My husband was a groomsman in our friends’ wedding. He was paired up with the bride’s cousin to walk down the aisle. At the wedding rehearsal, I was sitting next to my husband and the bride’s grandfather came over to talk with him.

Grandpa said, “So, I see you’re walking up with my granddaughter, Stacy.” Then he pointed to me and said, “She’s nice, but… STACY is beautiful!” He continued on to talk all about Stacy and how wonderful she was.

So I sat there and thought to myself, “WHAT?? Did he just insult me??…to my FACE??? Not only is he implying that I’m less attractive than his granddaughter, he’s trying to set my husband up with her!”

My husband kindly replied, “This is my wife and I think she’s amazing!”

This shocked grandpa and he said, “What?! You married a CHILD?”

A child?…Really?… Okay, besides the fact that I’m a little touchy about being mistaken for a 13 year old (which happens ALL the time), I was a quite peeved due to the fact that I was older than his granddaughter who was getting married, older than Stacy whom he wanted to set my husband up with…and most likely older than him and his wife when they got married.

El Fin – Somewhere

It was third grade summer break and my family went on vacation to visit relatives and friends. We had dinner with some old friends of my parents from way back when. I didn’t know them but because their daughter was my age it seemed appropriate to everybody else to send us both to her room for hours so the grownups could talk. It was a large house and a bit ritzy, and even though it was nighttime they didn’t have the lights on in the halls or anything. For some reason the ritziness and the darkness made it all seem like a fancy haunted house to me. We played for a bit and then my new “friend” decides to watch a movie. She takes me to some room upstairs where the lights are all off and throws in a movie. I forget which. But as we’re sitting together in the dark room a preview comes up for “Hocus Pocus” – a Disney film about the three witch sisters who say “Double, double, toil and trouble” and all that. My eight year old “friend” starts spontaneously SCREAMING. So I start screaming! I was thoroughly freaked out to be in a strange house in a dark room with a strange (and I also suspected spoiled) little girl next to me screaming. We frantically try to find the door in the black room, and as we get to the door knob our parents have already bolted up the stairs to save us from whatever it is that’s making us yell like lunatics. The lights go on and my little friend recovers and then starts laughing. “She just started screaming for no reason, so I did too. She was probably afraid of the movie,” she tells her parents. I was in tears from being so rattled and furious and I just couldn’t get the words out to tell anyone that she was lying. I was humiliated.

Beth the Other Admin

To give some background, this story goes back to the early 70’s, when I was in elementary school.  At that time, the government subsidized a part of the public school lunches, which meant that each student had to pay less to buy his lunch. Because of that, the price for lunches was only $.60 and the small ½ pint cartons of milk were reduced to 4 cents each.  So, every day I went to school with my bag lunch and 4 cents in my pocket.

Another thing to know is that the boys’ bathroom had no doors on the stalls, just walls.  So, you always ran the risk that someone would catch you in the middle of you doing your “business”.

So, one day I was in the bathroom minding my own “business”.  All of a sudden, who should burst into the bathroom but the school bully.  Seeing me sitting there, he pulls out a knife and says, “Gimme your money!”  I replied, “Well, all I’ve got is four cents to buy milk.  Do you want that?”  Looking a bit disappointed, he said, “Nah, that’s alright.”

Then, he starts bragging as he pulls out all the change that he got from a number of other students.  He goes on telling me how much he got from whom and what he was going to do with the money.  Meanwhile, I’m just sitting there on the pot, listening to him, not feeling all that comfortable in doing what I originally purposed to do now in front of him.

Finally, feeling satisfied with sharing about his accomplishments, the bully left.  Even though I was relieved, I sat there a bit stunned for a few moments.  Then it came to me – “Oh yeah.  I gotta relieve myself.”  I finished my business and went back to class.

Joseph – DC

Oh my goodness , this is awful I feel so bad remembering this but here goes…..years ago we all went on a family holiday to Florida and the daily routine was to get up and go to one of the massive waterparks dotted around the place, you know the ones with the really long lazy river that you float round in rubber rings. One of the days that we went my mum was really grumpy and kept taking it out on us so my brother and I hatched a plan, there were two types of rubber ring, a black one for the lazy river and a red one for waterslides, the red one wasn’t allowed in the lazy river because it was too big and there were signs up everywhere saying so….so we got a red rubber ring and went to my mum on her sunlounger and gave it to her, we’re all ‘Here we got you the rubber ring, you have to go in it’s so much fun’ she was quite chunky at the time and she wasn’t sure, she kept asking why everyone else had a black ring but we convinced her it was fine and she got into the red ring(oh my God I’m laughing so hard writing this! :O) because the ring wasn’t for lazy river-ing when she sank her butt down into it she got stuck, we were chuckling by the side of the river, thinking she’d see the sign and realise and get out but she couldn’t remove herself from the ring, next thing she passes a lookout post, seeing the red ring the lifeguard picks up a massive megaphone and starts shouting into it ‘Maam can you please remove yourself from the inappropriate ring and exit the river!!’ ‘MA’AM PLEASE, RED RINGS ARE NOT DESIGNATED FOR THE LAZY RIVER!!’ over and over, we were getting more and more hysterical, the next thing she starts freaking out and kind of wriggling from side to side to try and get out but flips over with a big splash into the river with the ring on top of her, the lifeguard starts trying to tug her to the side of the river, everyone in the river is staring and then she emerges from under the ring and comes storming out like a fury…..we were so scared we ran away and hid for the rest of the day and got really bad sunburn. Probably serves us right!

