a question. When are we going to do something useful in this class?”

The class fell silent; the teacher was silent, too, but I could read thunder from her eyes. After a moment, we were sent to our seats again and told we could go “self-study” for a group performance on musical instruments in a few weeks. She didn’t tell us how to read notes, so we helped each other and the end result was… well, frankly, absolutely terrible. We did all pass the class, including the male student who didn’t show up any more.

I am fourteen years old and not very assertive. I go to a rollerskating rink with a friend who’s a year younger than me. My friend spots a few friends of hers and goes off briefly to skate with them, but while she’s gone, I trip on the skating rink and end up hurting my elbow. My friend comes up, and I tell her that I think I’ll be okay. I sit at a booth on the edge of the rink, but the pain doesn’t fade and feels pretty bad.

I approach the concession stand. Half a dozen employees are there, and they all pause to look at me.

Employee: “Hi. What can we get you?”

Me: “I fell on the rink and hurt my elbow…”

The employees immediately scattered and started doing other things. I stood there for an instant, hoping they would come back to me, but they didn’t.

I left and sat back down, unsure what to do. I eventually got back up, went back to the stand, and specifically asked for some ice. They gave me some in a cup. I sat back down and waited for my friend’s mom to pick us up.

When I told my dad about it later, he suggested that the employees didn’t want to be liable for my accident, so that’s why they ignored me. I wonder why the employees would expect a fourteen-year-old girl to sue them.