(I’m out with a friend and his daughter, who, thanks to complications and sheer medical bad luck, is just now learning to properly speak at the age of seven. Despite this, my friend loves her to the point of giving her anything she wants. We’re shopping, and I’m tagging along to help out, both of us having her read boxes and signs.)

Friend: “All right, [Daughter], what’s that?” *points to a bag of cat food I’m lifting*

Daughter: “Kitty! Kitty!” *jumps up and down*

Friend: “Good! It’s food for the kitty. Kitties have to eat, too.”

Daughter: “Kitty!”

Me: *to a passing woman* “Hello.”

Woman: “Why is it out here?”

Me: “What?” *puts down cat food*

Woman: “The [disabled slur]! It needs to be put up!”

(My friend’s head snaps up so quickly and I see a certain hate in his eyes that scares me.)

Friend: “Listen here—”

Woman: “Why don’t you let your poor wife deal with it? Lord knows she’s probably brain dead if she wanted to keep it.”

(I grab my friend’s daughter and immediately take her with me as I get a manager in hope they can diffuse the situation while keeping [Daughter] away from it. I return with the manager to find that the woman is near tears and my friend is red in the face from anger.)

Me: “Uh… Should I take [Daughter] away again?”

Friend: “No. We’re leaving.”

(He walks out quickly and I hesitate before following.)

Daughter: “Dada! Lady sad.”

Friend: “I know.”

Daughter: “Why, Dada?”

Friend: “I got onto her like [My Name] does when his sister is being mean. The lady was very mean and said some bad stuff. So I got onto her.”

Me: “What did you say to her?”

Friend: “Don’t worry about it. She won’t be insulting innocent children anymore, though.”

(I was both terrified and respectful of my friend after that. The look in his eyes when the woman called [Daughter] a hurtful slur for a disabled person was enough to make me know that [Friend] is not to be messed with.)

(I’m doing a year abroad in Spain for my degree. While waiting for the light to change so I can cross the road, an old man comes up to me. I try to ignore him but realise I have no way to escape, so while I’m super nervous, I answer his questions as minimally as possible.)

Old Man: “¿Eres alemana?” *Are you German?*

What I Mean To Say: “No, soy inglesa.” *No, I’m English.*

What I Accidentally Say Instead: “No, soy iglesia.” *No, I’m a church.*

(Well, at least he left me alone.)

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(I’m a cashier at a retail chain; this location is inside a mall. One day, a couple of kids, looking around 12 years old, approach my cash register. They hold up a paperclip and explain that they’re trying to replicate the famous “one red paperclip” experiment, in which you start out with a small, low-value object, such as a paperclip, and try to obtain something of much higher value through a series of barters. They ask if there’s anything in the store I can give them in exchange for the paperclip.)

Me: “Um… no, I can’t take a paperclip as payment. I don’t think there’s any store here that will.”

(They thank me and leave. Their speech sounded rehearsed and they didn’t look discouraged in the least, so I assume that they have already tried other stores in the mall and have every intention of trying more. The next customer in line comes to the counter.)

Customer: “Well, that was… bold.”

(I’ve actually always wanted to try this experiment myself, and the original “one red paperclip” experiment is possibly older than those kids are, so I’m rather impressed that they’ve heard of it and that they had the initiative to go for it. I guess they didn’t understand that you trade the items with people, and not stores. I wish I could track them down and find out if their experiment got anywhere!)

(I work in a vet’s office. My coworker Meredith and I have been friends since we were small children. She is not, and never has been, a feminine woman. She has short, spiked hair and almost no curves on her body, and could without much effort pass as a teenage boy. I work the front desk and she works in the exam rooms, so I am used to clients checking out and saying things like, “That young man in the room was so nice,” or, “Tell the doctor that I loved the way that gentleman handled my cat.” Meredith knows they don’t mean anything by it, so she says to not bother correcting them. If they ask directly something like, “What was that nice man’s name?” I won’t lie, because I enjoy the looks on people’s faces. One day we have a new client come in, and on his way out we have the following conversation.)

Client: “Hey, that ‘girl’–” *he actually does air quotes* “–in the room, what was ‘her’ name?”

Me: “You mean Meredith?”

Client: “Yeah, ‘Meredith.’ Is that the legal name, or just what you call ‘her’?”

Me: “Legal.”

Client: “So ‘she’ had it changed then?”

Me: “Yes.”

Client: *turns to his wife* “See? I told you; I can always spot them. That one wasn’t even all that hard.”

Me: *interjects* “It was Dolly.”

Client: “What?”

Me: “The name on her birth certificate is Dolly. But she said that made it hard to be taken seriously, so she had it legally changed about ten years ago.”

(The man turned multiple shades of red and stormed off, while his wife started laughing.)

(I usually fuel up at a large filling station run by a supermarket chain near where I work. I drive a big old 4×4 that has had its petrol engine converted to run on gas. The station is mostly pretty quiet in the middle of the day, and it has ten “pumps” with petrol and diesel, but only pumps nine and ten have gas. I pull up to the gas pump, and a car pulls in behind me. The driver starts honking the horn.)

Driver: “Hey, pull forward!”

Me: “I can’t. I’m putting gas in, and these are the only two gas pumps.”

Driver: “I get my petrol at that pump! Pull forward!”

Me: “There’s plenty other pumps empty. Use those.”

Driver: “NO! I GET MY PETROL FROM THAT PUMP! YOU NEED TO MOVE! I NEED ON THAT PUMP!”

(He continued to lean on the horn the whole time I was pumping fuel in, and the whole time I was walking in to pay. When I got out, he’d pulled up right to the back bumper of my car, so close he’d almost broken his number plate on my tow hitch. He must just really love that particular petrol pump.)