Recently the local food bank was struck by tragedy. A fire broke out and all their supplies and storage facility was lost.

A plea for help went out to the local community. On Friday people were going into a local supermarket and spending 100$ in groceries and donating the entire lot to the food bank. The cashier I spoke to said the donation bin had filled and emptied four times since she had started.

Another plea went out for cash donations on Saturday. Another local supermarket along with a major radio station sponsored a donation drive. By the time they finished that Saturday they had raised 180,000$ to help fill the food bank.

To make matters even nicer, a government building was offered as a new storage site. So nice to know the people here are so willing to help out in times of need.

(A little background: my girlfriend was born premature and has struggled since birth to maintain a healthy weight. Right now she has been making progress, but is still extremely petite at a little over 5’1 foot and 100 pounds. Her best friend is not “fat” but extremely curvy and plus size. I myself am stocky and little on the chubbier side of men, at 6 foot and 200 pounds. All three of us stop in a plus-size clothing store, and the following ensues)

Girlfriend’s Friend: “Hey (Girlfriend); while I shop around can you help me carry stuff to the dressing room? I think I only want to try two or three things on, but in different sizes.

Me: Ohhhh good idea, count me in as using you as a shopping cart!

Girlfriend: *laughing* Sounds good, no problem.

(We proceed to wander around, becoming separated, with my girlfriend carrying some shirts and pants for us when we run them over while she looks at the jewelry and purses in the meantime. After about twenty-five minutes, I go to look for her so I can go to the dressing room, and find her IN TEARS being yelled at by one of workers- who is plus-sized)

Me: What’s going on?

Worker: Oh don’t worry sir, this girl here just doesn’t seem to understand that this store isn’t meant for her type, and she shouldn’t be here. There’s no reason customers should feel bad because people like HER choose to come in where they don’t belong. She’s even carrying clothes- probably to take pictures and make fun of the sizes!

Girlfriend: I TOLD you! These aren’t for me! They’re for my boyfriend *points to me* and my friend *points to her friend now approaching the commotion*. I came along to help them carry stuff and look at your jewelry! I also wanted to compare purse prices to other stores.

Worker: You don’t belong here. This store isn’t intended for you, and I don’t care if they are your boyfriend and friend- you should have waited outside. Or, better yet, go eat something. You look like you could use some meat on those bones.

(My girlfriend literally drops everything she was carrying, turns bright red, and stumbles out of the store with tears down her face. I follow her, torn between wanting to scream at the worker and wanting to calm her down. Her best friend stays behind, comes out twenty minutes later, and silently holds up three $50 giftcards- one for each of us- courtesy of the manager, who had also demoted the rude worker to probational stockroom duty after hearing what happened)

(A bit of back story. I was adopted and around 5 years ago I met my birth father and siblings. My oldest brother, whom this story is about, is really the only one of my siblings I still talked to on a regular basis. He decided he wanted to start a business where he helps restaurants that have a of health code violations. I agree to do a spreadsheet of 4 towns in the area for $20 an hour/an hour per tab.)

Me on phone: So the total is $80.
Brother: It took you four hours to do this? I’ve talked to others who said it could take them 1.5 to 2.
Me: Well I had to look up the information on the department of heath website, I copied how many violations they had, then you wanted the restaurants’ websites and emails which aren’t on the DoH website. That takes time.
At this point we said we’d talk the next day because I’d ordered dinner and we had to go pick it up.

The next day I hadn’t heard from him so I texted him:

Me: checking in
Brother: can we chat in half an hour?
Me: sure
Brother: *few minutes later* Can you please send me your PayPal link?
Me: *sends it*

A few minutes later he sends me $40, half of the agreed upon rate. Then he calls me. I don’t pick up. He texts me and says he sent me money. I don’t answer. The next day I send him the screenshot of the agreement we had in text messages. He replied to that email with a ?

The kicker? The Friday before I’d gone with him to pick up an amp set up for his guitar and the guy gave him a $100 discount and he argued with the guy asking him if he was sure. But he wouldn’t pay me what we agreed upon. So I hope he has a nice life.

