It’s autumn and the nights are creeping in. I’ve just finished shopping in a not-too-busy retail park. As I pull out of the parking space, I figure it couldn’t hurt to put my lights on.

Literally as my hand is on the switch, a car behind me starts flashing its lights and honking its horn. I didn’t cut them off — it isn’t even close — so I figure it must be about the lights. 

I switch them on (as I was about to do) and give a friendly wave and carry on. This is when the driver cuts the wrong way round the car park to get past me and stops in front of me.

She steps one foot out of her car and shouts at me.

Woman: “Lights on, idiot! It’s getting dark.”

I’m normally a confrontational person and I’m happy to say my piece, but she is being so overdramatic that it’s too surreal to take seriously.

Me: “Okay, love. Thank you. You’re so sweet.”

This pisses her off to no end.

Woman: “I am not your love!”

Me: “Okay, love, the streetlights aren’t even on yet. On you go.”

She huffed and puffed and seemed to think about approaching me, but she thought better of it. She got in her car, slammed her door, put her foot down… and drove straight into the kerbstone. I couldn’t see the damage, but by the noise, her car was certainly missing the corner of the bumper.

She jumped out, shouted at me, shouted at the car, and shouted seemingly at the world in general. As I decided to make a hasty retreat, she even tried to get in front of my car.

I don’t know what made her day so bad that she had to try to take it out on someone, but I know she made it a whole lot worse.

This story happened a while ago, but my boyfriend and I still talk about it occasionally because it was, in retrospect, very funny. It’s about 1:00 am on a weekend. My boyfriend is asleep, but I’m a night owl and am still up.

I’m using the bathroom attached to our home office when I hear an unfamiliar voice outside my apartment. I don’t think much of it… until I hear our front door open and suddenly the voice is INSIDE our apartment! I hastily get myself decent, but before I can even button my fly, I hear:

Boyfriend: “WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU DOING IN MY APARTMENT?”

Stranger: “Wha?! Uh… this is my apartment?”

Boyfriend: “NO. THIS IS MY APARTMENT!”

I peek out of the bathroom to see my 6’4″, 260-pound linebacker of a boyfriend, having apparently woken out of a dead sleep and raced into the living room in nothing but boxer-briefs faster than I could even pull up my pants, menacing a very startled-looking college-aged young man.

Boyfriend: “SO, AGAIN, WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU DOING IN HERE?!”

Stranger: “Uh, uh… I’m on acid, bro.”

There’s a beat of silence, but finally, my boyfriend lowers the fist that was poised to hit the apparent intruder.

Boyfriend: “What apartment building are you in?”

Stranger: *Pauses* “O?”

Boyfriend: “This is K. Get out.”

Stranger: “Uhhh…”

My boyfriend then has to physically turn the kid around, guide him out the door, and point him in the correct direction of his own apartment. We realize that when we got delivery earlier in the day, I neglected to lock the door, which is how he got in so easily. We both stay up a bit to shake off the adrenaline, but by the next morning, we have found the levity in the situation.

Me: “Honestly, it’s terrifying that you woke up out of a dead sleep that ready to just wreck someone’s s***. You didn’t even put on pants!”

Boyfriend: “It honestly didn’t occur to me. All I knew was that I couldn’t hear your voice, but I could hear a male voice I didn’t recognize, and that was wrong.”

Me: “Poor kid is probably terrified of this building now.”

Boyfriend: “Actually, he probably could barely comprehend where he was or who was talking to him. He’s probably like, ‘I met my spirit animal! He’s a gorilla and an a**hole!’”

This story is part of our Best Of February 2021 roundup!

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When I am a teenager, around the year 2000, I start a story and share it through a forum. People love it and say I should make a comic out of it. Alas, I can’t draw digitally and don’t have a scanner, but someone offers to draw the comic for me.

I ask him to draw the main character, an energetic black girl. He draws her in black and white lineart. Using MS Paint, I add colour (very terribly). He then draws her again, using most of my colours.

This all takes place through forum posts.

Me: “She looks great! She does look very pale, though.”

Artist: “Oh, I thought that was a mistake. I thought she was this colour, because she was based on you?”

Me: “No, she’s not. I wish I was as cool as her! But if you could darken her skin, that would be great.”

He darkens her skin to a more olive tint.

Me: “Can you please darken it more?”

Artist: “This is as dark as I can go.” 

Me: “Really? I looked online, and your software should be able to use hex codes, right? Could you use something like [hex code of dark brown]?”

Artist: “No, my software won’t allow me.”

Me: “But you are using [Software], right? It says on this site that you can add hex codes. Maybe if you swap palettes? This tutorial tells you how.”

Artist: “No, not my software.”

At that point, people were calling his BS. I was just confused about why his software didn’t allow him— naive me. Eventually, he lashed out, saying that black people scared him and he flat-out refused to colour her in the colours specified. He was promptly banned from the forum, and rightly so! I was very confused about this — again, naive me — because he showed pictures of himself and he was Hispanic and had dark skin. 

The comic never happened, and looking back at it, it was a terribly thin story. Still, I taught myself how to draw, and now I can draw her myself, making sure she has the right skin tone every time.

I am in an airport bathroom stall when a self-cleaning toilet seat begins to whir.

A woman speaks up from a stall with a delighted voice and a broad southern accent.

Woman: “D*******N, THIS IS SOME STAR TREK S***!”

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Several years ago, I was on the bus, playing on my original Nintendo DS and listening to music. 

Apparently, this older man started asking me what I was playing on and I couldn’t hear him because, you know, I was listening to music. 

Since I, a stranger, wasn’t paying attention to him, he decided to hit me in the shins with his cane!

He was amazed that I wasn’t receptive to answering his questions after this.