My mother used to love telling this story. In the 1970s, my sister, brother, and I attended a small, private Hebrew Day School from kindergarten through sixth grade. Our mother was very involved in the PTA (Parent Teacher Association).

One meeting was devoted to discussing whether or not to have sex education in the school.

Mom #1: “I definitely do not want my son to learn about S-E-X at school! Only at home!”

Mom #2: “Oh, come on, [Mom #1]. You and your husband have a kid, so you must have done it at least once, right? What’s your problem?”

[Mom #1] stood up, clutching her pearls (metaphorically) and sputtering incoherently, and stormed out of the meeting!

After a moment, a third mom spoke up.

Mom #3: “[Mom #2], you know that [Mom #1] and her husband’s son is adopted, right?”

You could have heard a pin drop!

This story reminded me of a time I also had to deal with an excessive printer.

I used to work at a community college computer lab, which mostly involved helping students with logging into their accounts and manning the two high-volume printers behind the desk. The premise, at first, was simple. Any of the 200 computers in the lab could print as much as needed, and the prints would come out of the machines behind me. I’d take the prints and lay them neatly across the long counter, and users would come up, search for their own, and head off. 

Eventually, there were the inevitable jerkwads who would take what wasn’t theirs, and after enough complaints, the school required us to keep the prints out of reach, and we’d ask people to name or describe their prints before we handed them over. It was a bit more work on our end, but overall, it was fine. 

There was no volume limit, either. With normal prints, that was not a big deal, though at the beginning of every semester, we’d have to ask people to only print the class list they needed and not the 130-page full catalog. Most of it was useless bureaucratic BS anyway.

Then, there was Cat P*ss Lady. 

She would come in every single night, usually about an hour or so before we closed, and she would take over an entire table of computers with bags and bags of stuff. She also had a walker, so she likely had some kind of disability. But she had to have been a student at the college because she had a login for the lab.

We didn’t really talk to her, though, because she absolutely reeked of cat urine. It was so strong that no one would sit within two or three tables of her. And she was mean. She muttered the foulest language constantly, and she would snap and yell at the lab techs at the end of the night when she finally came up to get her prints — which was always well after closing.

And she printed a lot, too. We’d go through a ream or two of paper just for her. A ream was 500 sheets of paper. 

What was she printing? Google searches. She would Google something and then print all the results, or at least until she got bored and Googled something else. Thousands and thousands of search results for the most random topics. I gave up even bothering to look when I pulled her prints off the machine.

We spent a solid year complaining to management about her abuse of the “free prints for students” policy with the intention of getting her removed from the building. But they were afraid to touch her. No matter how foul she was (smell or language), she was untouchable.

Eventually, just before I moved on to a new job, they implemented a pay-per-page system for the whole college. It left so many other students practically begging us for copies of their final papers and stuff because a lot of them were poor. All because of one horrible lady.

She didn’t stop coming, either. She just became far more abusive to the staff. I’m so glad I left.

Related:
Taking Advant-page

I’ve always hated sports, possibly because I’ve always been bad at sports — particularly sports that involve catching, throwing, or hitting. As an adult, I now attribute this to poor eyesight growing up, but as a kid, I only knew that I hated sports. And my feelings crystallized during one memorable year in high school.

My high school had just hired a new PE teacher: young, enthusiastic, and certain that all kids loved gym class. At the beginning of basketball season, he thought all the boys should be evaluated for their skill level on the basketball court. We had to stand at the free-throw line and shoot baskets. We’d take ten shots, and the teaching assistant would record the number of baskets we’d made as our score. But [Coach] had a clever twist: the ten-count wouldn’t start until we’d actually made a basket. That basket counted as shot #1, with nine to follow. This way, he reasoned, everyone would have a non-zero score, and by effectively giving each student some warmup shots, everyone’s score would be a bit higher.

Nice plan — except that it didn’t allow for the possibility of a student who was PHYSICALLY UNABLE to make a basket.

My class split into groups, each assigned one of the hoops on the court. In due time, it was my turn to shoot. I carefully balanced the basketball in my hands, took careful aim at the hoop, and threw. The ball hit the rim and bounced away. Not that unusual — a lot of my classmates missed their first shots in a similar way.

But I missed again. And again. And again. Either too high, or too low, or too far to the left or to the right, but none of my shots went through the hoop.