My mother likes to think she was a helicopter mom. I like to think she was a lunatic and narcissist masquerading as one. I’m going to let NotAlwaysRight be the judge as I recount what was, for me, the final straw of our relationship.

In my first year of high school, one of my friends was involved in a quiz show-style team (the name of which escapes me). The basic premise was that different high schools assembled groups to compete against each other answering trivia questions, ranging from music, biology, literature, television, pop culture, the works. Near the end of the year, we had an outbreak at the school and much of the team fell ill. With the next meet on the coming Friday, they needed alternates. My friend, one of the few who hadn’t gotten sick, asked me to be one on that Monday. On Tuesday, I met with the teacher assigned to running the program for our school, asked my own questions, and got a permission slip for my parents to sign. The only catch was she needed it by Thursday – I assume it had something to do with legal protections, but I really didn’t think enough of it to ask, especially since that was two days away.

So I brought the slip home that same Tuesday. Since it was my mother’s day to come home early and she refused to trust me walking home, I explained the situation to her in the car, and as soon as we got home I handed her the permission slip. The following morning when I woke up, my mother handed me the slip, signed and dated. I turned it in, and I spent the next two days after school studying with the new team. On Wednesday, this was easy because my Dad was home early this day and he trusted me to walk home (it probably took ten minutes if I got stopped at every crosswalk); all I had to do was use my phone to call home and tell him I was staying late. Thursday was just as simple since it was once again his day to come home early, perhaps more so since I was able to get ahead of it. Friday, the day of the meet, however, was my mother’s day to get home early. Now I had to give her a fixed time the night before.

My mother had no idea what I was talking about. I had to explain the entire situation to her again, how I’ve spent the prior two day practicing with my team, and stressed that on this day we were going to a different high school for the real thing. When I broached the permissions slip she signed, she shrugged her shoulders and said she accepted what I told her.

This whole thing should have been a red flag for me. It wasn’t.

Friday, at about 10:30 in the morning, I’m called down to the main office. My mother was on the phone, screaming questions to figure out what I was doing after school today. I explained to the secretary the entire situation, right down to how she signed a permission slip I turned in on Wednesday. My mother remained unconvinced, even as the secretary confirmed it was an official school team, so now the secretary had to call the teacher down to the office since she could better clarify the whole situation. Surely that’s the end of it, right?

Nope.

While the teacher was busy defusing my mother, the secretary went fishing into a filing cabinet and pulled out mine. I witnessed her pull out not just the permission slip for this club, but every document I needed a parent to sign in the past. The secretary concluded my mother’s tantrum was reasonable grounds to suspect I’d been forging my parents’ signatures.

And it only gets worse.

After about 15 minutes, my mother hung up the phone. Why? According to the teacher, her lunch just arrived. No matter how much the secretary called her back, she refused to pick up. Therefore, until this got sorted out, I was to spend the rest of the day in the principal’s office, because they didn’t want me running off. I didn’t even get to go to the cafeteria, nor did I return to class to gather my things; the secretary went for me while the principal watched me.

Only come 2:00, 30 minutes away from the end of my school day, did my mother pick up the phone and call back. And once again, she was screaming how I’m lying about where I’m going. Unable to get a word in, the secretary did the only thing she could do to placate my mother: withdraw me from the team. However, as soon as she heard that I was no longer involved and would conclude my school day at the usual time, she hung up again. The secretary did call her back and inquire about my form, but with how short the conversation was, her refusal to try again, and the fact that she still looked suspicious of me, I assume my mother’s answer was “I signed all of them, except for the ones I didn’t. Now stop calling me.”

So, in the end, the main office now believed I’m forging my parents’ signatures. The school’s team had to withdraw from the day’s competition due to being short one member. I’m pretty sure that constituted a detention, and likely made its way onto my disciplinary record.

When I was finally let out, as always, my mother sat in the parking lot honking her horn for me. I pretended to ignore her and just walked home myself. I packed a bag and spent the weekend with my aunt, who was sympathetic enough to not let her sister into her house.

