(My brother occasionally buys personal-size cakes for himself. Tonight, he’s talking about celebrating his birthday by eating an entire regular-size cheesecake. I remind him that he recently lost a lot of weight on a good diet, but he counters with:)

Brother: “You know how long it’s been since I’ve had cheesecake?”

(Sounds like a decent rationale; I’m about to shrug it off when I recall something:)

Me: “You had one just like three days ago!”

Brother: *delighted* “You do! You remember the small things. I was just testing you.”

(After our mother suffers from some unpleasant drama, my brothers and I decide to lift her spirits by getting her a cat, something she’s been talking about doing for a while. We eventually find a precious little, orange fluff ball that fits our basic requirements, and bring him home, humorously enough, the day before Mother’s Day. Mom takes to him immediately and locks the two of them in a room for some bonding time. While we wait for her to come back out, [Brother #1] starts to read the paperwork the shelter sent home with us to our father.)

Brother #1: “He was only brought in recently, so he’s a little underweight, but his health is otherwise good. He has all his shots up to date; you’ll have to renew some of them next year. He was tested for kitty HIV and he came back clean, so he can go outside eventually, and he is neutered the fifth…”

Brother #2: *laughing* “He is neutered the fifth?”

Father: *also laughing* “That sounds like some really fancy aristocratic name you’d find in Europe.”

Brother #2: “‘What ho, peasants? I am thy lord, Sir Neutered the Fifth.'”

Brother #1: *dramatically* “‘What is my legacy?'”

Me: “To not have a legacy, apparently.”

Father: “Okay, we have to convince your mother to name him that.”

(She named him Thomas. But it’s fine, he’s her favorite present of all time and that’s all that really matters.)

(I am a cashier working the night shift. The store I work at installed chip readers last year, but people are still having trouble using them. A customer approaches my checkout stand at about 11 pm with his girlfriend, and I ring them up.)

Me: “Your total today comes to [total].”

Customer: “Okay. Slide or chip?”

Me: “Chip.”

(The customer proceeds to insert his card into the chip reader. It gives him an error message and tells him to remove the card. He tries again, only to get the same error. Visibly frustrated, he actually LICKS his card and sticks it back in!)

Me: “Did… Did you just lick your card?”

Customer: “Yeah. It upsets the machine and lets me swipe my card.”

(He swipes his card and it works.)

Girlfriend: “I feel uncomfortable.”

(I’m a tech support representative for an online retailer that also has their own brand of Wi-Fi-enabled technology. One night, I get a call from a customer who is having trouble connecting his device to his home Wi-Fi network. I start walking him through the troubleshooting steps. Eventually, we reach the part where he is supposed to reboot his network.)

Me: “Go ahead and unplug your modem and router, wait fifteen seconds, and plug them back in.”

(The line disconnects. After a few seconds, I realize he must have had a VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol] line. I wait a minute or two to give his system a chance to reboot, then call him back.)

Me: “I’m so sorry about that; I didn’t realize you were using a VoIP line. Let’s move on with troubleshooting.”

Customer: *very angry* “I don’t understand why you didn’t know that! You should have known! Your system should tell you that!”

Me: *confused, as I definitely have no way of knowing what type of phone they’re calling me on* “Sir, I am very sorry; I have no way of knowing what type of line you’re using.”

Customer: “I don’t understand! You are [Major Internet Company], are you not?”

Me: “Um… No?”

(Needless to say, I double-check what type of line the customer is using before we reboot their network now.)

A few years ago, my parents and I were running some errands in our beat-up old van. It had no back seat, and the back hatch latch was broken, so it would come open at the slightest touch. We also had our year-old black lab, Jet, in the car with us, but weren’t too worried about him because he tended to stick right next to me as I sat in my bean-bag chair in the back.

This particular day, however, we were stopped at a red light, and he was sniffing around the back-hatch. The van lurched as we started forward, and Jet proceeded to tumble right out the back, sending me into an adrenaline surge as I shouted, “S***! JET!”, fully expecting the cars behind us to run over him as they followed us.

My father immediately pulled into a parking lot just a few feet to the side, and as I threw the side door open, I saw my poor, confused pup meandering out of the street and onto the sidewalk. But what I always think happily on as I remember this event is that not one single car had moved, not even those on the other side of the intersection. The people in the other cars saw what happened and all made the same choice to stay right where they were until Jet was safely back in my arms.

If anyone who reads this was there that day, THANK YOU. Jet was completely unharmed, just incredibly confused as to what had happened, and is still going strong today, thanks to everyone staying where they were and waiting until he was okay.