After a while, [Coach] moved the boys in line behind me to one of the other groups. And I kept shooting. And missing.

Eventually, I was the only student still at a free-throw line. The period ended, and all of the other students went to the showers, and thence to lunch. The only people left on the court were me, [Coach], and the poor TA.

Trying to be reasonable, I made a suggestion.

Me: “Look, if I do manage to make a basket, it’ll be by pure luck. I won’t be able to repeat it. So, how about we just call my score one and call it a day?”

Coach: “No, I know you can do this if you only try! I know it!”

Mind you, [Coach] hadn’t tried to tell me what I was doing wrong, showed me any technique, or offered any suggestions. In his mind, ALL teen boys grew up learning to play basketball, right? I didn’t need lessons, only encouragement.

With [Coach] watching like a hawk, and the TA looking more and more dejected, I spent what should have been my lunch hour attempting to make just one basket. I was honestly trying, but I simply could not get a basketball through that hoop.

Finally, with lunch hour nearly over and my next class soon to start, I felt I’d done all I could.

Me: “[Coach], I need to go now. I have a class — a real — class, that I really can’t miss. And look, we both know that if this were an honest evaluation of my skill, my score would be zero. Can we let [TA] write that down, so we can all leave?”

[Coach] stared at me a moment and seemed to realize how long we’d spent trying to get a single basket. He took the basketball from me and, almost without looking, threw a perfect basket, nothing but net.

Coach: *To [TA]* “[My Name], score of one!”

And then he dismissed me and the TA, and I barely made it to my next class on time.

To this day, I’m unsure what [Coach] thought he was accomplishing by keeping me there, throwing a basketball to absolutely no avail. But if his goal was to get me to hate basketball, and all team sports, with a burning passion — and in the process, humiliate me in front of my entire class — then I guess he succeeded.

My elementary school class (the children are between six and seven) has just seen a little play about the Nativity at the local parish. Since this is Sweden, they only describe the account and don’t claim that this is the truth or anything. Most people in Sweden aren’t religious, so we have to teach the children what the Christians believe.

Priest: “…so, that is the story that we tell about the birth of the man that we call Jesus. It probably didn’t happen that way, but this is an old, old story that inspired the people in the before-times to invent Christmas. There were older celebrations before Christianity, but this is the old stor—”

A boy raises his hand.

Boy #1: “Is Jesus real?”

Priest: “Some people think that; others don’t. The important part is to help each other be good people.”

Boy #1: “But is he real?”

Priest: “I know he was a real person that lived two thousand years ago, if that answers your question.”

Boy #1: “But is he real right now?”

Priest: “I can’t tell you. That is something you decide for yourself.”

The boy is obviously not satisfied, so a girl pipes up.

Girl: “My mom says Jesus is as real as Santa.”

Boy #1: “Oh! Good, because I have seen Santa. He came to my home last year!”

Boy #2: “My older brother says Santa isn’t real, and it’s just a grandparent or a dad!”

The discussion quickly spirals from here as the children get lost in a deep discussion about whether Santa and Jesus are real. The priest makes eye contact with me, and since we both know a little sign, I sign the word “F-I-K-A”. The priest quickly raises his voice over the increasingly heated argument of confused children.

Priest: “I think that [Parish Assistant] is done setting up Fika in the next room! Let’s go there, and I’ll tell you a story about a little gnome and how he invented the Christmas tree!”

And so, the children stampeded away toward the red fruit drinks, the cinnamon buns, and the little jam-filled sandwich cookies (which is what this Fika is). Verily, the musings on the divine are fleeting compared to the gospel of Fika; may its sugary blessing be upon us.

My dad taught woodworking at a high school. When I went to spend time with him as a child, we often went to the school after hours to use their tools while we made things together.

One visit, I was working on something on a lathe. After a couple of days, when we first got there, my dad needed to do something in the office, so I was left in the shop alone. Well, I knew how to work things, so I immediately went to the lathe and got to work.

After a few minutes, the lathe suddenly stopped. I looked around in confusion, finally seeing my dad staring at me wide-eyed with his hand on the master shutoff.

He proceeded to explain that, yes, he knew that I knew how to safely use the tools. But also, he absolutely 100% NEEDED to be in the room while I was using the tools, because if I somehow managed to chop off a finger or something because I was using power tools unsupervised… it could completely screw him, his career, and his pension.