It’s the Christmas of 2020, and I’m stuck secluded at home with you-know-what. Everyone in my family lives in another state, so I usually fly out there for Christmas. Not this year. So, there I am, sick and miserable, when I hear the doorbell. Confused and more irritated than I already was, I walk over to the window and open it, planning to tell the person that coming here really isn’t a good idea.

The person in question turns out to be my best friend, who tells me to come to the door and then runs back to a group of some of our other friends. Curious now, I do as I’m told. As soon as I open the door, my friends, who are a safe distance away, start dancing and singing!

Friends: “We wish you a merry Christmas; we wish you a merry Christmas; we wish you a merry Christmas; and a healthy New Year!

“Oh, please stay six feet away; oh, please stay six feet away; oh, please stay six feet away; you’re spreading it through the air!

“We won’t stay if you come outside; we won’t stay if you come outside; we won’t stay if you come outside; so, keep your a** right there!

“We wish you a merry Christmas; we wish you a merry Christmas; we wish you a merry Christmas; and a healthy New Yeeeeeeaaarrr!”

By the end of it, I was alternating between laughing and coughing but felt immensely better emotionally. I also finally spotted the gift boxes at my feet, each of which had a bag of cough drops taped to it. My friends insisted on watching me open my presents right there and requested IOUs for their own gifts.

I have the best friends ever.

DISCLAIMER: This story contains content of a medical nature. It is not intended as medical advice.

I was having some irritation on my leg. It felt like a spider bite, but there was no bite — in fact, no marks at all. It got progressively worse over the course of a couple of days until it felt like an itching, aching fire on the side of my leg. At that point, I decided I’d better see my doctor. I’d put it off because she hadn’t really impressed me; she didn’t listen to me, preferring instead to tell me what my symptoms were, and she never took my history. I’d been looking for a new primary care doctor, but it hadn’t been a priority.

I asked for an appointment and couldn’t get anything with her for a couple of weeks, but I was able to make a same-day appointment with her nurse practitioner. She asked a few questions, checked my leg, and made a diagnosis of shingles/herpes sine zoster (no rash). Since it had been a couple of weeks since the onset of symptoms, there was nothing to be done for the shingles except to wait it out, but she prescribed some gabapentin for the nerve pain, and I made an appointment with my own doctor for about ten days later.

She started the appointment by breezing into the exam room and saying:

Doctor: *Heartily* “We have to find out what’s wrong with your leg! I see you were diagnosed with shingles, but it can’t possibly be that!”  

Since it’s pretty easy to get basic information about shingles, I had done some homework, noting that the common symptoms checked all the boxes for my symptoms and that the no-rash version was uncommon but not rare. The only thing I could think of to ask that wasn’t outright rude was:

Me: “Why do you say that?”

Doctor: “Shingles always occurs on the torso, and it always expresses as a rash. The rash must be on a dermatome, and there are no dermatomes in your legs.”

For those of you keeping score at home, only one of those statements is true: shingles follows the path of a dermatome, which is an area of skin that sends information to the brain along a spinal nerve. That means you can get shingles on any part of your body; if you had no dermatomes in your legs, you wouldn’t be able to feel anything there. 

I decided that anybody who was willing to hand me that much misinformation about something so easily researched was not somebody I ever wanted to diagnose anything for me. So, since I was actually feeling pain, I walked out of the exam room and out of the clinic, and I found a new doctor the next week. 

I have a relatively mild case of post-herpetic neuralgia due to shingles at this point, and I am working with my new physician to find a means of treating it.

My grandma is the type of person that if you tell her something she doesn’t like or doesn’t want to hear, she just ignores you and keeps reiterating that she’s right. 

It’s Christmas time, and I am feeling really lazy this year. Since I’m going to be having surgery at the beginning of December, I choose not to put up a tree knowing I probably won’t be able to take it down later with my weight lifting restrictions. I decide to instead just put up a Festivus pole. I don’t really celebrate Christmas to begin with, so it works for me. 

Later, my family is holding their pre-Christmas party, and I’m not attending as I’m still recovering, but my grandma and my uncle come up to visit.

Grandma: “I see you didn’t finish putting up your tree. Do you want me to come over and do it?”

Me: “No, I’m not putting up a tree this year. It’s a Festivus pole.”

Grandma: “What do you mean, you’re not putting up a tree? You already have the base up. Don’t worry; I’ll be over to help.”

Me: “No. I’m not putting up a tree. That’s not a base; that’s the finished product.”

Grandma: “But what will you put up instead of that, then?”

