I was riding in the car with my mom, and a car behind us started tailing us. The car kept trying to get us to move faster than the speed limit. It got to the point where the driver was hitting our rear bumper.

My mom pulled into a car wash and called the police. We waited a little bit while my mom collected herself and then went back on the road.

A few miles down the road, the same car that had been tailing us had crashed into the back of another car, and police were surrounding the driver.

My mom burst out laughing after driving past the accident.

I’m volunteering as a referee for First Lego League, a competition for mostly middle-school-aged kids building Lego robots to complete various challenges on a table for points.

I try to make things fun for the kids as much as possible; I want the whole experience to be positive enough for the kids to come back next year even if they don’t have a perfect robot after all. We have to wait for all tables to set up before a match can begin, which gives me some time to talk with the kids.

Me: “I have a very important task for you all. They’re going to announce every team’s name before the match. When they say yours, I want you all to cheer louder than any of the other teams. Can you do that?”

Boy: “Yeah!”

The entire team is clearly the loudest and most energetic when their team name is called, with the first boy I talked to being the most energetic of his team.

Me: “You were definitely the loudest. Just for that, I’ll double your starting points.”

Boy: “Really?! He’s going to double it!”

Me: “Do you know what your starting points are?”

Boy: “No, but it’s double!”

Me: “You start with a zero…”

The boy doesn’t seem to hear me. He instead goes to try to tell one of the adults waiting back a little further back where we make coaches and parents wait that we are doubling their score.

Teammate: “I don’t think he’s listening anymore. At least he’s happy.”

We had to start the match about then, so I never did get to clarify things to the first kid. Hopefully, he wasn’t too disappointed when someone finally let him in on the joke.

Related:
Please, Parents, Resist The Urge To Over-Help!
Faith In The Future Of Humanity: Restored!

I’m a cheap b*****d, so rather than renting my own place or, God forbid, buying a home, I usually rent a room in a house shared with others, and I put the rent money saved to better use instead. Despite horror stories I’ve read online, I’ve mostly had pretty decent rental experiences. Either we all get along, or more often, everyone stays in their own room and ignores each other, and you only see a reminder the other person exists once or twice a week.

That was except for one experience. We had four in the house, but the newest person, replacing a tenant who moved out recently, was trouble. He smoked pot while playing music way too loud all the time, causing the house to stink and be too loud to do anything, including falling asleep. He was rude and left us to clean up for his messes and otherwise was just a terrible roommate. He also was home all the time — as far as we could tell he had no job or social life — which meant there was no time he wasn’t around making the place unlivable.

We reported this to our landlord, who assured me something would be done. When that something failed to materialize, I started looking for a different rental location only to find my house listed on the sites I checked. It seems my landlord’s idea of “doing something” was to wait until he had a replacement before he removed [Roommate].

One day, the doorbell rang, and after a few rings without anyone answering it, I paused my game and went down to see who it was at the same time that [Roommate] came up from his basement room. [Roommate] got there first, only to discover police officers asking to come in to speak with us.

[Roommate] clearly got worried, immediately insisted that they couldn’t come in, and asked what they wanted. I eavesdropped long enough to piece together that the police wanted to ask questions about a string of burglaries that I hadn’t realized were happening around where we lived. [Roommate]’s evident terror reminded me of his only leaving the house late at night, and of some mysterious items he had brought home even later at night that trusting, naïve me hadn’t thought to be suspicious enough about at the time.

Me: “You can come in, officers.”

Roommate: “What?! No, no! You’re not invited. You can’t come in.”

Me: “I’m also a legal tenant here, and I say you’re invited. Come on in.”

[Roommate] tried to bar the way in and continued protesting that they couldn’t come in. [Officer #1] just glared at him before saying, “Excuse me,” in a tone of voice that was more demand than request, and [Roommate] backed down so the officer could enter.

Me: “Come with me, please, officer.”

I started leading him down the steps toward [Roommate]’s room and away from my own. There was nothing but his room and the laundry down there, so [Roommate] was immediately suspicious.

Roommate: “Hey, you can’t go in my room.”

Me: “I’m not taking them in it.”

Roommate: “Then what the h*** are you doing?”

We got down there and, as I expected given [Roommate]’s past pattern of behavior, the door to his room was wide open and reeking of marijuana. Keep in mind, it was still illegal in the state back then.

Me: “Can you see anything interesting?”

Officer #1: “Indeed. Is that a joint?”

Me: “He brought some stuff in a black cardboard box he didn’t want us to know about last night and put it in there, too.”

[Officer #1] started to go in, and [Roommate] started ranting that the officer couldn’t go in there and that he knew they need permission, etc. Of course, while I’m far from a lawyer, I know just enough to know that the officers can enter the home if any resident invites them, even if another doesn’t. While I couldn’t give them permission to search [Roommate]’s room — only shared spaces — once they were in the hallway, they could look in and see plenty of evidence in plain sight that would allow them sufficient probable cause to enter his room.

[Roommate] ended up facing charges for theft — apparently, someone saw him rob a home just to walk right into ours — along with the use of illegal substances, and I think some other charges.

I had a long talk with my landlord. I basically said that either [Roommate] could not be allowed back in the house or I was leaving, and I would convince the rest to leave, too. After our talk, the landlord decided to have a talk with [Roommate] about how he had breached the rental agreement by smoking pot and basically ban him from returning to the house.

Of course, I was still frustrated enough with my landlord’s failure to act sooner that I kept up my search for a new place and moved out not too long after that, anyway.

My father once scheduled an appointment at his doctor’s office. He’s a lawyer (he had his own firm at the time), and he scheduled the appointment on an extended lunch break. The doctor’s appointment was at 1:00 pm, and he kept his schedule clear until 2:30 pm.

