The feeling of making a huge mistake is nothing less than soul-crushing, but these people messed up SO bad— it's unforgettable.

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1. Expensive Tastes

During his first week, a customer called over my co-worker to the unstaffed truffle counter. He hadn't been trained in truffles, so he just grabbed one from the display case and sold it to the customer. This turned out to be a massive mistake. See, what he didn’t know was that the display "truffles" aren’t actually real truffles; they are made of plastic.

By the time he realized, the customer had already left and paid $90 for it. I'm still not sure if it was an honest mistake or if he was planning to pocket the money. Either way, he got fired.

2. Cut And Run

Last summer, my boyfriend and I were on a road trip from New Mexico to Mexico. We have a Honda Element converted for living in, so I crawl in the back to nap while he's driving. He stops at a gas station in the desert of Arizona and while he's pumping, I get out to use the bathroom. Come back out, don't see him, and walk around the parking lot to have a look.

I jokingly think to myself that maybe he drove off, not knowing that I got out to use the restroom, but brush that off. I sit on a bench outside twiddling my thumbs, realizing this may now actually be the case. I reach for my phone to call him, but of course, my phone is in the car. I go back inside to ask the cashier to use their phone, but she says they don't have one.

Obviously, they do, but whatever. So I start asking random people in the store to use their phones, which makes people visibly uncomfortable because we're in the middle of nowhere and they think I'll take it I guess. I go back outside and continue asking strangers for their phones. I realize I don't know my boyfriend’s number by heart so I just call my phone repeatedly, hoping he'll answer.

He doesn't. I use one person's phone to log into my Facebook to find my boyfriend's number, but alas, his phone is out of battery when I call. I resort to explaining to everyone whose phone I ask to use my situation. Some don't believe me, others feel really bad, and one man offered to buy me a hotel room for the night in the next town over, thinking that my boyfriend left me on purpose and I was just being modest.

It's been about two hours now. The store clerks through the windows have been looking at me suspiciously for a while, I'm still sitting on this bench in the desert, and have no idea what to do and start bawling my eyes out. A patrol car pulls up and the officer comes to me and lets me know the store clerks called them because I’ve been loitering, haggling people for phones outside of their store, and crying.

Yep, that’s what I’m doing. I explain my situation and the officer is as confused and sympathetic as all the other people. She tells me I can't stay there so she can either take me to a truck rest stop in the town over or go to the station. I ask her to take me to the rest stop, although she’s not convinced that my boyfriend legitimately left me there on accident.

We're driving down the highway when on her radio, another officer says he's at the gas station and there's a guy there looking for his girlfriend. I just crack up and she does too. She flips the car around and takes me back. And there my boyfriend is standing outside of his car, banging on the windows and nearly crying because he couldn't believe he'd actually done that.

He said he was passing some really cool scenery far into the drive and went to wake me up to see it too when he realized I wasn't in the car. He flipped it around and drove faster than he's ever driven in his life to get back to the gas station. He said he wondered why so many people kept calling me but didn’t feel comfortable answering my phone.

He thought for sure that was the end of our relationship and the trip was ruined.

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3. Fun Gone Wrong

Today I messed up by pranking my office à la Jim from The Office. I thought it would be funny to put a Bluetooth speaker in the ceiling and play sounds of cats over it. I found an eight-hour video of cats meowing on YouTube that was perfect. I paired an old phone to the speaker, tossed the phone in a drawer of an empty desk, and tucked the speaker under a ceiling tile.

It was perfect. You could only hear the cats if you listened real close. It sounded like there was a cat in the ceiling, but you really couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from. I went to my office, got busy with work, and forgot about it until I went to break. I walked into the break room and several people were talking about the cat that must be in the ventilation system.

I chuckled to myself while I grabbed my coffee and made a loop through the accounting department to see if there were any more people talking about the cats in the ceiling. What I saw made my blood run cold. To my horror, half the ceiling tiles were removed and there were two maintenance men on ladders looking for the cat.  They were real close to the speaker but hadn't found it quite yet.

I just reversed out of there and went back to work. They eventually found the speaker, and shortly after everyone got an email from the big boss reprimanding the guilty party and asking for any information on the culprit. A conspiracy theory emerged by the end of the day: Several of them don't believe that it was a prank at all.

They think the maintenance people lied about it being a prank. That management made it up to get people back to work, and that maintenance is planning to set out traps and poison to kill it. One person claimed they absolutely heard the cat yesterday, and I kid you not, a couple of them claim they still hear it. This is completely my bad.

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4. Wormageddon

This mess-up has been set up perfectly for disaster over the past few months and is continuing to destroy my life. This is a long one, but every detail counts in portraying one of the worst weeks of my life. Let me preface this by saying I love my cat more than anything, and while he is currently not sleeping anywhere near me, he's still getting a lot of cautious love.

Truly, I love him too much—too much love got us here today. In January, I adopted an 11 year old, 19 lbs chonker. I fell in love instantly. His last family returned him after six months with a bad case of fleas. He had been de-fleaed but came home with a slew of other health issues. By the end of January after a lot of vet visits, he seemed to be on the mend.

