This story shows how all retail should work. Some twenty years ago, we got some extra unexpected money. We decided to treat ourselves to a new, big flat-screen TV. Our first visit was to our local store. (We live in a small city.)

I explained what we were looking for (46″ or larger, 100Hz), and the salesperson showed us an expensive [Brand #1]. The price was already reduced to €1,999 (from €2,499 if my memory is correct) but it was a bit too expensive.

Next, he showed us a nice [Brand #2], and the price was €1,199. But before we said anything, he reduced it to €1,099 and then €999. We said we would consider the offer and went to a larger city nearby to get some options.

At [Big Chain Retail #1], we looked at all the large TV sets displayed on the wall and at the four salespeople talking to each other. After ten minutes, we left. No one wanted to sell anything to us.

At [Big Chain Retail #2], we encountered the same thing. We looked at the large TV sets and the staff talking to each other and didn’t bother.

At [Big Chain Retail #3], we found someone willing to sell, but unfortunately, they only had smaller than 40″ and larger than 52″.

We went back to our local store and bought the [Brand #2].

Happily, we unpacked and started the new TV, but the image was flickering. I checked the specs and found that it was 50Hz only. Time to pick up the phone and call the seller.

I told him that our new TV was only 50Hz. He was quiet for a while and then responded.

Employee: “S***! My mistake! I am so sorry. Your TV has a V in the model name; the 100Hz has W. I will call you back.”

Five minutes passed before he called back.

Employee: “I can replace your TV with the same kind but 100Hz for free. But! That model is outgoing, and there is a small chance that I can’t get one for you. If so, I can give you the [Brand #1] set you were interested in, but then I have to add €100 to the price. How about that?”

The next day, staff from the store came with the [Brand #1] TV and replaced the [Brand #2]. They unpacked and set up the TV, and they took all of the packaging with them. I ended up with a much better TV and paid less than half of the original price.

Guess which store I do all my purchases in now!

Back in Swedish high school a few years ago, I had a friend (we’ll call him “NetFriend”) who got most of his facts from the American Internet, and he would constantly talk about pressing issues from the US as if they were current issues right now in Sweden or quote memes as if they were facts.

NetFriend, a bunch of other friends, and I were talking after a math class where we got our test results back.

Me: “So, how did everyone do on the math quiz?”

NetFriend: “Ah, man. I got, like, zero points.”

Friend #1: “What, you didn’t study?”

NetFriend: “Ah, it’s stupid anyway. We don’t learn real stuff here.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

NetFriend: “Like, we only study what numbers are called and how to find areas of triangles, not how to balance a budget or something important!”

Me: “Are you serious?”

NetFriend: “They should be teaching us stuff about reality, like how to pay our taxes and how to vote! How to, like, buy a house and stuff!”

We stare at him, disbelieving, as he continues on that line for a minute or two. I interrupt.

Me: “[NetFriend], can you read?”

NetFriend: “What?”

Me: “The math quiz was about percentages! The questions asked us to calculate interest, figure out how much you save if something is on sale for a certain percentage off, and figure out which job is more lucrative to pick if job A and B have different starting wages but one has a higher guaranteed raise, given three years. Isn’t that ‘real world’ enough?”

NetFriend: “I… didn’t… Well, you know…”

Friend #2: “No, we don’t know.”

NetFriend: “I didn’t… read all the questions.”

Me: “That might explain your low score, you dunce.”

Friend #1: “And have you also missed that the Civics test next week is about voting and taxes?”

NetFriend: “Is it?”

Later that day, I helped him summon the courage to talk to his math teacher about letting him retake the test. [Friend #1] helped him study the math, and [Friend #2] helped him with civics. He was OUR dunce, after all. He also promised to study more in the future, and he did finish high school with passing grades, so lesson learned, I guess.

I tend to notice very tiny sounds that most other people miss. It is mostly annoying since I can get distracted by the oven turning off in another room. But it came in handy one time.

