A few months ago, in the middle of GCSE season — for those who don’t know, GCSEs are the exams that mark the end of compulsory schooling in the UK — I was on the bus to school when I realised I had missed my stop. I started panicking because I had a history paper starting at 9:15 which made up half my GCSE grade for that subject. I got so panicked that I almost ended up getting off the bus and trying to find my own way using my phone.

Luckily, the bus driver noticed me before I could make the worst decision in my entire time at secondary school. He checked his timetable and told me that if I stayed on the bus when it arrived in Huddersfield, it would go the same way back and I would arrive right before my exam. He even reminded me when he noticed my stop coming back up.

I ran into my school to find the rest of the students entering the exam hall. I had arrived just on time, exactly as the driver said I would. I managed to do well enough to get a grade 6 overall — the equivalent of a B in the old grading system.

Thank you, kind bus driver, for realizing that something was wrong. I certainly wouldn’t have noticed it in your position. After all, I didn’t pay enough attention to realise when my stop was!

One day, my dad’s class was given new rulers by the school to replace old wooden rulers. The old rulers had a problem with splinters, and may have had inches on them — Dad can’t really remember, as this was the 70s — whereas the new rulers were centimetres only. Perfectly valid reasons to replace the rulers. There was just one problem: the school made the mistake of choosing ones advertised as shatterproof, with the word featured prominently on the rulers themselves as if trying to invite the destructive curiosity it inevitably would.

Telling a room of teenagers, the intelligent and mischievous individuals that they are, that it’s impossible to do something has never been a good idea, nor will it ever be. No matter the generation, teenagers will put this sort of claim to the test, and that’s precisely what happened here. My dad and his classmates, taking the claim that these long, thin slabs of plastic were shatterproof as a challenge, started bending the rulers to just over a complete circle, forwards and backwards, to determine the claim’s truthfulness.

The rulers survived being bent forwards, but when they were bent backwards, the claim they were shatterproof failed the truthfulness test miserably. As a result of my dad’s class’s experiment, from what he tells me, shards of plastic shrapnel initially originating from the ridges flew all over the classroom, which was obviously far more dangerous than the splinters from the old wooden rulers. Only one ruler survived the mischief, and that was because it had been confiscated before its user could scatter its remains across the classroom by testing its structural soundness. Dad can’t remember since it was so long ago, but he suspects they went back to the wooden rulers until the not-so-shatterproof ones could be replaced.

(I am in a small beach town in the south of France vacationing with my husband and my son. The first night there, we go to an all-you-can-eat buffet near the beach. I have never tried most of the seafood they have in the buffet so I decide to take just a little bit of the things I want to try so I will not be wasting food in case I do not like it. I next go back to the buffet to get a full plate this time. After putting some rice, vegetables, and a few seafoods on it, I decide that I also want to take some mussels. The waiter is checking the trays to see what needs to be refilled. I am about to grab the spoon to take mussels when he grabs it instead and tells me:)

Waiter: *in French* “Since you already had mussels, you cannot take any more.”

Me: “Is this not an all-you-can-eat buffet, like the sign says in front of the restaurant?”

Waiter: “It is, but for the mussels, it’s only one serving per meal.”

(He stayed there, in front of the platter with the serving spoon in hand, looking angry. I was starting to feel really uncomfortable and the guy was not budging so I decided to go back to my table. I immediately told my husband what had just happened. The waiter heard me and quickly disappeared into the kitchen. A good ten minutes later, another waiter came to replace him. My husband told him what his colleague had told me earlier and he did not understand why he would have said something like that. He added that it must have been a misunderstanding but I know it was not — French is my mother tongue. My son and my husband had quite a few more plates before we paid and left, but since I had knots in my stomach, because of the rude waiter, I barely touched my plate. We saw him come out of hiding when we left the restaurant.)

My mother has Alzheimer’s and lives in a care facility. Not long ago, she was taken ill and they sent her to the local emergency room for some tests as a safety precaution because she can’t communicate and so it was unclear exactly what was wrong with her.

Mum’s husband and a carer went with her from the home and I joined them in the hospital. Understandably, my poor mother, who had no idea what was going on — even though we tried our best to explain — was confused, upset, and maybe even a little frightened.

The nurse taking care of Mum wasn’t unkind as such, but she was brisk and abrupt, and she made little to no effort to try and reassure Mum or interact with her. Again, understandably, Mum became ever more flustered and upset despite our best efforts to keep her calm and reassure her ourselves.

Then, the shift changed, and a new nurse was assigned to take care of Mum. She interacted with Mum; she spoke to her, touched her, calmed her, and reassured her far more than Mum’s husband, the carer, or I had managed to achieve. She even had Mum cooperating.

When Mum was finally released, I went and thanked that nurse for helping a frightened and confused woman feel calm and safe. The nurse was totally shocked that I thanked her. Later, my sister, who’s also a nurse, told me that while people are quick to complain, they rarely say thank you. Nurses do a very hard job, working with people who are ill, frightened, confused, and many other things besides. They’re not perfect, but on the whole, most of them do an amazing job. Please don’t forget to say thank you.

Related:
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 12
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 11
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 10

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I work in an assisted living facility. When visitors come and sign in, the system prints out a name tag sticker for them to wear. I recently purchased a small desktop trash can for them to put the peel-off backing of the name tags into, because they’ve been all over the floors, desktop, etc.

This trash can A) is directly in front of the visitors’ faces, at more-or-less eye-height, B) is shaped like a large, typical trash receptacle, and C) has a label on the front that says, “TRASH,” in large, easy-to-read font.

And yet at least a dozen times a day, a visitor stands directly in front of the d*** thing, peel-off backing in hand, asking me, “Where’s the trash?” and, “Can you toss this for me?” and, “Where can I put this?”

I would like to tell them just exactly where they can put it, and it sure isn’t the little trash can.