Uncle: “Mom, you’re not understanding. This is from Seinfeld. That’s what it’s meant to look like. It’s complete, so stop trying to needle yourself in.”

Later on, my grandma is complaining to my mom about my unfinished tree. 

Mom: “She’s not doing Christmas this year. She’s just doing Festivus, so there is no tree.”

Grandma: “But she has a sign up above the unfinished tree saying ‘Merry Christmas’!”

Mom: “I know what sign you’re talking about because she sent us a picture. It clearly says ‘Happy Festivus’.”

Grandma: “No, I know what I saw. I just don’t understand why she won’t let me help her decorate her tree!”

Thankfully, I recovered quickly from my surgery, so I didn’t have to worry about her stopping over all the time to “check up on me”, which was just her trying to finish decorating my tree.

For reference, I’m blind. Partly because this high school is rather fearful of a lawsuit, and partly because I’m unable to navigate without assistance (for several medical reasons), I’m required to have someone take me from class to class. The usual person who does this goes on lunch at a rather poor time, right before a class, and so someone else comes in to fill in for her.

This interaction happens a week or so into school. I’m in the room several instructors use, where I make up work, etc. There are several devices on a table.

Aide: “What’s this?”

Me: “What?”

Aide: “This thing sitting on a desk?”

Me: “Umm… Describe it, please?”

Aide: “It’s black.”

Me: “Black? But… what does it look like?”

Aide: “It… looks like a black suitcase?”

Me: “Umm, is it a device? It might be the notetaker I use for braille?”

Aide: “I guess?”

She walked over to me with the item. It was, in fact, the notetaker. It doesn’t resemble a suitcase in the slightest; picture a tablet with a braille pad that slides up to reveal a visual screen.

I’ll never understand how, after ages working with various teachers and aides, it’s so difficult to describe an item to me.

There was also the time she walked me smack into some form of metal structure, didn’t tell me, and caused me to knock it over and send lunchroom decorations all over the place. Guess what? She couldn’t describe that to me, either

My employer has an automatic prompt every time someone pays with a card, asking if the customer would like to donate to local pet shelters. I am finishing a transaction with a man in his forties who has not acknowledged my existence once.

Me: “Okay. Your total is [amount]. Is that cash or card?”

He puts his card on the reader to use tap-to-pay.

Me: “Okay, card. There is a donation—”

Man: “Did it go?”

Me: “No, not yet. You have to select—”

Man: *Moving his card all over the reader* “It’s not working.”

Me: “You still need to select whether you’d like to donate to local animal shelters. If not, you—”

Man: “No.”

Me: “Okay, just go ahead and press ‘No, thank you’ on the screen.”

Man: “Why isn’t it working?”

Me: “You have to hit ‘No, thank you’ at the bottom right of the screen.”

Man: “I want to use credit.”

Me: “You cannot pay until—”

Man: *Finally looking at the screen* “Is this asking for a f****** tip?! Are you serious?”

Me: “No, it’s asking about—”

Man: “I can’t believe you think it’s okay to ask for a tip for ringing me out!”

He goes on like this for a good minute. I’ve decided to just wait and let him run out of steam. As loud as he’s being, everyone around us knows he’s talking out his a**, so they just watch, either amused or glaring daggers at him.

By the time he finishes, the prompt has timed out and moved on to the payment screen. I haven’t touched the register or even been close enough to the keyboard to do so since the first time he interrupted me.

Man: “…it’s so d*** disrespectful— Oh. Good, there it goes. See, how hard was that?”

Me: “Here’s your receipt. Have a nice day.”

Man: “Get your manager. This tipping culture is obscene. You cannot—”

Me: “Sure. You can step to the side here and she’ll be right up.”

I call the manager over the loudspeaker and address the woman who has been waiting in line behind the man.

Me: “Hi. How are you?”

Woman: “I’m good. Honey, do you really ask for tips? I’ve never seen that here.”

Me: “No, it’s about donating to local pet shelters.”

Woman: “Oh! That’s good! I’ll donate $10 if that’s okay.”

Me: “That’s wonderful! Thank you!”

The man is still there, turning red as we talk. He grabs his purchases and walks out.

A moment later, the manager does arrive. 

Manager: “You called?”

Woman: “That was a man who left. But I will tell you that this girl has the patience of a saint. That man was going on about tipping when he wasn’t even reading the screen.”

Manager: “Tipping?”

Me: “The donation prompt. “

Manager: “Oh. Well… Okay, then. Um… carry on?”

Me: “Thank you!”

I know a lot of places are asking for tips for things that people don’t believe should be tipped, but if he had taken two seconds to read the screen, he would have seen it.