A friend and I are waiting at a bus stop, talking about the day we both had at work that day.

Me: “…She’s the goated rep in the sales department and the one to beat.”

A stranger at the bus stop next to us, an older lady, throws her hands up in the air and looks at us.

Stranger: “Ugh, stop making up words!”

My friend and I both turn to the stranger.

Me: “Pardon me?”

Stranger: “You young people and your annoying slang! It’s juvenile! Goated is not a word!”

Me: “I could make up words all day, what business is that of yours?”

Stranger: “You’re talking loudly at a bus stop and forcing me to hear your junk talk!”

My friend has opened his phone and is now showing a screen on his Merriam-Webster dictionary app.

Friend: “Goated is a word, as recognized by the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Language evolves, lady.”

Stranger: “Ugh, even the dictionary is being ruined by your generation!”

Me: “Okay, well, we’re going to go back to our conversation now.”

Stranger: “And a stupid conversation it is, too!”

My friend has opened something else on his phone and holds it out to the stranger.

Friend: “Can you read that?”

Stranger: *Squinting.* “What’s that crap?”

Friend: “That’s Beowulf. A poem from over a thousand years ago… written in English. At least, that is what English looked like at the time.”

The stranger looks at the first line, “Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,” and rolls her eyes.

Stranger: “You wouldn’t be so smart if you didn’t always use your phone.”

Friend: “Yes, but I do know how to use my words, old and new.”

The stranger just harrumphed, and we continued our conversation, maybe a little louder this time, and I might have thrown in the occasional ‘skibidi’ for good measure just to p*** off the crazy stranger, even though I have no idea what it means…

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?”

I was recently reminded of a time I nearly got myself in trouble

I was at my local zoo with the family, and as wifey went off to get us all a bite to eat, I was watching kiddo play in the playpark. A woman came up to me, and she seemed pleasant enough, and asked me:

Woman: “So… which one’s yours then?”

Me: “Dunno, haven’t decided yet.”

THANKFULLY, at that moment, the kiddo runs up and goes:

My Kid: “Daddy, did you see…”

The woman looked at me with concern, and I made a mental note to be VERY careful with my dark humour around strangers.

I arrived at the airport early (as wise travelers do) and decided to splurge on a ridiculously priced bagel to get something in my stomach. I sat in the waiting area, munching away, when a little girl walked over to me. She taps me on the arm.

Little Girl: “I want some.”

Me: “Sorry, kiddo, no. Ask your mom to buy you one.”

Mom: *From a seat nearby.* “It’s fine. You can share.”

I had to stop at the audacity.

Me: “Excuse me? No. Please go get your child her own snack.”

Mom: “She asked you, and I told you that you can share.”

Me: “I can share, but I won’t. You don’t even know if I have Herpes, or COVID, or any other number of contagious infections. Also, it’s really creepy that you want your child to accept candy or food from total strangers.”

Mom: “You’re being really rude!”

Me: “And you’re being an idiot. Either buy your kid her own bagel or tell her she has to wait. Either way, I’m not giving your kid my food.”

I then stand up, take my carry-on with me, and move to another seat, while the mom hugs her now wailing child, and glares daggers at me.

If you don’t collect Pokémon cards, you might not be aware of the craze surrounding them. They’ve become hard to get, prices are soaring, and scalpers are buying out the stock to relist for crazy prices online. Some stores are even raising the prices and succeeding in selling, due to how hard some sets are becoming to get. I work, so I can’t be at the stores right when the cards are put out and miss out on a lot.

My mother is a seventy-four-year-old disabled Veteran and every time she’s at a retail store, she checks for Pokémon cards, and sometimes scores for me.

There are two sets that I have been absolutely unable to find. Black Bolt and White Flare. Unfortunately, these two sets correspond to one of my favorite games in the series, and I’ve been a bit down that I cannot get my hands on a single pack.

Well, one day my mom’s out shopping for regular groceries and happens to check the Pokémon card aisle, and lo and behold, there are Black Bolt and White Flare booster bundles. Now, my mom’s not a crazy scalper, so she selects 2 of each for me and leaves the rest for others.

She’s going about her regular shop when a man reaches into her cart and tries to take the booster bundles.

My Mom: “Don’t take those, they’re for my daughter.”

Man: “Yeah, I want ’em for my kid.”

My Mom: “There were more on the shelves. You can get some of your own if you head over now.”

Man: “They’ll be gone.” *Reaches for boxes again.*

My Mom: “NO! Go get your own.”

My mom attempts to maneuver the cart away from this man, but he follows her, a short 5’4″ (162 cm for my non-American friends) grey-haired old lady with a cane in her cart.

My Mom: “Please go away!”

Man: “Just stop.” *Grabs her cart and forcefully stops her.* “You can go get more if they’re really there.” *Takes booster bundles.*

My mom tried to stop him, but he pushed her away, and she had to grab on to the cart to maintain her balance. She has two bad knees and a bad back from the military, and she could have easily fallen and hurt herself seriously. So, the man took the cards and speedwalked away.

My mom told the first associate she saw, but the man was long gone, and sadly, so were the rest of the cards. When my mom told me the story, I told her to just let the miserable SOBs have whatever and keep herself safe. She’s worth too much to me to get hurt over my collection. 

Fortunately, my friend Adrien happened to be visiting his grandparents in Japan when I complained in the friend group chat about this, and he told me he’d get me a couple of boxes of Black Bolt and White Flare Japanese cards. My mom wired him some extra cash and told him to go wild picking out stuff for me, so I ended up with 3 Japanese Booster Boxes of each Black Bolt and White Flare, along with several other boxes from different sets.

But to that crazy man in the store, I seriously doubt you even had a kid, and I bet you just saw my mom as weak and easy to take advantage of. They’re just fancy cardboard, not worth sacrificing our human decency over. I hope the next old lady you decide to pick on has a background in Krav Maga and a spirit to match.

My mom’s okay, but she’s a lot more cautious and brings a coat into stores with her now to hide her finds under. It’s really sad that the hobby has come to the point where an old lady has to hide presents for her daughter from grown men.