When I first started dating my boyfriend, he had a female friend that obviously had feelings for him. My boyfriend is on the spectrum, and I can honestly say that he never noticed. But I did.

I hadn’t seen the girl in a while when my boyfriend came home looking very confused — not angry or upset, but perplexed.

He told me that the girl had told him that I had cheated on him the night before, and she had seen me at the local club dancing with lots of men and women before going home with one.

When my boyfriend asked his friend to clarify, she said, “I knew it was her because of her horrible, bright green hair! She looks like a goblin, ugh!”

My boyfriend’s confusion stemmed from the fact I had dyed my hair from the green to cotton candy pink the month before.

Because he has Asperger’s, he was more concerned that the girl couldn’t tell the difference between green and pink than her lies. He informed her of all of this in his usual impassive way.

She ran away crying.

Thus the friendship ended, running its course.

I fit in with much of the world’s population by being deathly afraid of spiders. I also fit in with much of the world’s population by owning a window AC unit for my room.

This air conditioner has stretchy panels on both sides that are meant to stretch out to block the rest of the space in the open window, since the weight of the open windowpane is what is holding the unit in place, and because you don’t want the open window letting in hot air or letting out cold air, of course.

My window is a little bit too wide to exactly fit the length of these stretchy panels, and one of the panels is also missing a screw that holds the very bottom of the panel in place. What this means is that, when the unit’s panels are fully stretched out to block the open window, there’s a very small gap that can let air and objects through.

I thought this would be a small problem, or maybe not a problem at all, so my fix was to simply put scotch tape over the opening to block insects and air from trying to get in. Could a mosquito possibly even find that gap, anyway? There was no way I would have to worry about things flying in, right?

Well, maybe not quite mosquitoes…

One day, I came into my room and walked over to the window to turn the AC on when I was greeted with the sight of a noticeably large spider trying to push its way through the tape barrier, through the gap, and into my house, for whatever reason. Probably to try and murder me, like any spider would, I’m sure.

While I saw that my tape barrier was adequate for keeping out a normal, yet large, spider, I still felt the immediate urge to eliminate the threat. I turned away, say, “Nope,” and made my way through the house.

As I walked through the living room, still repeating “nope” at random intervals, I made a beeline for the cabinet under the kitchen sink and found the most caustic and/or most toxic bug spray I could find and made my way back to the offending bug.

I walked into the room, said one final, “nope,” and then instantly started blasting the spider through the tape with the spray at almost point-blank range. The spray was actually so toxic that it began dissolving the flimsy tape, and the spider was very much dead by this point, but I no longer cared about the consequences of my actions until I could personally verify that this Hell-spawn was erased from the face of the earth.

After about a full 30 seconds of chemically power-washing my windowsill, I decided that the threat had been neutralized and started cleaning up the melted spider-tape-chemical ball by knocking it back out of the window from whence it came using a very long chopstick. I then proceeded to use the next ten minutes to put double-layer extra-strength duct tape on every single crevice that the window might have. Thankfully, I haven’t had a repeat incident since.

I get that spiders do good for us by keeping obnoxious flying insects in check… but I still can’t justify their existence.

They’re just too evil.

My mother-in-law is an amazing, sweet, kind, and generous woman, who I am lucky to call family. 

Yesterday, I was being released from hospital following major abdominal surgery. My husband was due to collect me after visiting his mum in a hospital local to our home. She had been in intensive care for the past three weeks with sepsis that wasn’t responding well to treatment. As he was about to leave his hospital, the doctor told him that his mum was not going to last much longer and he needed to stay with his dad and his sister for the end. He phoned me and told me the news and we agreed I would have to get a cab home despite the cost. 

I made the arrangements via the hospital’s concierge and sat to wait near another lady in the lobby. We sort of smiled at each other, and then she gestured to a bag the other side of her and asked if it was mine. I said no and pointed to my suitcase next to me and said that was all I had. 

We then struck up a short conversation about our reasons for being there. She asked what was wrong and said I seemed upset. I explained that my husband couldn’t collect me as his mum was dying and not expected to last long and that I was waiting for a cab. She instantly waved her hand and said her driver would take me home. I protested, as I already had the cab booked and it would be too far as I live the other side of the river, but she insisted and told the concierge to cancel my cab. Then, she told a gentleman outside the entrance to take my address and ensure her driver took me home as soon as possible. 

I was definitely overwhelmed by this point and forgot to ask for her name, but I did give her a hug and thank her for making my day so much easier. She then left with her assistant. When her car arrived, I got in with my suitcase, and then my husband called to tell me his mum had gone. Thanks to that incredibly generous stranger, I was able to be with him and the rest of our family when it really mattered and, yes, faith in humanity restored.

Being an avid reader, I spent lots of time after school in a bookstore. One of the clerks there came to know me quite well and sometimes asked my opinion on some books, what I would recommend to a certain age group and similar questions. Sometimes, when there was a customer she thought I might be able to help, she would go and ask me to come over to try and find something, so I was used to dealing with people in this store.

One day, I was browsing through the teenage section when a woman with her boy walked up and started asking me what book I would recommend for her son. So, I talked to the little guy and we found a book that he might enjoy.

Just then, the clerk walked up and asked if she could help them. The woman looked puzzled, and the clerk explained that I didn’t actually work there.

The mother looked affronted, took the book out of the boy’s hands, turned to me, and started accusing me, “You pretended to work here, giving unsolicited advice, and I’m sure the book you just told us to read is crap! How dare you?! Who do you think you are?” and kept going on in this vein for some more time.

Despite the boy saying, “Mom, I actually like this book!” she returned it to the shelf, took his hand, and dragged him away.

The clerk and I stood there, speechless.

Some grandparents wanted to celebrate their 60th wedding day and they invited their children and grandchildren to our restaurant for a family dinner. They made the reservations well ahead and all in all, there would be thirty persons attending the dinner.

We could see that the grandparents really were excited and looking forward to a nice dinner with their loved ones.

On the night of the event, everyone showed up as expected. Everyone sat down and was talking to each other in friendly conversation while I took their orders.

Sadly, that didn’t last long. 

Not even ten minutes had passed and everyone was busy on their phone. I looked at the grandparents and they motioned me to come over. They were visibly upset and asked me if they could cancel all the orders.

I told our boss what happened and if it was possible to cancel the orders. My boss looked at the table. The grandparents sat there surrounded by the family who were all texting and swiping on their phones. “Sure,” he said. “Cancel all orders. But prepare a table for two.”

He went to the table, had a word with the grandparents, and escorted them to another part of our restaurant where they would have a private dinner. Nobody of the entire party noticed what was happening. 

After having the couple seated, my boss returned to the group and made an announcement:

“I’m sorry to have to tell you that your grandparents cancelled the dinner. They wanted me to tell you this: they expected to have a nice evening with their family in a restaurant. Instead, they ended up with strangers acting like smartphone-zombies. They are not going to buy food for strangers, so they have left this table to have a meal on their own.”

The guests looked very embarrassed and left in a hurry. We tried to make this evening a bit better for the grandparents by treating them like royalty, and my boss didn’t want them to pay for their dinner. But it was still sad that this whole group of people was more interested in their phones than in their grandparents. 

My boss had placed signs in the restaurant asking people to act like it’s 1950 when there were no smartphones. But a lot of people felt offended by them. He even inquired for a phone-jammer, but it seems that these are illegal to have or to use.