I knew what I was signing up for when I adopted a senior cat, but just didn't realize the endless possibilities. Truly, I tell him every night before bed how much I love him, and that's about to be tested with this saga of the greatest love story ever told. Early February, he starts coughing and stops pooping in his litterbox, despite me cleaning it daily.

He's still peeing in there, but seems cautious and runs out immediately. Even when he started pooping on the floor (thank God for wood floors), he'd run under my bed from it. That was the only time he'd go under my bed, otherwise, he was cuddled up on or next to me. His medical chart from when I adopted him said he had issues with litterbox pooping.

They suspected he was afraid of his last family's other cat and it was behavioral, but something didn't add up. He was fine with pooping in the litterbox for the first month after his kitty enema. I cleaned up his poop every other day and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He was starting to lose weight, which was good because as cute of a chonker as he is, it's not healthy.

I stopped free-feeding him, started feeding him scheduled wet food meals, and we had daily playtime to get him to a healthy weight. I bring him in to the vet in February for the sixth time in a month and a half. He had half of his teeth removed before I adopted him. This resulted in an incision infection and an enema due to opioid constipation.

This visit was for his cough. I even ask if he could have worms. The vet tells me, "I know you're trying to be a good pet owner, but he likely has allergies and it's a behavioral issue. This might be something he has to live with. Come see me if his mucus turns brown". I had been right about every single Dr. Google diagnosis up until this point, but whatever.

I buy an air purifier, vacuum and clean regularly, change the bedding weekly. I already have an obsessive cleaning schedule. Ask any of my previous roommates and I am the cleanest person you'll ever live with. Despite the cleaning, some coughing days were better than others. All of a sudden end of last week, he starts coughing a lot less, and I start feeling like absolute garbage.

My best friend even makes a joke that I caught whatever my cat had. Sick, sick foreshadowing. My chest was tight, frequent bathroom runs, just pure exhaustion, losing weight rapidly despite not really exercising, and malnourished to the point that my hair is falling out. I'm a mess. I guess it's a good thing I got laid off two weeks ago because the bathroom and I are very close friends these days.

I wake up Monday morning to the pungent smell of my cat's usual poop surprise on the wood floor. He's such a kind cat to poop where it's easy cleanup. That's when I see them. Worms crawling around EVERYWHERE. I'm gagging, take a little sample for the vet, and flush the rest. I Dr. Google the heck out of it and it is for SURE tapeworms.

Then I read about the eggs. Let me remind you I change my sheets and wash my duvet cover weekly. I make my bed the second I get out of it and even vacuum my duvet cover. I RUN to inspect my bed. There are eggs EVERYWHERE. Little rice demons that have been dropping from my poor cat's bum for three months. I'm dry heaving at this point.

I live in an old studio apartment and my bed is against a brick wall, so I get little grout crumble patches that I have to vacuum up pretty regularly. I remember feeling little patches of what I assumed one night was grout in my sheets, but fell asleep and ignored it. When I tell you they were everywhere, I mean they were everywhere.

My pillow, under my pillow—my cat and I fall asleep cuddling every night. Again, I love this cat too much. I call the vet and it is undoubtedly tapeworm. We suspect he's had it since I adopted him. His prescription gets to me within a few hours. I also get flea medication and spray. I check him for flea dirt regularly and hadn't seen anything, but better to be cautious.

I bag all of my bedding, throw out half of what I own, vacuum every inch of this place for an hour, I'm on the freaking floor with my flashlight, and find a tapeworm under my couch. Swiffer, disinfect my couch, flip my mattress—like total mental breakdown. I give him his medication and his cough stops instantly. He hasn't coughed once since Monday.

This has been one of my childhood phobias since I read that urban legend about the guy who starved himself then put a burger patty on his tongue and lured the tapeworm out until he could grab it from his mouth. I'm thinking about this story after giving my cat his medications when holy moly diarrhea. I look in the toilet bowl…and nearly puke.

Three long strings floating on the sides that normally I would have flushed to sewage heaven without a second thought, but they are undoubtedly tapeworms. My grown self calls my mom and sobs while still sitting on the toilet in all of my wormy glory. I call and embarrassingly show the doctor, the doctor undoubtedly tells me I too have tapeworm and writes me a prescription.

He asks me if I want just tapeworm or a full deworming? I'm like what does that mean? He's like, "You'd be surprised how many parasites are living in you regularly. Just wait and see what you're about to poop out". I honestly just want to expire at this point. My cat and I are prescribed the same medication, obviously just different doses and different price tags.

His was $13 for two doses. Mine? $130 for one dose, two pills. That's WITH my last month of insurance from my previous employer. I immediately receive a text that my prescription is on backorder. I'm trying to fall asleep that night on my couch without any blankets, when would you guessed it—my heat stops working. So now I'm just shivering on a small couch knowing there are worms crawling around inside of me and eggs everywhere.

I don't sleep. I call the pharmacy when they open in tears, asking when my meds are going to get there. Lucky me, they had just arrived. He asks me, "Did you know your prescription is $130?" I'm like, "Uh no, I've never had tapeworms, but I guess the price is irrelevant". We both nervously laugh. This is trying on soooo many levels.

