I’m a ski instructor that works in the Austrian Alps. I’m in charge of a group of ski students from a boarding school in the UK.

One of my students is wearing a suit of motocross armour under his ski clothes — a full neck guard, breastplate, shoulder armour, elbow and knee pads, gauntlets, buttplate, and calf armour. They are all made of the same reinforced plastic as his ski helmet. He wears it as he is “paranoid that he’d get hurt on the slopes.” We all laugh and call him a wimp. As his armour is painted bright gold, everyone calls him “Thanos.”

This happens on the third day of skiing. Thanos manages to get into the ski lift ahead of us, and there’s a group of what looks like university-age girls speaking in obvious American accents. They’re quite loud and when in the queue, they use their poles to disconnect the skis of the person in front of them before shoving them aside before taking their spot. It’s gotten more than one person angry, but the girls ignore them.

They reach Thanos, but when they try to disconnect his skis, he moves his leg out of the way, lightly knocking one of them on the ankle in the process. Those girls go ballistic, shouting about him being rude and a jerka**. They start swearing, but Thanos has reached the front by then and goes up the lift.

I think that’s the end of it, but that is not the case. When Thanos reaches the top, he patiently waits for the rest of us, but the university girls get up there first. They see him and start shouting and swearing at him, calling him rude and demanding an apology.

Naturally, all they get is a flat refusal. They take that poorly, to say the least. They then start hitting him with their ski poles and punching him with their fists. He turtles up and takes the hits, calling out for help while telling his assailants to desist. The girls push him over and then they notice that he is Chinese and add accusations about the recent health crisis — this is during the outbreak in Italy.

At this point, I arrive with a few more students. Seeing us and some ski patrol guys rushing toward them, the girls run off, leaving Thanos behind.

Thanos says cheerfully, getting up, “Well, thank goodness for my armour.”

[Student #1] asks, “Did that even hurt?”

“Nope,” Thanos responds. “Barely felt a thing.”

“Dang, that armour’s tough,” I observe. “I’ll be more worried about the person that rams into you than you.”

“Told you all that my paranoia was justified,” Thanos says smugly.

[Student #2] asks, in an appalled tone, “This was what you were paranoid about?”

I ask him, “Should we go to the police? Press charges?”

Thanos just says, “Nah. It’s our holiday. Let them go. Besides, they’re long gone by now.”

We reluctantly agree with him and continue skiing, but I just wonder what would have happened if Thanos wasn’t wearing his armour or if they had gone after one of the other students. Would they be unharmed and treat the whole thing as a joke? Those girls could have hurt someone badly, and I can only hope that they face justice at some point in the future.

Related:
Thanos Had One (1) Good Idea

I work a lot of conventions around the country, which means a lot of airport trips. I’m disabled, though I know how to handle airports by this point. I’m at my gate, ready for them to announce pre-boarding. They call for those with priority boarding: people with small children, active military, and people with disabilities. I start to get up to head towards the gate.

Passenger: “You aren’t priority! Wait your turn!”

I’m used to premature judgment, so I ignore him and use my cane to get in line. Instead of leaving me alone, he comes over and gets in my face.

Passenger: “I SAID, WAIT YOUR TURN! IF I CAN’T GET ON YET, YOU CAN’T, EITHER!”

I’m a little freaked out at this point. The man is obviously taller and stronger than me. A flight attendant rushes over.

Attendant: “Sir! I need you to back off!”

Passenger: “Tell this b**** to sit down! She ain’t priority!”

Attendant: “We will determine that. You need to sit down, sir.”

He takes a step back but refuses to go further.

Passenger: “If she can board early, I get to get on early, too! Ain’t no way she’s disabled!”

Attendant: “Ma’am, can I see your boarding pass?”

I hand it over.

Attendant: “All right, it shows that you did request priority boarding due to mobility disability. And you are obviously using a mobility aid.”

Passenger: “SHE’S LYING!”

He tries to rip my pass out of the attendant’s hand. Luckily, she steps out of the way.

Attendant: “I’m going to be calling security now. Ma’am, I’ll make sure you get on the plane with no problems.”

She walked me to a coworker and then called airport security. I boarded before seeing them arrive but did not see the man board the plane afterward. Fortunately, I’ve never had to deal with anything like that since.

It’s the summer of 1993 and my mother and I are on a cruise on [Now-Defunct Cruise Line]. Mom is in one of the theaters enjoying one of those Vegas-type shows, and I’m wandering around the various decks, just checking things out, looking for my own entertainment.

I notice that one of the many bars has karaoke, and since I enjoy singing — and some folks tell me I’m pretty good at it — I decide, what the hey? It’s a small but nice place, with few people, so I’m not too intimidated. I usually am when performing for crowds, but I figure I don’t know any of these people, so why should I care?

I choose a song by Anne Murray, “Could I Have This Dance?” since it’s in my range and I’m comfortable with it. The bar pipes the current singer and music outside so people walking by can hear it, and the whole wall facing the deck is faintly-tinted glass.

About a minute or so into the song, I notice an elderly couple walk past, stop, listen, and begin slow-dancing together, smiling. This encourages me and warms my heart, and I focus on them for the rest of the song.

When I’m done, I leave the bar to greet them and thank them for the confidence boost. They, in turn, thank me for my performance. They are celebrating their anniversary, and that song was their first dance.

I don’t remember much else about that cruise, but that’s one memory I’ll treasure forever.

I post different pieces of artwork to various websites. Most of the time, I’m lucky to get five or six likes and maybe a couple of comments. However, one time, I woke up after having posted a sketch before going to bed, and I found that it had over 200 comments on it.

The first couple of comments were typical “Nice” or “Good Job” type of comments. However, one person had given the comment, “this sux”. Two minutes later, he’d then posted the comment, “hello?”, followed a minute after that with “this sux” again. He’d then proceeded to repeat “this sux” every couple of minutes for three straight hours.

This had, apparently, drawn the attention of other commenters, who had ended up splitting between telling me that it didn’t suck and directly mocking him and his stream of “criticism.” My favorite was a couple of people who went back and forth “agreeing” with him, talking about how the “suxxitude” of the piece had reached “terribad proportionisms,” and how it was reminiscent of the great “Suxxirian masters” of the past.

I ended up writing a post, saying, “Thank you for the critique.” Not even ten seconds after I hit the post button, he had replied with what must have been a copy-pasted rant about how he was allowed to have opinions, and how I needed to “suk it up and admti you sux”.

To this day, it is still the funniest “criticism” I’ve ever received.

The online game I play had a meetup recently. It cost $20, all of which was donated to charity and you got swag, one of which was a T-shirt with the game logo on the front and your game login across the back.

In the game forum, one of the players asks:

Player: “Does it have to be the login?”

Me: “Why?”

Player: “Read my login.”

It was posted by “RancidDogFart.”