I live in a condominium that has a pool and playground downstairs. It’s pretty communal. All the kids know one another, partially because well over half of them go to the same primary school down the road.

We also have a bunch of security guards — rent-a-cops essentially. I’m not exactly sure why the HOA keeps them around given Singapore’s nonexistent crime rate. Still, they enforce the rules in our condo.

For better or for worse, my family is very familiar and friendly with the guards. This is half because we’ve been living there for fifteen years and counting, and half because my younger brother is the biggest troublemaker on the block. He got skateboarding banned after he nearly ran over a three-year-old, and was responsible for — or at least involved in — a considerable amount of the mischief and bad behaviour the local boys got up to.

As such, it’s not the first time that the security guards have come knocking.

Me: “Hi, [Guard]. What’s the problem?”

Guard: “I’ve got complaints from two mothers downstairs about your brother flashing a butterfly knife and threatening their kids with it.”

Me: *Long sigh* “Seriously?”

Guard: “We take a very serious stance about weapons on the premises. I’m afraid that we might have to get the police involved. Knives like that should be illegal in Singapore, I believe.”

Me: “It’s a toy. He watched some movie or another and got really obsessed with getting a butterfly knife toy of his own. I don’t know why our parents agreed to get him one.”

Guard: “A toy? Can I see it?”

I dig it up and pass it to him.

Guard: *Examining it* “The things they make these days.” *Passes it back* “The blade is metal and rather sharp. I’m afraid, toy or not, I’m going to have to ban it from downstairs.”

Me: “No problem. I’ll relay this to my parents. Sorry again for the trouble.”

As promised, I tell my parents.

Dad: *In a confrontational tone* “Who are those parents? They obviously are overreacting. It’s a toy.”

Me: “Toy or no, it looks real, and that scares people.”

Dad: *Dismissively* “People are all so scared these days. It’s not a big deal.”

I could tell by his tone that he’d tuned me out and I wouldn’t be winning that argument. Instead, I got Mom to get a certain wonderfully weird idea into Dad’s thick skull; maybe, just maybe, mothers don’t like having sharp metal objects pointed at their very young children.

He conceded and agreed to drop the issue, but I still heard him grumbling about “wimpy parents being overprotective” and “teaching their kids to be sissies” quite frequently.

I decide to attend a local workout class with my mum one morning. She’s a regular, and being a typical mum, she talks all about me to the other women there. As a result, she’s told me that a few of them are looking forward to me coming along and meeting me. Relevant to note is that she has definitely referred to me by my name when talking about me, not exclusively as “my daughter”.

I arrive and introduce myself, clearly having arrived with her, and they give me friendly good mornings but are otherwise quite indifferent to my joining. I shrug it off and figure she exaggerated how much they wanted me to come along.

Then, about twenty minutes later, they’re suddenly much more interested in chatting with me and asking questions about my life and work, etc.

The change in behavior was because of this amusing interaction mum had with one of the other women a little beforehand.

Woman: “So, how do you know [My Name], [Mum]?”

Mum: “Oh, I gave birth to her twenty-six years ago.”

I am shopping with my four-year-old daughter when a store employee walks down the aisle and passes us.

Employee: “Excuse me, ladies.”

My daughter immediately and loudly states:

Daughter: “We are not ladies!”

I work in a hotel. One night, someone called out for the overnight shift, so my boss had to work it. Her oldest son was two, and she couldn’t find a babysitter, so she had to bring her son with her.

The hope was that said toddler would fall asleep at some point.

He did not.

And the next thing my boss knew, a bunch of cops stormed in with guns drawn asking what was wrong.

Apparently, her son pushed the panic button MULTIPLE times, and every available cop in the area was at her work with guns drawn.

My mother and sister are living together in Indonesia and I live in the Netherlands. I video call them every weekend so they can see my son. It goes swimmingly until I start potty training my son by following a method that includes a phase when the kid has to go bare-bottom so the parents can react fast enough to run and grab the potty for him to pee.

Me: “Hi!”

Mom & Sister: “Hello, [Son]!”

My son walks away to grab a toy car.

Mom & Sister: “OH, MY GOD! WHY IS HE NOT WEARING PANTS?!”

Me: “Potty training.”

Mom: “But I can see his lower part!”

Sister: “Oh, my God! I can see the cracks!”

Me: “Yes. Humans have butt cracks.”

Mom: “[Son], you need to wear pants, or your birdy will fly away!”

Me: “It’s called a penis, and it’s attached to his body.”

Sister: “I’m afraid he will bump his thingy.”

Me: “So, a piece of thin cloth will protect it from a bump?”

Sister: *Laughs* “Now that makes me sound unreasonable.”

Me: “Oh, just a tad.”

They kept freaking out over it, and I had to cut the call short. I can kind of understand why my mom freaked out; she has only had two daughters and my dad passed away decades ago. However, my sister is a general practitioner. I expected her to be unfazed by human bodies. I was wrong. No video calls until I move on to the pants phase, then.