I order delivery for a bi meal from my favorite restaurant because first, I have no appetite because the thought of feeding the worms makes me want to retch, and I was hoping ordering from my favorite restaurant would entice me to eat. Second, the medication has to be taken with food. Third, I realize this is the last day the calories don't matter. Might as well enjoy it.

I pick up my prescription, light a candle, call my best friend, we have a little virtual funeral for my worms, and try to make light of the situation. I play the song I want played at my funeral. But it just keeps getting worse, y'all. My best friend hesitantly tells me he was telling his physical therapist about my worm saga. She recommended buying clove oil and rubbing it on my, er, pink starfish.

I'm like why? Apparently, worms like to bite your butt on the way out, and clove oil prevents that. I hate everything at this moment. It's like the different levels of a nightmare. I take the pills and am reading the prescription pamphlet. It notes that you'll experience random aches and pains while the worms are expiring. Let me tell you, I felt every worm as I lay blanketless on my couch in the fetal position.

All of a sudden, I'm thinking about the worms and I can't breathe. My throat is kind of itchy, and I'm thinking there are worms in my tonsils at this point. I'm laying there in the fetal position, telling myself it's just a panic attack. My cat decides to go pee at 2 am and jumps out startled, trailing pee all over the apartment. I know the medication says to limit your alcoholic beverages, but I say screw it and make a drink.

I clean the pee and finally fall asleep for about three hours. I wake up bright and early to the smell of cat poop. Still half asleep, I searched his normal spots and couldn't find any poops. He left it in the tub for me—a new spot—thanks, cat. Easy cleanup and no worms, I take it as a win. I flush it down the toilet, bleach the tub, and obsessively wash my hands.

Let me tell you, my hands are bleeding from the number of times I wash them in wormageddon. I look at myself in the mirror while scrubbing my raw hands and oh my god. My face is swollen to the point I'm still surprised I can see out of my eyes. My tongue is flopping all over the place. I am having a severe allergic reaction to the tapeworm medication.

That panic attack while falling asleep was actually an allergic reaction. I immediately video chat my doctor, and he tells me to go get Benadryl immediately and writes me a steroid prescription. I get a call from their finance department on the brief walk to the pharmacy: $140 for that five-minute virtual visit. I try to dispute the charge, but she can't do anything.

I just flat out ask her: "Can I just tell you about my awful life then for $140?" We talk for five minutes about how much my life sucks and she agrees. She was very nice about it, but still $140. She basically tells me that if I had waited a month to get tapeworm and almost die from the medication, the virtual visit would have been cheaper without insurance.

I cut my losses go back to the same pharmacy from the day before and they ask me what's wrong. I lift up my glasses and they were like "Ooooof—did you know you were allergic to this medication?" At this point, I'm like "WHY DO ANY OF YOU THINK I'VE HAD TAPEWORMS BEFORE?" Truly, complete mental breakdown. I buy my medication, 12-pack, and $20 worth of candy to ease the pain.

So folks, here I am. Unemployed, clenching my butt like never before, still haven't pooped because I'm terrified of worm kisses on the way out, face still swollen shut, but I'm breathing fine. My cat is a new cat, so for that? I am grateful. I am 100% sure I will have PTSD from this experience. It is going to be a long, long, time before my cat and I snuggle regularly again, but I know we'll get there and I still love him.

Adopt senior pets regardless of this story, because 10/10, would still get worms again for him. Wormageddon 2020 will not soon be forgotten.

5. Fancy Seeing You Here

This morning I was feeling frisky and really wanted to hook up with a local guy. So I got to talking with a guy and even though he was a lot older (like late 30s-mid 40s), he had a great body, So I said what the heck invited him to my hotel room. After 45 minutes to an hour of fun, I thought I’d never see this dude again because I’m flying home this afternoon (right now).

Wrong. I went to the gate when they started boarding. Guess who was pre-boarding with his wife and children? You guessed it. To make matters worse, they are just a couple of rows from me and I can hear all their conversations. I’m on the plane right now and he keeps texting. I am saving screenshots in case I need them in the future.

I’m sitting here wondering how he was able to get away from his family that long...he was staying at the same hotel, which now just dawned on me because he made it to my room super fast. This is so uncomfortable.

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6. All In Good Fun

To begin, my husband and I can get naughty in the bedroom. My husband often cuffs and spanks me, and on Wednesday we had a pretty intense session. He put these big leather cuffs on me, but failed to take off my Apple Watch. I didn't realize that if you hold the dial down, it automatically dials 9-1-1. So we get into it, and he's spanking me.

I'm pulling on my restraints, and the restraints hold down the button. Suddenly I hear from my watch, "Ma'am, I hear what appears to be hitting and screaming. We are sending someone to you. Hold tight". "Did you call 9-1-1???" My husband asked, "tell them it was an accident!!" So I tell the operator that it was just an accident, and she says is your name [She said my name here]? And I say yes...

She says "We have your address from our database, and we're sending someone over now. I’m sorry, but we hear a male voice telling you what to say, and this sounds like coercion on our end, so we are obligated to make sure you're safe". I said okay thank you, and I hung up. Oh, heck no. I'm literally covered in bruises and welts, and the authorities are coming to check on my well-being.

