I worked my way through college at a pizza chain known for its stores looking like a hut. After a year, I was promoted to assistant manager, a lofty title for a barely nineteen-year-old.

One evening I took a call from two teens who ordered a pizza, and didn’t actually talk to each other prior to calling about what they wanted. After listening to them discuss toppings back and forth for nearly ten minutes, they made their order, and we got it into the oven after they told us the caller’s mom would be by to pick it up.

A little while later, they called back looking to change the order, and I explained that it was just about ready to come out of the oven. So, after using some choice language, they decided to cancel the order. Okay, fine, dinner for our delivery drivers and a note on their account about abusive language.

Lo and behold, two minutes later, I see an order pop up on the printer: same account, completely different pizza. At that point, I had already canceled out the first pizza, so we made the second one.

Enter the mom.

She was very polite and looked like she had just gotten out of work. I pointed to her son’s original order just as it was being sliced and explained that it was SUPPOSED to be hers, and ready to go, only her son canceled, and now she had to wait around twelve to fifteen minutes for the new order.

I also let her know I didn’t appreciate her teen calling me a “stupid f****** dumb***” because I told them it was impossible to change ingredients on a pizza that was already 75% cooked.

She went from “polite” to “p***ed off, mom” in a flash, but not at us. She asked if we had a phone she could use, and dialed her house (this was long before cell phones). She then absolutely REAMED her son for what he did and the language he used.

She also informed him that his friend was no longer staying for dinner, and she was tipping us $10 that was coming out of his money. After telling him she was going to deal with him when she got home and he was lucky she didn’t drag him into the store to apologize in person, she hung up and went right back to polite mom.

She made good on her promise ($10 in 1994 was an amazing tip), my delivery guys had a nice hot pizza for dinner, and I wonder to this day how much more that kid got reamed out when his mom got home.

I’d heard my dad curse in the past, but just the word “dammit” or its variations. The first (and only) time I heard him use the “f”-word was the following joke:

My dad snuck up behind me when I was standing in our apartment hallway. He poked me in the back with his index finger, like he was mugging me at gunpoint. Then he said:

Dad: “All right, you sticker! This is a f***-up!”

Admittedly funny, but I was so in shock by his f-bomb that I forgot to laugh.

Our theme park is very large, and as a result we rent strollers to families with kids if they haven’t bought their own. We even do double strollers for families with two kids.

A family is returning a rented double stroller (two wheels in the back, one in the front), and the dad starts complaining.

Customer: “The stroller kept malfunctioning all day. I want a refund.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. Can you explain the nature of the malfunction?”

Customer: “When the kids got out of the stroller, it kept falling backward!”

Me: “You currently have a lot of bags and items in the back of the stroller. Have they been there all day?”

Customer: “Duh, we’re not gonna carry them around when we have the stroller, are we?”

Me: “So that’s why it was falling backward, sir. That’s not a malfunction, so I can’t offer a refund.”

Customer: “Are you stupid or re****ed? Do I have to explain to you that a stroller that keeps falling to the ground is f***ed up?”

Me: “Sir, do I have to explain a seesaw to a grown man with children of his own?”

He didn’t appreciate my response, but it seemed to get the point across that he wouldn’t be getting a refund.

I have my phone set to metric units despite living in the USA. I had swapped units while living in China for a year, and decided to keep it like this so I can use it as a mental exercise by converting between metric and US standard. 

I am visiting my parents from out of state, and we are going out as a family. I don’t drink, so I am the designated driver for my parents, and we are in my car. I have the location we are meeting my sister in my GPS. My dad is in the front and doesn’t mind my phone’s settings. However, my mom is in the back seat and is always really annoyed by my phone spouting kilometers and Celsius for some reason.

Apple Car Play: “Left turn in 4.8km.”

Mom: “I don’t know what 4.8 kilometers is. Switch it to miles.”

Me: “It’s a little under three miles. Just multiply by 0.6.”

Mom: “I don’t want to multiply by 0.6, I want miles!”

Me: “Hey! My car! My phone! My system of measurement!”

Mom: *Grumbles in imperial units.*

I lost my foot in an accident a few years back and have been using a prosthetic foot since then. I wear a running blade while out running. While that does draw some looks, it also makes me feel a little like a cyborg.

