I was on an eastbound train from Colorado two days before Christmas. There was some kind of incident in another car around 11:00 that night — a dude got wasted and started threatening other passengers — and we had to make a stop so the local police could come and collect him.

After the delay, the conductor came over the speakers and announced that if anyone was feeling upset or shaken by the incident, one of the passengers had offered to play his guitar in the snack car, and anyone who was awake was welcome to come down and join in for a singalong. I’m always down for weird train activities, so I decided to grab my harmonica from my bag and head down.

There were about fifteen of us in the car, ranging in age from sixteen to mid-seventies and from all over the country. We sang every song we could think of that even kind of referenced a train. We were somewhere in rural Nebraska at that point, and nobody had cell service to look up lyrics, so at times I was pretty sure that we were making up more of the words than we actually remembered. The conductor came through after a while and offered to play a few songs, so the guy with the guitar handed it off and pulled out a mandolin, and my harmonica got passed around the group while one guy drummed along on his backpack.

After a while, the conductor got up and left, and then he came back with a copy of The Polar Express. He read it out loud to our absolutely captivated group of mostly adult travelers while the snow flew all around us in the night, and I swear that for a few minutes, our trip felt every bit as magical as the visit to Santa Claus in the story.

Sometime well after the snack car was supposed to have been vacated for the night, we capped things off with the most ridiculously earnest rendition of Don’t Stop Believing that has ever been performed and went our separate ways. I never saw anyone from our little makeshift band again, but I’ll always remember that weird, wonderful late-night celebration of Journey and the magic of winter travel that came about because some guy was a jacka** on a train.

This is a story from a friend. She had moved from New York to Los Angeles, and although she had driven her car there, she had not been out of the LA Basin since. Consider her a California newbie.

Our hero was an Apple Mac influencer, before the term influencer was coined. She did talks, shows, consulting, etc. (Note, she was not a nasty entitled influencer, just trying to freelance a living.)

She gets a call offering a free ticket to MacWorld in San Jose, and an offer to couch surf while there. So, after throwing her stuff in a bag, she charges down to the parking garage, puts her bag in the car, and realizes that she has no idea whatsoever where she is going. She doesn’t even know how to get out of the LA Basin.

So she goes up to the security guard in the garage and totally innocently asks:

Friend: “Do you know the way to San Jose?”

I am a movie snob. I know it. My family knows it. And while I try to ‘Let People Enjoy Things’, it’s usually obvious when I don’t like something. 

Several years back, I was home for the holidays, and we all decided to watch the latest animated movie from the House of Mouse. I didn’t go into it with high expectations, but I was content to let my nieces enjoy the fairy tale.

Surprisingly, I didn’t think it was that bad.

Once the movie was done, I turned to share my thoughts, and my sister looked at me with a huge grin on her face and said:

Sister: “You totally loved that movie.”

Me: “What? How do you know?”

Sister: “After “Let it Go” you asked who the composer and directors were. You only ask about the production crew when you like a movie.”

I learned one of my tells that night. I got my revenge by joining my nieces in singing Let it Go for the rest of my visit.

As a whole, I’m not a fan of Burning Man. It’s a you-do-you thing. Don’t push it and its values on me, and I won’t lecture you on how terrible its environmental impact is each year.

I work at a popular small breakfast restaurant in a hippy beach town. Each year, just after Burning Man, we get an influx of people who haven’t adjusted back to real life yet.

For example, lots of people walk in without shoes/pants and try to hug all the staff and random customers. One year, I s*** you not, two kids sat on the floor in the middle of a narrow walkway during a weekend rush to read our specials board. They genuinely seemed surprised when I told them they couldn’t do that.

Today really bothered me, though. I had a very sweet old couple in my section. They had a lot of trouble hearing over all the ambient noise in the restaurant (it can get surprisingly loud).

Two people were sitting at the table next to them, with just a very narrow planter box separating the tables. The new table was for two people who had just returned from Burning Man. They had a ukulele with them, and the girl started playing and singing. Not loud, mind you, but loud enough that it was bothering my sweet old couple. I asked the girl to stop or please step outside to work on her song. She just glared and me and stopped.

Minutes later, she started playing and singing again, but even softer this time. I was making my coffee rounds, and my elderly couple asked if they could switch tables. The pitch on the ukulele was bothering his hearing aid.

I was annoyed at this point and curtly told the annoying singer to please take it outside. She, to my surprise, snapped back at me. Saying she was playing as quietly as she could and singing just above a whisper.

I snapped straight back and told her that I could still hear her, and the point was, I asked her to stop, not continue, but quieter.

Some background: I am in my second year of university, studying music education, and am in the middle of my first-ever teaching placement. My assigned school is a public primary school, and my class consists of some of the sweetest stage three kids I’ve ever met (ages 9 to 11). It’s been an incredibly rewarding experience, but I occasionally run into the odd… unexpected situation. 

Their current unit of study involves songwriting. At this stage in the term, they have written their lyrics and are now working on turning them into verses with structure and rhythm. I have just spent about five minutes helping [Student #1] with the pacing of her lyrics, specifically in adding rests or holding syllables over multiple beats so that all her lines are the same length. She’s doing pretty well, so I take the opportunity to check in with the rest of the students at her table. A few minutes later, while I’m answering a question about beat vs. rhythm…

Student #1: “Mr. [My Name], can I hold you?”

Me: *Blink blink.* “What?”

Student #2: “Huh?!”

A look of realisation and horror dawns over [Student #1]’s face. I’ve never seen someone turn so red so fast before. I recall reading her lyrics and have my own realisation.

Student #1: “Wait! The word! Um, I—THAT’S THE—CAN I HOLD. ARGH.”

Me: “As in, can you hold the word ‘you’ over multiple beats?”

[Student #1] buries her face in her hands and nods. [Student #2]’s cackling probably isn’t helping.

Me: “Sure, you can hold the word ‘you’ over multiple beats!”

Student #1: *Facedown on the desk.*

Student #2: *Losing it.*

I’m not sure she’ll be living that one down any time soon, but at least the song is sounding pretty good!