It’s dinner time. My younger brother’s eyes are glued to his device and he is barely eating. My parents are adamant that I am not to steal his device — again — so I am reduced to nagging him to eat faster. It isn’t working. After I’ve lost my patience, I say this.

Me: “[Younger Brother]. You will start eating your food faster, or else I’ll be forced to feed you.”

He’s like eight. I thought that threatening to feed him like a baby would have been embarrassing enough. Alas, he calls my bluff.

Younger Brother: *Not even looking up* “Sure!”

I sigh, scoop a mouthful of food, and offer it to him. He eats it without even looking and visibly winces. After struggling with the worst expression of disgust, he finally swallows his food and glares at me.

Younger Brother: “What the h*** was that?”

Me: *Unrepentant grin* “Liver. It is just the worst, isn’t it?”

The two of us absolutely hate liver. On the other hand, our mom loves it, which is why there is some available at the dinner table.

Younger Brother: “Why did you feed me that?!”

Me: “It’s not my fault you weren’t looking at what you were eating.”

That finally got him to put down his device and start eating in earnest. Unfortunately, over the years, I’ve had to redo this trick several times to get him off his device, mostly using chili, which was more common than liver and had far more amusing and effective results. You’d think he’d have learned his lesson by now.

I studied IT in college. My first job is an administrative position with a colleague who is bossy and tends to be controlling, but I need the job so I put up with it. She barely knows anything about computers, but she thinks she is better than me because she went for the official training for the system and is the one who teaches me how to use the in-house software.

My first day:

Colleague: “To do [task], highlight the words, click the right mouse button, and select ‘copy.’ Then, go to Excel, click the right mouse button again, and select ‘paste.’”

I use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.

Colleague: “No, you’re supposed to do—”

Me: *Wanting to reassure her* “Oh, it’s the same thing. It’s just faster.”

Colleague: “Oh, really? Hmmph!”

I don’t really notice her reaction but continue with the rest of the data entry.

Colleague: “For the next step, you need to highlight the words, click the right mouse button, and select ‘copy.’ Then, go to Excel, click the right mouse button again, and select ‘paste as values.’”

I use the keyboard shortcuts again.

Colleague: “No, you can’t; you need to do this.”

I’m still innocently thinking to reassure her.

Me: “Oh, it’s the same thing, as well.”

Colleague: “This has to be submitted to Finance, and you have to be very careful not to get it wrong. I’m teaching you the proper way to do it, but you want to be stubborn and don’t want to listen, and you insist on doing it your own way.”

Me: “What? But… it’s the same.”

I am completely lost for words. I didn’t realize that she doesn’t even know about keyboard shortcuts, and I never imagined for a moment that she thought it was stubbornness on my part. I’m a shy person, and as this is my first job, I don’t dare to speak up.

A few days later, we’re doing another task. The system crashes every time I try to submit the data. It doesn’t happen on her system.

Colleague: “See, I told you, you need to do copy and paste properly. This is what you get when you don’t do it the correct way.”

Me: “The error isn’t when I’m keying in the data. It’s only when I try to submit it—”

Colleague: “There, you’re being stubborn again. If your method is correct, why is it that the problem only happens on your PC and not on mine?”

Me: “…”

Colleague: “Do it properly and you’ll see; it will work.”

Instead of arguing, I do it her way. It takes twice as long, and the system still crashes. I contact the system administrator.

Colleague: “Oh, so now the IT people are going to look at it. Okay, go ask them, is it because you’re not doing copy and paste correctly that causes your system to crash? If you don’t believe me, go ask them. They’ll tell you that it’s because you’re doing the wrong thing!”

To shut her up, I do just that.

In a video chat with the system admin, I describe the problem.

Me: “[Colleague] thinks that this error is caused by using keyboard shortcuts, such as Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. She thinks I should right-click the mouse and select ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ from the menu.”

The system admin gives me a weird look.

System Admin: “No, that’s not the cause.”

Me: “So, using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V won’t cause this kind of error?”

System Admin: “No, of course not.”

Me: “Or any keyboard shortcuts?”

System Admin: “No, it’s the same. Excuse me, I need to go. I have a meeting.” *Logs off*

Colleague: “So, what was IT’s solution? Can they fix it?”

Me: “He had to go for a meeting.”

Colleague: “Hah, see? You probably bothered him too much, so he made an excuse to leave. Just do what I told you, and you won’t have any more problems.”

So, basically, IT thinks I’m an idiot, thanks to [Colleague]. After some time, IT found the error was caused by a connection time-out when I tried to submit the data. It had nothing to do with keyboard shortcuts.

This happened during my uniform group camp when I was in my early teens. The uniform groups of about five schools were camping together in a school for four days and three days.

At the end of the first day, my groupmate’s shower cubicle couldn’t open, leaving him trapped inside. His response was to start pounding on the cubicle door and hollering, “I’m trapped in the toilet! I’m trapped in the toilet!” The boys all found the whole thing beyond hilarious and didn’t help the trapped boy, though he eventually got the lock open and escaped.

He was the butt of all the jokes that night. Thank goodness everyone was too busy laughing at him; I had accidentally packed my mother’s pyjamas and would not have lived it down if anyone noticed.