I got some crazy phantom itches while running last summer (my brain decided to pretend that my lost foot was really itchy), so I had to sit down at a park bench and take off my blade to take care of the stump.

A nearby picnic, consisting of a few kids and their mothers, gave me some funny looks, but I ignored them until I heard them talk about me. They did try to keep their voices down, but I am sharp of hearing and had too little else to focus on.

Kid #1: *Roughly eight years old.* “Mom, why does that man only have one foot?”

Mom #1: “I don’t know. We can ask him if you want.”

Mom #2: “No, don’t do that. I know why he’s without a foot.”

Mom #1: “You know him?” 

Mom #2: “No, but I know what happened to him. You see, that man didn’t drink his milk, so his foot fell off.”

Kid #2: *Roughly six years old.* “What? Really?” 

Mom #1: “What the fu…dge?”*

Kid #1: “That can happen?”

Mom #2: “Yes! And he’s probably very ashamed. He did something bad, that’s why you shouldn’t ask him because he’ll feel even worse.”

Kid #3: *Maybe five years old, to [Mom #1].* “Mom, is this really true?”

Mom #1: *Obvious annoyance.* “Well, I have never heard of it before.”

Mom #2: “And now you all know.” 

Kid #2: *Scared.* “I’ll always drink my milk! I promise!”

Mom #2: “Good, you should. And that’s always why people are in wheelchairs or have lost limbs; they didn’t do what their moms told them.”

The other mom obviously disagreed, but didn’t seem to want to call out their friend. I know from experience that calling her out or causing a scene would not make anything better, so I didn’t do anything.

A while passed and [Mom #2] took her kid to the public bathroom, not long after the itches randomly stopped. [Mom #1] quickly came up to me with [Kids #1 and #3]:

Mom #1: “Excuse me, may we ask a question?”

Me: “Yes?”

Kid #1: *Nudged by his mom.* “Why do you only have one foot?”

Mom: “If you’re okay with answering, that is.”

Me: “Oh, I was in an accident and got injured. My foot got really hurt, and the doctors couldn’t fix it, so they made me a new one.”

Kid #1: “So… you didn’t do anything wrong to lose your foot?”

Me: “No, I was just very unlucky. Someone else had drunk a lot of beer before driving, which is really bad, and they hit me with their car. But I could have gotten hurt waaaay worse so I’m lucky in a way.” 

Kid #1: “Does it hurt?”

Me: “Not anymore, but sometimes I have to take care of it as I do now. A foot made of meat and bones is better to have, but if you lose one, the doctors can just make a new one. I even have different feet for different occasions. This is a running foot, but I mostly use my walking foot, which looks like a normal foot.”

Kid #3: “Do you have a pirate leg?”

Me: “No, but I could get one if I wanted. But I don’t get invited to enough costume parties for it to be worth it; they are expensive.”

Kid #1: “What is your foot made of?”

Me: “Carbon fiber and aluminium, the things they make space ships from!”

Kid #3: “Wow, a space foot!”

Mom #1: *Looks at the public bathroom.* “I think that’s enough. Thank you for answering. Now, what do we say?”

Kids: “Thank you!”

Me: “You’re welcome, and thank you for asking me instead of making assumptions. I’m going to put my foot back on now and go home. Have a nice day!”

[Kid #1] wanted to watch while I put my foot back on, which I agreed to but his mom seemed stressed about. He was very interested and polite, and I answered his million-billion questions about how prosthetics work.

When I set off running again, I saw that the other mom and her kid had returned. I heard a loud argument building between the moms.

When I ran through the park the week after I saw [Mom #1] and her kids without [Mom #2]. I said hi, got pulled into small talk by more questions from [Kid #1], got a spare juice box, and sat down for more small talk. It escalated to a friendship with regular visits for coffee. The mom told me that the incident was the last straw in an increasingly weird relationship and was very glad that I didn’t help her hide that she and her kids had talked with me. 

The kids soon decided that my blade needed some drawings on it, and now my blade sports flames and dinos (on paper taped to it, the carbon fiber can’t be easily drawn on with a felt-tip pen). I know I run faster with them on.

*Original Swedish: “Vad i hel…skotta?”