I have been dating my boyfriend for a few years. He is allergic to nuts. Eating them makes him very sick, so since we started dating I have stayed away from nuts, out of fear of cross contamination making him sick.

This particular day my work was doing a bake sale for charity. One of the things for sale was a Reese’s Pieces brownie, with whole chunks of peanut. I was very happy to have a place where it would be safe for me to have peanuts, so I bought one and ate it straight away.

Pretty much instantly I thought that my tongue felt a bit strange, but being an idiot I thought it was just my imagination and I ate that brownie in about half a minute.

In the next few minutes my thoughts went from, “My mouth feels a little strange,” to, “It’s definitely getting harder to breathe.” I mentioned this to my manager, a first aider, but she thought I was joking. So I went to the receptionist, also a first aider, and mentioned it to her. She realised I wasn’t joking and panicked, running to get my manager.

An ambulance was called and the staff sat with me as I waited and waited, in discomfort, and with no idea if it was going to get any worse. I vaguely remember joking to the baker that “these brownies are killer.” I thought it was funny at the time. Pretty sure she didn’t.

After about 45 minutes with no ambulance, they called 999 again. That’s when we found out that the first ambulance couldn’t find their way into the office block — through the clearly-marked entrance — so they just gave up.

The second ambulance came, and a decision to go to hospital was made, considering that I had no history of an allergy.

We got to A & E and it was unsurprisingly busy. The paramedics were told to put me in resus until another bed cleared, as there was a space in there. They gave me antihistamines and steroids, and by this point I was feeling a lot better, but a secondary reaction was possible, so I still needed an eye on me.

That’s when a nurse came in with a face like thunder, took one look at me, and declared to the whole room at full volume, “She’s not sick! She shouldn’t be in here!”

She repeated this several times, while I just sat there nervously; I’m anxious enough most days, without someone telling me off for being somewhere I have no control over. I had no idea how to respond, so I just sat there ignoring her. She wasn’t doing anything except look at me and make these comments again and again.

Eventually they found a normal bed to put me in, and I got moved, but as they moved me, she declared to the medics and porters around her, “See?! I told you she’s not sick!”

A later blood test confirmed that I had developed a peanut allergy at 23. Luckily I didn’t have a secondary reaction, and it was a pretty easy lifestyle change to avoid, since I was already avoiding them for my partner.

While driving my parents’ car on a long trip at night, the engine just stops and all the warning lights come on. I’m able to get the car off the road and open the hood. There is a massive amount of smoke and steam coming from the engine and after checking, I find that there is no coolant at all in the reservoir. I get to wait by the car while arrangements are made to pick both the car and me up.

The next day after examining the car, it is determined that a coolant hose came off while I was driving, and that caused the engine to overheat and seize. Over the next few days, my father acquires a new engine and swaps out the old engine with the new one. We then find out that my brother had taken the car in for some repairs a few days before my trip to dealership, and it was one of the hoses they worked on that came off.

My father is in contact with the dealership, but they say they are not at all at fault and refuse any kind of compensation. So, my father decides to take them to small claims court.

After a few months, we are all at the courthouse. The judge comes in and the case is read to her. As soon as the dealership’s name is mentioned, the judge asks for the lawyers — both ours and the dealership’s — to come forward and have a private discussion. This seems very odd, but all we can do is wait for our lawyer to come back and tell us what’s going on.

After a few minutes, our lawyer comes back with a smile on her face. Apparently, the judge is also having “issues” with the dealership, so she has to remove herself due to a conflict of interest. We can’t believe it.

Once the judge has officially removed herself from the case, the dealership settles for everything we wanted.

I am going down the steps from my porch and misstep, and end up breaking my leg in three places right near my ankle. It is a Friday night, so I can’t get an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon until Monday.