We expected the mockery to end by the next day, but there was this one schoolmate of mine that just insisted on rubbing it into my groupmate’s face. Every joke about being trapped in a toilet, he cracked, and he laughed non-stop. He was always a jerk, but this was on a whole new level.

And then, on the second night, guess who got trapped in that defective cubicle? My schoolmate, that same boy who kept mocking my groupmate, was now hopping behind the cubicle door, flapping his hands like a chicken and screaming, “Get me out of here! Get me out of here!”

I really couldn’t help myself. I burst out laughing until I started to cry before I ran off to get the teachers. I found them having a coffee break in the canteen, right as one of them said, “Ah, peace and quiet at last.”

I gleefully ruined their peace and quiet by telling them how [Schoolmate] got himself trapped in the toilet. The look on their faces was priceless. One of them actually said, “You just had to jinx us!” to Mr. Peace And Quiet.

The four of them followed me into the washroom, where all the boys were now out of their cubicles in varying states of nudity, laughing at [Schoolmate]’s chicken flapping and jumping. Seeing that nobody was showering, I snuck into one of the opened cubicles and began showering right as the teachers made themselves known.

There was a shriek of “Why are there girls here?” — one of the teachers was female — and then sudden pounding on the shower door as the guy I stole the place from tried to get in and get clothes on.

I ignored him, and he started angrily shouting that he’d kill me. It was about this point that the teachers realised that they couldn’t open the cubicle door no matter how they tried, so one of the teachers returned with an actual crowbar, which the four of them used to force [Schoolmate]’s cubicle open. While everyone was distracted by the crowbar, I snuck out before the guy I stole the shower from could notice.

The very first thing I proceeded to do was to find [Groupmate]. When [Schoolmate] finally stumbled out of the showers, the two of us stood there and threw every single toilet joke he made back in his face. [Schoolmate] then snarled at me, “I mocked [Groupmate] and then I was trapped. Tomorrow will be your turn.”

On day three, I didn’t get trapped. I wasn’t an idiot, and the teachers had declared that one cubicle off-limits anyway.

And to add insult to injury, someone made a play about the whole situation and had it performed in front of the entire uniform group the next year, forever preventing [Schoolmate] from living it down.

Moral of the story: karma is one h*** of a b****.

I’m a new secondary school student. Our school is holding a fair where all the clubs advertise themselves to the new students the next day.

This happens right at the end of the school day. A student dashes past our classrooms with what looks like a bunch of bodies with their heads and limbs dangling out of the sack slung over his shoulders.

Student: *Bellowing* “Out of the way, out of the way! Guy with a corpse coming through!”

Half a dozen other students run right behind him, each carrying what look like body bags with heads sticking out of them and shouting the same line.

Classmate: “What the f***?!”

That basically summed up our reaction to those corpse-carrying students.

The very next day, I found the club that had done that. Apparently, it was a school tradition for the Saint John’s Ambulance Brigade to run through the corridors with their CPR dummies slung over their shoulders and shouting that line while carrying them from the storeroom to their assigned classroom the day before the fair — especially in front of the secondary one classrooms — both to amuse and to serve as advertisement.

Their advertising worked. I signed up, and for the next four years, I got the honour of being one of the corpse carriers and the leading corpse bearer — the guy in front that carries the big four-bodies-in-one dummy — in the last two.

In fact, the original corpse-carrying student that I first saw became my best friend.

This happens after my younger brother’s first day in primary school. He comes back crying and is rather inconsolable. My younger sister and I eventually manage to calm him down enough to explain.

Brother: “The music rooms are haunted! [Classmate #1] and [Classmate #2] went in and never returned!”

As he starts panicking again, my sister and I look at each other and start laughing as one. We are so relieved that it isn’t bullying or anything of the sort. Our younger brother finally stops crying when he sees us laugh.

Brother: “Don’t laugh! It’s true! There’s a ghost in there! A girl went in and never returned, so she now attacks the living!”

Sister: “I know! I’m the ghost!”

My brother makes a “WTF” face.

Me: “It was all a big prank. I’ll explain it to you.”

Basically, the music room corridor is always pitch black and scary. So, one day, a certain prefect decides to use it to prank the new primary one students. During the school tour on day one, the students are guided down that corridor, one class at a time. The lights are turned off, and the guiding prefect starts telling the ghost story to the class. When they are distracted, older students hidden in the music rooms grab pre-informed volunteers from the class, typically their younger siblings, and pull them into the music room. Then, when they leave the corridor, the guiding prefect makes a big show about the missing students, pretending it is the ghost kidnapping them.

Brother: “So, you mean…”

Sister: “Yup, your classmates are fine. Man, I can’t believe that they’re still doing this.”

Me: “Yeah, it’s been a decade since [Older Sister] came up with that prank.”

Brother: “What?”

Sister: “[Older Sister] was the prefect that schemed the prank. My class was the very first to be pranked. [My Name] pulled me into the music room while [Older Sister] led my class down the hallway. That’s why I’m the original ghost.”

Me: “Ah, that was nostalgic. Can’t believe we started a school tradition with our prank.”

Brother: *Indignantly* “And why did none of you tell me that?!”

Me: ”It’s literally been a decade since [Sister] was primary one. We all forgot.”

I don’t think he ever forgave us for that traumatic experience. In our defence, how were we supposed to remember a prank that we schemed before he was even born? We didn’t expect it to last long after we left, much less become a school tradition.