Within a few minutes, there's a stern knock at the door. We put our clothes on and come to the door, and the officer takes my husband outside, separating us from communication. I calmly explain that it was an accident and we were just having intimacy. I didn't mention the spanking. Well, apparently my husband did. Another officer comes in and asks about our contract, which we use to make sure everything is consensual".

He told you about our contract?" "He felt it best to come clean about your extracurricular activities tonight, and thought the contract would possibly show State of Mind". I go get our contract and showed it to the officers. After a mortifying few more minutes explaining that he was only smacking my butt and thighs, they believe us and tell us to disable the 9-1-1 feature on the Apple Watch if we're going to do that again.

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7. Loyal To The Bone

This weekend, I was at one of my best friend’s weddings. The bride, my friend, is diabetic and forgot her insulin when we went to the church, so technically, diabetes is the villain of this story. No problem. I volunteered to go back to her house to pick it up. I like a mission. Me against diabetes. After a morning of bridal stuff, my adrenal glands were more than happy to kick some dust off.

The bride says the back door is unlocked, so I dash to her house, drifting the corners (in my mind), finding the apex in the road. The back door is not unlocked. No doors are opened, but I am NOT taking the L on this. All of us bridesmaids had gotten ready at her house earlier, and one of the other bridesmaids was leaning out her window on the second floor at the time.

I gaze up at her window, praying that it’s still unlocked. I know this house. I went to high school with the bride, snuck out of that window onto the roof, and clambered down the tree beside the house many times. Only this time, I am in a strapless, tight, mermaid-style dress. Driving a stick in this constricting skirt was challenge enough. There is no way on God’s green Earth that I can climb a tree.

It’s barely above freezing, but this is a DefCon 2 situation. I’m in the backyard, and there is only one house that can see me. I accept the crazy-low odds that the grandparents that live next door will notice me. Decidedly incorrect assumption. Because apparently, Gramps has assigned himself the position of overwatch. I kick off my heels, sling off my jacket, and toss the Morticia Addams-style bridesmaid dress over the fence.

I pat my old friend, the tree, and begin to climb. I’m sure I sloth-climbed it, but the adrenaline pulsing through my veins has me convinced that I ninja warriored it. The window is unlocked **Oorah**! Once I open it, I ungracefully fall into the room from the roof. I don’t care because the distinctly male movie announcer voice in my head is sexily broadcasting the trailer for the movie I’m acting out.

The crowd cheers when my icicle toes hit the hardwood floors. The room looks like a girl’s purse exploded. Curlers, hairdryers, make-up bags, and clothes cover every square inch of the carpet. I super kung fu hop over the piles to the dresser where she said her insulin bag would be. It’s not there. I look through the piles, shaking like a scared dog from the cold.

Nope. To the bathroom. Nope. A massive rock drops into my stomach when I can’t find her insulin. The clock is ticking. I launch down the stairs, two at a time, and run through the house as my eyes scan every surface. I find it on the kitchen counter, a full floor away from where she thought she left it. Booyow! I’m back in the game. I pump my arm and grab the bag.

I make sure I can lock the kitchen door from the inside. I mentally check—yep, I left all of my stuff outside. I step into the garage, shutting the door behind me. As I’m jiggling the locked doorknob, I hear the Woop Woop of a patrol. I slowly turn and do some weird half raise of my hands. There are two…TWO officers in the driveway.

All official and stern-looking. In a split second, I flash on images. I’m in the back of the car, handcuffed, search warrants are getting issued. I see the courtroom, a stern judge, and an unforgiving jury. In a moment of catastrophic cognitive dissonance, I swear I heard my brain misfire. The only thing that zaps me back to reality is that, I kid you not, my chest is frozen.

I’m going to have the pleasure of explaining this to the officers. I could have vaporized on the spot from the humiliation as the officers approach me. I don’t even know what I said. I virtually shoved the bag of insulin at the older officer and vomited out the preposterous details of this Texas-sized oof that landed me in my skivvies, coming out of a house that I technically broke into.

They try to keep a straight face, but then I start to laugh. It begins as a small embarrassed chuckle, but then it takes on a life of its own, commandeering all of my self-control and flinging it into the icy wind with the ashes of my dignity. I howl. Tears run down my face and I shoot inhuman sounds at them. I can make no sound other than drawn-out vowels.

God, it’s embarrassing. They are trying to ask me questions, and instead, they get Mutley the dog. All I can do is wheeze, or tear and shake from the cold. Finally, I beg them to let me put my clothes on. One gallantly swings his arm to tell me to proceed to the backyard to recover my assortment of clothing cringingly clinging to the fence.

They are gentlemen about it as I jump and shimmy into this contraption of a bridesmaid’s dress. They ask me if there is anyone that I can call from the family to confirm the story. I call the bride. She doesn’t pick up. I call the bride’s mom. She doesn’t pick up. I call the love of my life. He picks up on the first ring. God, I love that man. He doesn’t know why I left the church but immediately goes into solve-this-fast mode.