Tanya – Belfast

When I worked at Wal-Mart I was the under-paid angry customer problem solver. We had a policy saying that one could only use a check if that person’s name was on the check. This was obvious to me. Don’t let people use stolen checks. Our customers should have appreciated it. One of my cashiers called me over because she had an angry lady in front of her. I would usually give in to whatever crazy thing a customer wanted to insure they would come back, but we couldn’t budge on issues of potential fraud. I nicely explained to the lady the reason we couldn’t take the check. She said, “It’s my husband’s checkbook!” I said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. We do this to protect you and the rest of our customers.” She left in a huff to go get another method of payment. I forgot about it
I went to go goof off at the customer service area. I was laughing a lot and chatting with a friend of mine, who happened to be black. The lady came in all angry and approached me. She pointed in my face and yelled, “You’re a racist b——-, and you can f— off!” Then I realized that she must have been a really light skinned black person or perhaps was part Hispanic or Native American. I don’t know. I would have called her white and maybe, if asked, wonder about her grandparents’ ethnicity. I think my skin was darker. Either way, I was embarrassed.

micah the admin

One Christmas a friend of mine invited me to a Christmas party with a bunch of his friends, none of which I knew. He told me (and I quote), “We’re having a naughty Santa gift exchange, so bring something to give.” I’d never heard someone use that term before, but being a person of sub-par to average intelligence, I assumed that meant a white elephant gift exchange and didn’t ask any questions. No sweat. Just a brief perusal of my parents’ basement will bring me what I need. I found a statue of a cat laying down that was about a foot long. The cat was multi-colored with velvet like stuff on it to make it soft. In other words, it was really tacky, ugly and undesirable. I think my Grandma bought it at a thrift store. Anyways, I wrapped that as my gift. Upon arrival to the party, I set it lovingly beneath the bows of the Christmas tree and chuckled to myself at its inherently white elephant nature. The time came for us to open the gifts. Sweet. The first gift opened was a…..(drumroll) nice picture frame. Second gift…..(drumroll) nice set of Yankee candles. Third gift…..(drumroll)…………a…..a gross thrift store/basement stored/bizarre looking/tacky statue of a cat? That jerk totally lied to me! That was no “naughty Santa” or whatever the heck you want to call it gift exchange! I sat there completely degraded and humiliated in front of a bunch of strangers. The guy who opened the gift was very gracious though. I tried to explain myself, but he just kept on going on about how it was ok and he could put it on his porch or something woefully ridiculous like that. Whatever, man. Awkward!

I stopped at a gas station with two friends to get some coffee. While we were getting creamer and lids this dirty guy walked in. Both of my friends knew the guy but didn’t bother to introduce me. My jaw dropped as I watched this guy get his coffee. He was loud and laughing about non-interesting stuff. As he poured his coffee it sloshed all over the counter and some on the floor. He didn’t clean it up. He poured cream, it sloshed on the counter. He added sugar, it spilled on the counter and the floor. Then as he took the cup away it spilled a little more. He left in the same loud huff. I was not used to this. When we got into the car the first words out of my mouth were, “Who was that jerk?” My friend, who was driving, turned and said, “That is my brother.”  I didn’t even try to recover.

Micah the Admin

I’ve always considered myself to be an animal person. More specifically, a cat person. So I was surprised when this certain pet shelter lady set me straight.
It had been a couple of weeks since the last time anyone had spotted my long-haired calico. I knew the probability of her being snatched by a wild animal was pretty good. But she could also have been stolen. Either way, I was minus a cat. So off I went to the local pet shelter to do my good deed for the day. When my husband and I pulled up, the building sparkled with good maintenance and self-importance. Anxious to get a kitty, we got in line and waited for a good fifteen minutes while the person in front of us gushed about “adopting” their newest “family member.” As we waited, a man walked in with an enormous, wretched looking stray dog he had rescued. The pet shelter lady gave the pooch a syrupy look  and then proceeded to scowl at the man. She turned back to the dog with a sympathetic expression as if to say, “I understand. I hate humans, too.” Our turn.
After reviewing too much paperwork, we were drilled on the following subjects:  living situation, work schedule, length of marriage, plans for the future, when will we have kids, and on and and on and freaking on. At this point I would have given anything to go home and pretend we hadn’t come here.  I was already twelve years old and getting younger by the second. With a sigh she put down our stack of papers and began taking notes in a separate file. We had come to the part where she noticed we USED to have a cat. “Was your cat an indoor kitty?”  We let her outside.  ”I thought so. Your cat was obviously eaten by some animal by your carelessness. You should have put a tracking microchip in her skin.” Another sigh. She copied our names onto a list.  ”I’m afraid you two are just not responsible enough to adopt one of our cats. They are family. I suggest you come up with a two year plan for your futures before you try to adopt again.” And then she gave us a two year plan.  ”Go back to school, get a large enough house, and wait till you have a child so we can match their temperaments to suit each other.” Then she added, “Or you can just go to a farm and get a kitten that way.” So we did. Come to find out, they didn’t even have kittens at the pet shelter that day anyway.

P.S. I totally cried all the way home.

Beth the Other Admin