And for later-date consequences, any friends I had on the team stopped being my friends. A couple of years later when I finally had this teacher for one of my classes, she consistently made “mistakes” while grading my work, so my scores were getting lower every day and my grade was consistently hovering at about a D. Thankfully, this one only last for about a month and a half when I finally transferred out of her class. The consequence of that being she taught an AP class; transferring out with such a low grade meant I now had to work extraordinarily harder to qualify for the AP test.

All together, I haven’t spoken to her since I turned 18 and left for college.

So I’ll ask again: helicopter mom, or lunatic?

Some years ago, I got involved with a local amateur dramatic company working with them as a sound designer and engineer. One day, the musical director asked me if I’d consider working on their Christmas pantomime as well. I pointed out that while the theatre had a fairly decent sound rig, their collection of mics—such as it was—was not up to the task of a musical show. One thing led to another and I ended up with about £1000 budget to hire in some kit for the week-long run.

I then called up the boss of a local sound hire company I did a lot of freelance work for and I ended up getting 10 radio mics, some float mics and some bits and bobs for the front-of-house rack, all for a substantial discount and well under what I had been allocated. Come the first day of production rehearsals in the theatre, I spent the morning rigging all the kit and, in particular, the all-important float mics. These particular mics are rather unconventional in appearance, consisting of a flat metal plate about 6” x 4” with the actual mic hovering a few millimetres above the plate, and known in the industry as a pressure-zone mic. They are also not cheap: each one was worth over £300 and there were six arrayed across the front of the stage. All six mics were taped down across the front of the stage with white tape on the upstage edge so the actors could see them and, hopefully, avoid tripping over them.

No such luck! In the afternoon, the director assembled the cast onstage to deliver some notes. Some of the younger members, bored with the director’s note-giving, decided that this was an opportune moment to go chasing each other around the stage. Of course, the inevitable happened: one of them tripped over one of the mics ripping it from its moorings and sending it flying into the orchestra pit, and coming within a few inches of falling into the pit some six feet below himself.

With my health and safety hat on, I decided to address the issue immediately:

Me: Excuse me, but would members of the cast please refrain from running around the stage. Someone has very nearly had a nasty accident.

At which point, the director lost it, came over to where I was standing and yelled in my face:

Director: How DARE you speak over me when I’m giving notes. You are only the soundman and you NEVER talk to the cast without my explicit permission.

I confess to being more amused than annoyed at his outburst. After looking him up and down I turned on my heel, walked off the stage and proceeded out of the theatre to smoke a cigarette. Not two minutes later, the musical director comes scurrying out to talk to me.

MD: Please come back—the director is really annoyed.

Me: Not unless I get a craven apology from that idiot…and you know exactly why that apology is warranted!

The MD goes back into the theatre and comes back a few minutes later.

MD: He wants to talk to you. Please come back in.

I walk back into the theatre and go on stage where the entire cast is stood looking somewhat subdued and the director looking like he’s about to burst a blood vessel. I beckon him to accompany me into the scene dock where we could converse privately. He goes to berate me again whereupon I hold my finger up to stop him.

Me: Point 1: I am the ONLY person in this theatre with professional experience of working in London’s West End (the equivalent of Broadway). Furthermore I have over twenty five years of experience touring extensively in the UK and Europe. Point 2: I have a legal obligation under the Health & Safety at Work Act to ensure the safe working of not only myself but the people around me. When I see someone behaving like a complete idiot in what is a dangerous working environment, I WILL exercise my legal obligations without reference to anyone else. Point 3: I am personably responsible for around £20,000 of hired audio gear—I would very much like to return it to the hire company in the condition in which I received it. This will go one of two ways: either you apologise to me right now, or I will call the hire company and have them remove the kit with immediate effect. Oh, and if you have any issue with me or the way I do my work, talk to me in private first. If you EVER speak to me that way in front of the company again, I will personally hand you your head in a basket!

It was at this juncture that the director realised that he had stepped well over the line. He immediately apologised with, to his credit, a good deal of grace; the show did its week-long run to packed houses, and at the end-of show party, the director presented me with a very fine bottle of single malt scotch. I went on to working six more years with the same company, and the director ended up becoming a good friend.