I am out camping with my girlfriend and a couple of friends when I notice that something is off. I perk my head, shush everyone else chatting around the campfire, and listen intently.

Girlfriend: “What is it?”

Me: “I hear something.”

Friend #1: “What? A bird?”

Me: “Um… A voice in the wind?”

Friend #2: *Snickers* “A voice in the wind? What have I told you about accepting strange rings from old men?”

Me: *Giggles* “Yeah, but… it sounds like crying. Like a sobbing child?”

Everyone listens, but only I hear it. 

Friend #1: “It could be a fox? They sound like crying children sometimes.”

Me: “No… No, I can’t tell you why, but… it sounds like a child? Look, I have to check it out. You know how I am.”

Girlfriend: “Of course! I’ll come with you.”

We head off in the direction I think it’s coming from. My girlfriend starts to hear it after a couple of hundred meters. She runs back to tell the others. We all head off in that direction, the jokes about evil forest goblins and hulders that want to kill us all dying off quickly. Since it is June in the north of Sweden, it is light even at night, so it is easy to find the way, but we are constantly attacked by swarms of mosquitos. But the sound gets louder.

We find a little girl, probably aged four or five covered in mosquito bites, sitting on a stump. She is wearing one shoe and a pretty dress that is tattered, stained, and torn up. She is bawling her eyes out and looks at us with great fright. I rush over and pick her up.

Me: “Hey, hey, there, there. What are you doing here?”

She sniffles. 

Me: “You seem lost. Are you?”

Girl: *With a tiny nod* “Yes.”

Me: “Poor thing! Let’s help you get home.”

We carried her back to camp, asked her name, told her ours, put her in a sleeping bag next to a new campfire, and gave her a mug of hot chocolate and a sandwich. She quickly fell asleep with a tiny smile. We called the police, meanwhile, to tell them that we’d found her, and we gave them GPS coordinates to our position. The girl’s parents called us, and we decided to meet next to a road the next morning since it wasn’t easy to get to us and we were several hours from the road.

We carried the girl out of the forest the next morning and handed her over to the most grateful parents I have ever seen. They were beside themselves with relief. The police took a statement, and then they all headed off to a hospital to make sure everything was all right. The girl had developed a fever, probably due to all the mosquito bites, and was obviously a bit dehydrated and hungry. The parents got in touch later and invited us to a fika (a Swedish custom) to properly thank us and fill us in on what had happened.

The girl had slunk away during a family party next to the forest to look at a pretty bird and followed it a bit deeper into the woods. Then, she stepped on a viper on her way back — but it didn’t bite her. She panicked and ran randomly until she got completely lost. She had probably been lost for at least ten hours, she had lost her shoe in a mire, and she had accidentally wandered very far away from civilization — the only direction that had literally no other humans for dozens of kilometers.

The girl was completely fine now, after about two weeks, and had drawn a little picture of us in the forest that still hangs on my fridge. She was very afraid of the woods now, but she and her dad would go camping in a glen close to the house to make her feel safe again. I’m still friends with the family, and we visit each other from time to time.

I still think about what might’ve happened if I hadn’t followed my instinct to check on the voice in the wind.

When we are out walking with our four-year-old son, we sometimes encounter an older gentleman in the area. He hasn’t done anything specific that would be cause for alerting authorities, but he gives us a very bad feeling.

The first time we noticed him was when our son was not yet walking but aware of the world around him. The man came up as he was walking in the opposite direction.

Man: “Oh, what a cute little boy! You are so cute!”

At first, we didn’t think much of it other than being a bit awkward as we aren’t very socially outward. But the man kept mentioning our son’s cuteness, to our son, without ever looking in our direction. I tried to think positively, that it was my social difficulties that made a bad feeling about this man grow, and I tried to calm down and smile. However, once I noticed that my son looked terrified, we firmly walked away.

This kept happening. We avoided eye contact and didn’t slow down our walk, yet the man always took whatever seconds he managed to get to talk to our son, even to the point where my husband told him to stop. He didn’t; it was as if we didn’t exist. He never followed us or anything; it was only that creepy behaviour when we happened to walk past each other.