He called a few days in advance to confirm the time. He also called that day, shortly before lunch, to confirm the time. He showed up as directed, about fifteen minutes before, introduced himself, and waited.

And waited.

Around 1:30, he was called up and admitted to the office… where he waited.

And waited.

Finally, at about 2:00 pm — over an hour after he arrived — a nurse came in.

Nurse: “The doctor will see you shortly.”

Dad patiently (no pun intended) informed them that he had work to get back to and left.

The office tried to bill him for breaking the appointment. He responded by informing them of his (big city law firm) hourly rate and telling them that if they intended to bill him for breaking the appointment, then he intended to bill them for his time if they were that late again — noting that he’d confirmed they weren’t behind schedule before coming over.

They didn’t bill him for breaking the appointment. They also never held him up like that again.

My nephew was somewhere around sixth grade when this story took place. [Nephew], like his father and others in our family, has ADHD — an inattentive variant, in his case. He was very smart and tended to ace all his tests, but he seemed to view his homework as unneeded busywork since he was doing so well without it. My brother had tried numerous things to try to get better homework completion — with very little success. [Nephew] is very intrinsically motivated; external rewards or punishments seemed to have little effect in motivating him. In fact, he got quite creative with wiggling out of any of the more extreme attempts to force him to complete his work.

My family was visiting my brother’s family for the holidays during winter break in school. We had just had a very busy day visiting various museums and events in DC the prior day, so this day was intended to be a lazy day indoors to recover. I came downstairs to see my son and [Nephew] who is a few years older, in front of the computer. [Nephew] was explaining a game he was playing to my son, and my son was aptly listening, up until he switched to begging to be allowed to play himself. After some very deep thought, [Nephew] finally relented.

Nephew: “Okay, fine. I suppose I should do my math anyway. I’ll start a new game for you, but I can’t help as much as I usually do since I’ll be doing my homework, too.”

A little later, after getting his cousin started on his game:

Nephew: “Uncle [My Name], did you see my backpack? I left it here.”

Me: “No, I don’t think so, but if I had to guess, your mom put it in your room to clean up down here.”

Just as he was headed upstairs to check his room, his dad (my brother) came downstairs.

Brother: “Hey, [Nephew], you’re not playing on the computer for once?”

Me: “He was very polite, letting [Son] play for a bit.”

Father: “Sounds like a great time to start on your homework, then!”

Nephew: “School doesn’t start for like a week still.”

Father: “Yeah, but if you keep putting it off, you’ll never start it. best to get it done now so I don’t have to keep pestering you all week.”

Nephew: “I’ll get to it. I’m hungry right now.”

[Nephew] went about ignoring his father’s pestering, making a big deal about getting food in the kitchen instead, and then took up the seat [Son] had vacated, playing backseat driver to [Son]’s playing of the game. 

I have enough experience with ADHD to know that sometimes a polite reminder can help when a kid gets distracted from a task, so I tried to help a little with getting things done.

Me: “[Nephew], didn’t you find your backpack?”

Nephew: “No, I stopped looking. I’m not doing my homework now.”

Me: “I thought you were going to do it while [Son] played. What changed?”

Nephew: “Dad asked me to do it.”

Me: “Why would….”

About this time, [Brother] came back up from the basement where he had gone to fetch something. [Nephew] clammed up, seeming to desperately want me to not say anything with his father around. Since I wanted to keep my Cool Uncle designation, I kept my mouth shut, too.

Over the next few hours, [Brother] continued to pester [Nephew] about homework every forty minutes or so, making it clear that his intent was to be annoying enough that his son would do it just to shut him up — a goal that did not appear to be making any progress.

I finally caught [Nephew] when his father wasn’t around later that day.

Me: “Okay, [Brother] is gone. Are you going to tell me now why you said you can’t do your homework if asked to do it?”

Nephew: “You heard him today, right? He’s trying to annoy me into doing it.”

Me: “Yeah…”

Nephew: “So, if I do it, he will decide it worked and keep doing it! I don’t want to deal with that every day. I’ll only do my homework if he hasn’t asked me to do it recently, so he doesn’t think being annoying is working.”

Me: “Ahh, I see now. How’s that strategy worked for you so far?”

Nephew: “It’s a lot harder to get anything done! I mostly have to do my work on the bus because he never stops annoying me during the evening, so I can’t do it at home. One of my teachers has already complained that my handwriting is sloppy now because it’s hard to write on a bus. I can’t wait until he gives up on annoying me already.”

Me: “What makes you think he will give up?”

Nephew: “He always forgets about it and gives up eventually. I just have to make sure he doesn’t think it’s working.”

Me: “I guess you have this all figured out, then, huh? If you want, I could distract your dad for a few minutes so you can get up to your backpack without him asking you about homework right now, though.”

Nephew: *Sounding slightly resigned* “Oh, I guess I should… Fine, I’ll go start it.”

I played interference for [Nephew] as promised, and later — after swearing [Brother] to secrecy about who his informant was — I relayed to him what [Nephew] had told me. It’s rough when a middle-schooler outthinks you, but I think he was willing to admit his current plan was proving counterproductive.

For the record, [Brother] never did figure out a good means to get his son to commit to completing his homework, despite many, many attempts. Luckily for him, though, he didn’t need to. Sometime around the latter half of high school, [Nephew] got a few mediocre grades on tests, and suddenly, his homework completion problem fixed itself. Turns out he just needed to be convinced he needed his homework to actually learn before he was willing to work at it. He now has a good-paying job as a programmer — the job he had been telling everyone he would have since he was seven.