He gets the bride’s dad. It gets sorted. My guy is waiting in the parking lot when I pull up. Panic rolls across his face when he sees me, thinking I have been crying. I laugh the rest of my make-up off with him when I tell him the story. We’re getting married soon, and I think the bride should have to perform a commensurate task of climbing a tree in freezing weather in her underwear.

I’m definitely taking suggestions. This all happened in a decently small town. This story has ripped through the gossip mill like Taco Bell through the colon. My oldest brother is apparently friends with the "young" officer that I could never make myself look in the eye. Yep, never living this down, and I’m never more grateful to have moved away.

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8. Flipping The Switch

I’ve been living in this house for the past 11 years. In my bedroom, there’s a ceiling fan that I always have on to try and make my room colder. My room has always been insanely hot compared to the rest of the house and I never understood why. Flash forward to today when I’m talking to a friend that said they found out their fan can switch directions to heat the room in the winter. I immediately realized my screw-up.

When I got home I took a closer look at the fan, and hiding by the light is a little black switch. I hit the switch and what do you know, my room is about 10 degrees colder in minutes. I’ve been sleeping in a sauna for the past 11 years and had no idea. Every day in the summer waking up sweaty was because of a tiny black switch.

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9. Double Life Exposed

So this took place maybe half an hour ago, and to be honest there's still a chance there will be some kickback for this today. I work in a call center to make ends meet currently. It’s no career but it’s a pretty nice job with some decent people and it’s easy. All we do really is facilitate switches for people looking for better deals on household stuff, usually their internet provider or supplier of gas/electricity, etc.

We have agents in the field who make sales, then call us for verification with the customer, simple right? Not today. See, usually it’s company policy not to do call-backs. Nobody wants annoying call-center calls right? So unless the customer specifically requests a scheduled call-back, we just don't do them for that reason and others.

I had a customer two days ago looking for a pretty pricey internet switch, going from some basic setup to a full TV/Phone/Internet package, the works, all the channels, anytime calls to numbers including international, 500+ mbps wifi, and it came to over £100 a month. I inform the customer, who's an impatient-sounding guy, that because of the price increase he'll need to have a quick credit check run on him and it'll mean the call takes a little longer.

The guy gets all annoyed about being busy and says he "can't waste all afternoon on the phone to some call-centre" so would it be alright if I called him after the weekend to go through it then. Seemed straightforward enough...This is pretty common, people are always up for the sale until they realize they'll need to spend more than one whole minute on the phone.

But I scheduled the call anyway and asked if there was a specific time he wanted me to call. He says any time is fine and follows with "If Emily answers, just ask her for me, she'll make sure I get the phone" and gave me a home phone number. Fast forward to today, and I make a grave error. See, the application I had from the customer had his home phone number already filled in.

It turns out this was NOT the same number he'd given me for today's call back. I called the number I thought was correct, and a woman answers. I say without thinking; "Oh hi, I'm calling for Steve to confirm his broadband switch, we spoke the other day? You must be Emily!" .....cue uncomfortable pause. She says, "This is Steve's wife, Amanda. What do you mean I ‘must’ be Emily?"

I apologized, and said, "I'm so sorry, when I spoke to him the other day he said if Emily answered to just ask for Steve?" And she just goes, "I knew it, I freaking KNEW IT" and slammed the phone down. After checking the application against the post-it note I'd jotted some info down on the other day, I realized Steve must have given me the number for where he was going to be today, and I'd instead called his unsuspecting wife at home.

Nobody's called into my workplace yet, but if they do I don't think they'll be happy.

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10. Aw, Bloody Heck

For those of you who don't know, a menstrual cup is a soft and flexible medical grade silicone cup that you can leave in "there" for up to 12 hours. As you can imagine, a full cup has a fair amount of blood. This is important for later. This morning at 5 am, I felt the need to go to the toilet.

I noticed that a little blood had spilled out so I knew it was about time to empty my cup. This usually doesn't happen to me, but I guess overnight I had more blood than usual. Groggy at 5 am with the lights off, I take my cup out and dump it into the toilet. It was messy, and I finally discovered that I had an accident with how much blood came out.

I chucked my cup in the sink next to me, ready to clean everything up, but at this moment, my boyfriend peeks into the bathroom to see if I'm okay and what I'm doing awake. From his perspective, he just sees blood all over my hands and in the sink. The lights were off and he just can see me from the flash on my phone. It looked like a horror scene.

He freaked out and fainted at the door. Me, being concerned without thought, jumped up to aid my boyfriend who had just collapsed on the floor. I then instantly realized I had blood all over my hands, and now all over him and the floor. He wakes up a moment later, freaking out not knowing why there is blood everywhere. I explained it to him and was left with a shocked boyfriend and a literal bloody mess I had to clean up at 5 am.

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11. For Your Eyes Only

I’m a bank teller at one of the biggest banks in the US. This is also by far the highest-paying job I’ve ever had as I only just graduated high school. This dude who looked to be on the older side came in and he wanted to know why his debit card kept declining. So I pulled up his account history and there were literally pages upon pages of online purchases.