When I go in for my appointment, I first see a nurse assistant with a very unique name. We talk about how it happened and my medical history. And because I’m female, she asks when my last period was. It has been almost a year. I’m on continuous birth control, despite not being sexually active, because during that time of the month, my migraines and fibromyalgia get to the point where I can’t function. She then goes to get the doctor, and from the room she has taken us to, we hear an argument break out over “who cancelled the appointment of the broken ankle girl.” I still don’t see how that’s possible, considering we made that appointment only an hour earlier. I end up being seen by another doctor with more of a specialty in what I need, so it works out and I forget about the weirdness.

Fast forward a week to when I can finally have surgery. I’m in the hospital gown, have an IV in, and I’m being asked the same questions again and again: spell my name, what’s my birth date, etc. Finally the nurse looks at me funny and looks at my ankle splint — which has a ton of padding and is massive — and tells me, “I know it seems obvious, but I need you to tell me what you’re here for.” I tell her to fix my ankle. She nods and tells me that that nurse assistant — I remember her unique name — had put me down as coming in for a hysterectomy. I’m not sure if she was trying to — inaccurately — note in my file that I’d had one because I hadn’t had my period in a year, or somehow managed to screw up why I was seeing an orthopedic surgeon when I had three broken bones. But I guess that will forever be a mystery.

A group of us got together to form a nudist club, and we would rent out the hot-tub suite of the local leisure centre for an hour or two on weekly basis. People who were using the suite before the hour we rented were naturally expected to leave before our rented hour.

This, of course, did not always happen. The worst instance of liberty-taking was when a middle-aged man from a culture where nudism is a shocking concept deliberately spent a long time showering, changing, and preparing to exit the suite, to such an extent that it was a good ten minutes into our rented time.

I, along with the other coordinator of this weekly event, approached this man a few times, explaining to him that he was encroaching into our time, and the members of the club wanted him either to leave immediately, or to pay his subscription and disrobe. Of course, he had no intention of doing so; he just wanted to hang around on the off chance that he could see naked women.

In the end, the aforementioned coordinator and I just undressed, and approached him again, naked this time. Nobody else had done so; it was just we two men. This time, the embarrassment of being made to interact with two naked men, and the increasingly remote prospect of cheap thrills on offer at the sight of bare breasts and women’s lady parts, was too much for him, and the slimy old toad left.

I have a side job in a social kind of institute aimed at senior citizens and teenagers.

As such, the institute has bought a 3D printer to use in projects aimed at the teenagers — projects I will be teaching, since I’m the person with experience in 3D printing and the likes.

For showing off and getting the teens interested, I’m working on a project that ties computer programming and 3D printing together, and I have to print a rather large object on the 3D printer for this project. “Rather large” refers to printing times of two to two and a half days. It’s one of the first prints I’m doing there, certainly the first one of such size.

So, after starting the print, I go to the people working full time in the institute and try to give them instructions regarding the print. I tell them things like, “Do me a favor and from time to time have a look at the print. It may go wrong and look like pasta or solid rocks. Stop the printer if that happens,” and, “Please don’t open the windows or leave the door in the room open for a longer time. If the print cools down, it tears off the print bed and is ruined,” and, “Don’t turn the power off to the printer in the evening. The print will take about 70 hours. Do not be worried about this.”

I return on the second day and check on my print. The thing’s about halfway done, so I figure the day after, it will be ready, and I plan to return in the evening of the next day. I chat a bit with my colleagues, again mentioning the above “printing rules.”

Sadly, things do not go as expected, so instead of being there the evening of the third day, I show up in the morning of the fourth. I meet the colleague I chatted with before, who is at the moment the only one in charge there for the whole week.

We greet, and they inform me I may not get into the room with the printer as they have a big educational event where they need about all rooms, so the printer room may not be available.

Also, because of this, they started setting up the rooms for the event the day before. So, the coworker went into the print room, noticed the rather warm room temperature caused by the printer, deduced the people setting up the rooms would most certainly try to open the windows and air the room… and stopped the printer by turning off the power.

This, in turn, caused it to cool down and tear off.

It was the one thing I did not explicitly mention.