When I was in middle school, my math classes required a graphing calculator. My older brother and I were both math geeks, so he showed me how to use the “programs” feature of the calculator to do some cool stuff — not related to class.

Eventually, we learned the quadratic formula in class. After finishing the unit and passing the quiz, I had the bright idea to create a calculator program to do the formula for me. I then showed the program to my teacher, expecting the teacher to be impressed by my ingenuity, but instead, the teacher told me I wasn’t allowed to do that. I tried to point out that the mere fact that I had created the program was evidence that I had mastered the formula, but my teacher wouldn’t hear it. So, no time-saving shortcuts for me.

Looking back on it now, I wonder if the teacher didn’t believe I had created the program myself, but I’m still annoyed; as I said before, I had already passed the test on the formula itself, and using my calculator for the formula should have been no different than using it for basic arithmetic.

We went to a few stores today, needing to pick up a few things for bringing our new puppy home next weekend. We were shopping, and due to the current health crisis, almost everyone had masks on, politely keeping a distance from each other as much as possible… except for the “Karen” behind me in line. Any closer and she could have crawled up my a**.

I’d move a few steps up to try and put distance between her and me, and she’d move right up close behind me again. I finally turned around and asked her, politely, if she could please back up a few feet.

She huffed in disgust through her mask — at least she was wearing one — and rolled her eyes, muttering, “Whatever,” but didn’t back off. An employee overheard and helpfully pointed out the markings on the floor to her, just in case she “couldn’t figure out what six feet apart looked like.”

The woman got pissed, tossed her stuff on a table by the checkout, and walked out of the store.

This took place about eight years ago. My younger brother and I join a group of guys for a game of indoor football — soccer — at our local sports centre every weekend. Everyone else is college age, seventeen or eighteen, while I am the eldest at twenty.

Things go by smoothly. One of the guys is a friend of ours, and there is a clear mix of ability so there is little in the way of unbalanced teams. Nonetheless, one of the guys is super competitive and continually body-checks others into the walls in order to tackle them. As the eldest in the group, I have de facto responsibility to ensure everyone’s health and safety, so I gently ask him at the end of the session to tone down his tackling, since he could seriously injure or be injured in doing so. As I feared, he simply brushes it off and says everything will be fine.

Cut to a few weeks later. My brother is unable to come with so it is just me this time. Everything goes fine until a harsh tackle from me on another guy causes me to roll my ankle, causing me to fall hard on my lower back. As play stops, the idiot I mentioned has the brilliant idea of grabbing me by the arms and ankles and carrying me away from the playing area!

While they carry on their game without a care in the world, I am lying there in agony. Between the now worsened ankle injury, they also jarred my lower back by unceremoniously dumping me on the floor. My friend stops playing and comes over to see if I’m okay. I immediately order him to get a member of staff, which he does. When the on-duty first aider — also the manager — arrives, the guys laugh and tell me to “stop acting like a p****,” to which my friend replies that this is serious.

An ambulance is called and my mother arrives after my friend used my phone to call her. About six hours later, I leave the local hospital on crutches with a severe high ankle sprain and strained lower lumbar muscles, and a metric crapload of various prescription painkillers. The following morning, my ankle has swelled to twice the size and looks the colour of a ripe blackberry. I take a photo for my university as proof — I commute to the uni and will be in no shape to get there for at least a week, maybe even two — and settle in to working out how to use my crutches effectively.

Six months later, I start training again to get my fitness back, and my brother and I go back to the football group. Naturally, they laugh that I took half a year off for “diving”…

…until I wordlessly walk up to the idiot in charge and show him the photo of my blackberry-coloured, inflated ankle. I stress my warning back to him from way before, and I swear I have never seen the colour fade so fast from someone seeing consequences of their actions. 

Nowadays, my ankle is fully functional, if slightly more tender, while my lower back has developed into full-on sciatica. Still enjoy football, though!

It only took about a year and a half of being a Not Always Right reader for me to finally run into a real, live Karen in the wild. It’s currently the fourth month of the health crisis, and in New Jersey, it has been state law to wear a mask when visiting any public venue — store, restaurant, doctor’s office, etc. — since April. It’s been in every news venue and posted outside every establishment for months now.

While visiting a [Major Big Box Store], I enter — wearing my mask, of course, as is literally everyone else — and go to get my cart from the rack right inside the front door. As I’m wiping off the handle with my antiseptic wipe, a woman about my age walks in with a cart but without a mask.

She is addressed rather loudly by the staff attending the front door but appears to be completely ignoring them. Since it’s noisy and I have a louder-than-normal voice, I try to get her attention, as well. She does turn and look at me, and then looks away when I point at the staff, so I don’t think her hearing was an issue.

When other shoppers that are directly in front of her — and blocking her way — point her to the front door, she finally turns and comes back, where the staff remind her she needs to be wearing a mask to enter the store. She comes off with nothing but attitude — “Why do I need a mask?!” — and when they remind her that it’s the law, she repeats it to them mockingly, like a child would — think of the Spongebob meme with words like this: “ItS tHe LaWwEr.”

She even demands the staff give her a mask, but they remind her it’s not their job to provide them. As she’s leaving her cart with the others, she looks at me for some kind of agreement, but I just raise my eyebrows and shoulders. She does leave the store, but as I’m doing my shopping, I see her again, with a mask. I wanted to yell at her, “Was that so friggin’ hard?!”

This story is part of our Anti-Masker roundup.

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The manager of our local community centre is moving on to pastures new after seven years of sterling service, so naturally, the centre has been advertising for a new manager. The criteria for the job are pretty standard: applicants must have experience of managing a community centre or similar, must have a proven track record of fundraising, etc.

There have been a few… shall we say, interesting… applications, but a recent one was an absolute stand-out. The applicant, for some unfathomable reason, believed she was applying for a job as an Avon representative; Avon sells cosmetics door-to-door in the UK. The icing on the cake came under her list of qualifications, where she listed “Mother of a Musician and Singer” as being a suitable qualification for the position.

Those of us on the selection panel are still frantically scratching our heads trying to figure out on what planet “Mother of a Musician and Singer” has any bearing on the suitability of a candidate applying for a top management position at a community centre.

This story is part of the singing silliness roundup!

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