The kicker? Every single one of the purchases was to a cam site. I guess that he subscribed to many, many pages. But then came the crazy part. They were over the last few days directly after he got paid, so he got a bunch of money then blew it all on the site subscriptions. When I saw the account history I pretended to cough because I had the biggest urge to laugh, but I managed to hold it in.

I asked him if he had online banking or if he’d managed to look at his account history recently, and he said no. I offered to print it out for him and he said, "yes please". When I handed the print-outs to him, he just said ahhhh. And I came so close to laughing again but I managed to hold it in and be professional. Then I asked if he made those purchases and he just dejectedly said yes.

And. I. Giggled. I couldn’t help it. He gave me this weird look and left. Afterward, I had to excuse myself to the bathroom and laughed it all out of my system. I guess he called in to complain because after I came from my lunch break, my manager called me into his office and now we’ve scheduled a call for HR tomorrow. I’m probably pretty screwed…

12. Testing The Waters

I am a Med Student in my second year of Med School. Today we had a urine lab and for the vote of confidence, my professor decided it would be appropriate for everyone to bring their own urine. So everyone had their urine in front of them in the container, and we were doing several tests on the central table. So after doing all my tests and recording them in my journal, I thought it would be fun to mess around.

There was a pack of pregnancy strips. I don't know why the heck these things were there in the first place. But I thought literally nothing and picked up the strips and started reading the leaflet. In the meantime, everyone was done and they saw me. I don't know why we all had the same idea, but we did. All 15 students picked up a strip and mindlessly dipped it in the urine container.

As expected nearly all of them tested negative. All but one. I cannot describe the horror on that girl's face. Like it was really, really horrified. Without thinking, she took another strip and tested again. Still positive. She ran out of the lab rather VERY visibly upset. Me and the other classmates were really awkwardly staring at each other and trying to understand what happened. What a wild turn of events.

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13. A Web Of Lies

This happened quite a while ago, but it only just caught up to me a few weeks ago. About 11 months ago, I moved into a new house as a temporary sort of thing until I could get the money together to sort something out properly. I was hoping to have already moved out by this point. On my second day after I’d finished unpacking, I decided to break the house in with a nice acid trip.

I’d brought some with me that I’d recently bought but not had the chance to use yet. Things were going well with the trip, but then it seemed to be getting really intense and I quickly realized that the tabs were much stronger than I had been told they were, and I thought being locked up in the unfamiliar house wasn’t helping me relax.

I figured the best thing to do to relax would be to go for a stroll because I was starting to get pretty overwhelmed at that point. I left the house to start my walk and my next-door neighbor happened to be just arriving at the same time. It’s a street of tightly packed terraced houses, so next door’s door is about one meter away from mine.

I’d not met anybody on my street yet and didn’t realize this was a friendly tight-knit community where people talk to each other. She said something along the lines of, "hello nice to meet you, my name’s (her name), are you new to the area?" So basically, I do this thing sometimes when people try to sell me things on the street where I pretend I can’t speak English.

I remember a few words from my GCSE French, so I just say some nonsense sentences and then people usually leave me alone. In the state I was in, this conversation seemed like it would be way too intense for me, and French just sort of came to me as my default response to the situation. My exact words were "je voudrais une boulangerie" (one of my favorite lines to use) and I shrugged my shoulders a bit with a weak smile.

She pretty much just left me to it after that and I went on my way. I did my walk and got home about two hours later. I was tripping majorly so the walk ended up taking a lot longer than it needed to. When I got home, though, my next-door neighbor was standing in her doorway talking to another neighbor who was stood outside. I tried to keep my head down because I couldn’t handle any more human interaction but she waved at me and said "bonjour".

So I instinctively returned the bonjour and got inside my house as fast as possible. When I got in, I started freaking out straight away. I realized that I’d just become French and now two of the neighbors think I can’t speak any English. The next day when I woke up, I realized the best thing I could do (as an Englishman) was just live with the lie for the rest of my short stay in this house to avoid the excruciating embarrassment of having pretended to be French for seemingly no reason.

Fast forward 10 months, I still live here, and at this point, I’m in DEEP. My life on this street is a web of lies. I’ve perfected my French accent and over the course of 10 months. French Me has learnt a decent amount of English so he can hold a disjointed conversation. I’d gotten to know the neighbors pretty well and I was the nice, quirky French guy on the street.

I didn’t let the lie slip ever, because every day and every conversation had just meant that it would be even worse if anyone ever discovered I wasn’t French. If I had friends come over (I don’t have many so it wasn’t too bad) they knew to never speak to the neighbors because of my strange situation. Most of them found it amusing, at least.

Things were going okay and I wasn’t too worried about being exposed anymore because I’d gotten so used to it. I’m not home that much and when I am I rarely leave the house for any reason, so I only had to do it for maybe five minutes a day when I was out on my street. If anything, it was a nice way to spice up my day when I got to take on my French persona.

French Me somehow had much better social skills than the real me, even if his English was a bit limited. But then there was the day it all came crashing down. I was walking to my car and saw one of the neighbors coming towards me from the opposite direction with someone else next to her I didn’t recognize. She stopped to say hi, as she normally does, and then she says to her friend "this is the guy I was telling you about".