Since then, our son has forgotten his first fright of the man, but he does notice that we don’t like to linger when approached by that man specifically. On an unrelated note, but relevant to the story, this man was not of Scandinavian ethnicity looks-wise.

One day, my son came home from kindergarten.

Son: “Mom, we are bad people.”

Me: “Really? Why?”

Son: “It is bad to avoid someone with darker skin.”

At first, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but once I understood he meant that man, I explained to him that, yes, you shouldn’t avoid people because they have darker skin, but that we avoided him because he had scared him when he was little and given Mommy and Daddy bad feelings about it. Since we have friends of different ethnicities, even family members, he seemed to understand that we only avoided that man, not dark-skinned people in general.

Of course, we used much simpler terms, but I tried to explain the difference between avoiding someone with dark skin and avoiding someone BECAUSE they have dark skin.

Later, there was a reminder to all parents sent from kindergarten about their policy that they didn’t accept any discrimination of any kind, among some other policies they mentioned. We did not think much of it until we had a meeting with one of the teachers.

Teacher: “I must say, I am worried about what your son is learning. He has told us that you avoid dark-skinned people because they give us bad feelings.”

Husband: “What? That’s not true!”

Teacher: “Look. I need to remind you that we do not accept discrimination here. Your son has several friends of different ethnicities, and that is a good thing.”

Me: “Is this about that man? My son thought we avoided a man because he had dark skin. Did he get that from kindergarten?”

Teacher: “We teach the children not to discriminate…”

Me: “And so do we.”

Teacher: “Then why are you teaching him to avoid a person with dark skin?”

Me: “We avoid that man because he scared our son on several occasions when he was younger and doesn’t listen when we tell him off.”

Husband: “Why would he think it is because of his skin? I don’t even know why he would get that idea?”

The teacher grew quiet for a moment and then excused herself to make a phone call. Coming back, she explained that there had been a misunderstanding. Apparently, our son mentioned the man once after we had met him, and one of the teachers had asked what he looked like. Then, when our son proceeded to say that we always avoid him, she jumped to the conclusion that we were racists and then had a talk with all the children about how it is bad to avoid someone just because of their skin colour. Unfortunately for our four-year-old, he didn’t quite grasp all the reasoning and took that as us being bad people.

We never found out which teacher it was, and I am sure she had noble intentions. But next time, I hope she talks to us before teaching our son that he is a bad person.

I drive passenger trains for a living. This story took place very early after I started driving on my own. I drove a train going south. They were switching out a bridge between the third and the fourth station. No trains could pass, so we would empty the train at station three, and we’d all take a bus to station four where we would continue the journey south on a different train. It was a planned job, and everything had been planned and arranged meticulously.

When we left my starting station, we made announcements about the bus. As my coworker told me later, she even told everyone affected in person as she took their tickets.

When we got close, we made another announcement, and to be absolutely certain that no one would be left, we made one more after we had stopped. My colleague helped the passengers find their way to the bus while I switched the driver’s compartment for the next driver. I also walked through the train after the doors were closed to make certain it was empty. 

There, I found an entire family obliviously waiting for the train to continue on its merry way.

Me: “Excuse me, but you have to switch to the bus now. I’ll open the door for you.”

Mother: “What?! No one told us about this!” 

Me: “We made several announcements.”

Mother: “We didn’t hear anything, right?”

There were nods of assent from the family.

Mother: “It is absolutely unacceptable for you to suddenly have us switch to a bus without any warning.”

Me: “It isn’t sudden. We’ve made several announcements, and it’s even on your ticket. This has been planned for at least half a year. Now let me show you where the bus is; I don’t want to be late.”

There was some more arguing before I got them to leave the train. I don’t recall exactly what was said since, at that point, I started to lose my temper and got very snarky. But I still don’t get how an entire group of people could miss all that information; it wasn’t a language barrier, they all seemed to hear me perfectly fine, and the kids were ten or older.