You might be able to see where this is going. Her friend hits me with a question in French that I didn’t understand a word of, and I knew he was actually French straight away because his accent was way better than mine. I didn’t know what to do and I just froze. Every second that went past just made it so much more painful, and after way too long of a pause I just decided I had to come clean.

I told her I wasn’t actually French and couldn’t speak French and then I tried to play it off like some kind of practical joke I’d been doing on everyone. Nobody was buying that. I fast-walked straight to my car and then let the embarrassment just swallow me for a while. I haven’t spoken to any of my neighbors since, some of which I’d struck up a friendly relationship with over those 10 months.

I make sure nobody is around now whenever I leave the house, and I do a loop around the block in my car if any of my neighbors are walking down the street when I get home so that I never come into contact with them. Every time I think about the day I was discovered the embarrassment physically hurts me. I have to get out of here.

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14. Can’t Wash This One Away

Today I messed up so bad. For context, my dad was hired to work an IT job at the school I attend around two years ago. I am a third-year college student. While he was doing this job, he became friends with some of the other IT people, and through this, he has been invited to go to a club where they listen to music and appreciate it. Some of my teachers are in this club, especially one of my favorite teachers, horrifying I know.

They have moved their meetings online through video calls, and here is where the mess-up begins. To join these calls, my dad uses the family computer in the living room. My room is adjacent to the living room and if my door is open, I can directly see the computer from my doorway. Last night, I was hanging out in my room wearing headphones and watching some Netflix.

As I am playing, I spill some salsa on my white shirt, meaning if I want to salvage the shirt I have to soak it immediately. So I get off my bed and take off my shirt. Oh, and I’m not wearing a bra. Why I took off my shirt before I left my room I don't know. The stars must have lined up for this to happen because 1. I did not know my dad was attending this video conference,

2. My dad had left the living room to go to the bathroom, and 3. I am in clear view of the video camera on the family computer in the living room and didn't think about it at all. So, I leave my room, tiddies out and all, and walk to the laundry room to get the stain out of my shirt, done easy no problem. As I walk back to my room, I get a craving for some soda and decide to go get one.

The kitchen is adjacent to the living room, right next to the family computer. I walk by the computer and into the kitchen, open the fridge, and behind me, I hear "Uhmmm?" and I immediately recognize my teacher's voice. I stop in my tracks. You know that feeling when your stomach drops and your entire body just freezes? Yeah, that.

In my panic, I was so shocked and I was just putting 2 and 2 together and just go "no" and drop to the floor. I sit on the floor, my back against the kitchen island with my knees to my chest and I have no idea what to do, there is no way I can get back into my room without going past the camera. Luckily, my dad came to the rescue and came back to the room shortly after.

This was the conversation that followed. Teacher: "Hey, I believe your daughter might be in hiding, you might want to hang up so she can safely return to her room". Dad: "You there?" (He can't see me because of how I am sitting). Me: "…...yes" Dad: "Do I want to know?" Me: "No" Dad: "Should I disconnect from the call?" Me: "Yes...can you also close your eyes until I tell you to open them?"

Dad, very confused at this point: "Ok?" My dad proceeds to turn off his camera and tells me I can leave. I then fled the scene, locked my door, and immediately put on a shirt. I called out for my dad that it was safe, and a few minutes later I could hear him laugh with everyone in the call. We have yet to discuss this. For personal reasons, I will now be expiring, thank you.

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15. A Vegas Bride

This happened a couple of hours ago. I proposed to my long-term girlfriend a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, due to the nature of my work we have to move soon and having a real wedding before then would be impossible. I got off work early today and after getting home, my fiancée asked if we could go get some paperwork notarized for the courthouse wedding that we planned to have in a month or two.

We hopped in the car with a form we printed off the county website and drove to the closest UPS. The notary checked our IDs and had us sign and then she signed, notarized the form, and said congratulations. Cool, now all we have to do is go to the courthouse on a day of our choosing to be wed. My fiancée called the courthouse afterward, double-checking to see if we needed to bring anything else.

After calling me her boyfriend, the lady on the phone corrected her by saying "husband". She then told my fiancée our state no longer requires a ceremony with the judge at the courthouse. That form is literally the marriage certificate and she is now married. Whoops! We had a honeymoon picnic at a park near a lake. I’m married, I guess?

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16. Hot For Teacher

This was several years ago now, but I still cringe about it every now and then. When I was a freshman at university, I had a huuuge crush on one of my lecturers, who was honestly just a regular-looking, middle-aged man. I was so obsessed with him that I often stalked him online, including on LinkedIn, where I made a profile just so that I could stalk him.

I’m talking really often. It was creepy. Years later when I joined the workforce and actually started using LinkedIn seriously, I realized that people actually get notified every time someone views your profile. He used to give me odd looks when I would pass him around campus and I used to be paranoid thinking, oh god he knows that I fantasize about him bending me over his desk in his office.

But then I’d think nah nah nah, how could he possibly know that? He must’ve been thinking, hey there’s that weird girl who used to look at my LinkedIn profile daily. He even saw me at my graduation and made a very deliberate glance at me. He. Knows.

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17. Your Own Worst Enemy

My boyfriend suffers from pretty low self-esteem. Like it's not like he's too bothered about his looks, but he rates himself a 5 out of 10 at best. Obviously, I think he's gorgeous and handsome, but even though I've been saying this for years, he does not believe me. I came up with the stupidest plan to prove him wrong. For some reason, I decided to show him that other girls would find him attractive by making him a tinder account.

I set him up an account, make him a bio, and just start swiping right. After a day, he got around a dozen matches on tinder. After I showed this to him, I saw how he immediately became more confident and thanked me for the whole gesture. Cue my surprise when a couple of days later, I check the tinder account I had basically forgotten after 24 hours, and I could see lots of messages sent to lots of the girls my boyfriend had matched with.

I confronted him and he denied it, but I mean these messages even included promises to meet each other. Obviously, we broke up and out of curiosity I checked the tinder account again after a week and this breakup has clearly not slowed him down one bit. So now the tinder I made for him not only broke us up but is now helping him navigate his newly single life. Wow. I played myself.

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18. Blue In The Face

This happened six years ago and was deeply repressed by shame. I only remembered it in a conversation with my wife when she asked, "What was your most embarrassing moment?" So I was at a work party, and my girlfriend at the time (not currently my wife) offered to pick me up and drive me home, knowing I would get fully sloshed at the party.

She was right. On the way home, I ask her to pull into a gas station. She pulls her light blue Jeep into the parking lot, I stumble out of the Jeep, go in, and complete my purchase. I over aggressively yank open the passenger door to the blue Jeep, plop myself down on the seat, and say to my girlfriend, "I can’t wait to get home and rail you". I was not expecting what came next. Which was…to get hit in the face.

I also did not expect the loudest screaming I’ve ever heard in my life. Instinctively, I covered up my face and wondered what the heck I said wrong, as it was not uncommon for either of us to say something like that to each other. The screaming was intense and sounded very scared, so I couldn’t really make out what my girlfriend was yelling.

That is until between punch three or four, when I heard, clear as a bell, "Get the heck out of my car!" WHOA WHOA WHOA instant sobriety. I uncovered my face and looked up, and it’s finally dawning on me that although I was in a blue Jeep, it was not my girlfriend’s blue Jeep. Her identical blue Jeep was parked next to—and blocked by—this random woman’s blue Jeep.

I finally tumbled out of the car, went to my girlfriend’s car, and told her what happened. She convinced the woman not to call the authorities to tell them about some crazy guy breaking into her car and telling her he was gonna rail her. I did not sleep with anyone that night.

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19. Work Smart, Not Hard

This happened a few years ago. I was pretty efficient at my job and faster than my colleagues at getting reports done. We mostly wrote reports that had the same calculations and said very similar things. So I created a large database, linked it to Microsoft Excel, let excel calculate everything for me, automate various sentences for me, and then exported it to Microsoft Word.

The end result? In only two hours I could push out what took my colleagues eight hours.

I decided to work only 2.5 hours a day, spending the other five doing anything I wanted to, YouTube, day trading, reading up investments, or looking at silly memes. It was awesome. One day, a colleague took a romantic interest in me. Since I had nothing better to do and was single for a while, I gave it an honest shot.

The relationship went fairly well. She was lovely, really smart but, like me, really lazy too—except that it didn't seem to bother her that her work performance was close to the bottom of the pack. In order to both impress her (and help her), I showed her what I do, and how it could be used to speed up her work. She didn't seem to take an interest at the time.

After some time I broke up with her. We tried our best but I wasn't feeling it as much as she was and I felt it would be better to end it sooner than later. She was already saying she loves me and I wasn't even close to using the word love. The breakup seemed somewhat peaceful. And then the other shoe dropped. Two days later, I got called into HR at work for a disciplinary hearing.

To my horror, I was presented with screenshots of my activity of the previous days: memes, trading activity, news reading, YouTube, and even a tally of how many hours I actually worked vs how much I didn't. Turns out, my ex shared my screen via Microsoft Skype when I went on a break, recorded all my actions for the day, and then reported me to HR.

I should've actually worked my hours in, I shouldn't have tried to impress my ex, and I definitely should have noticed my screen was being shared.

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20. Keep It In The Family

So I have an uncle who has always been VERY vocal about his disapproval of my sexuality. There is not a family gathering that goes by where he doesn't say something jerky about homosexuality or me specifically. Well, this weekend in between family gatherings I was looking to meet somebody. I started chatting with an older man because that's how I roll.

A lot of older guys don't like to show their faces because they aren't out, so I don't think much of it when he doesn't show me his face. We actually hit it off great and after receiving a few pictures I wish I could unsee and sending a few I wish I could take back, we decided to meet up for well... you know. So I'm at this coffee shop down the street waiting for my man to show up…and you know who walks in.

It is at this moment I realize my screw-up. I've been flirting with my gay-hating, closeted uncle. He tried to play it off like a random encounter but I wasn't letting him get away with that. After some pressing, he finally admits that he is the man I've been talking to and I told him I don't judge him as he does me. He apologized for the hurtful things he's said to me over the years. OH, but it got awful real quick.

He kept talking with me like he was still INTERESTED and I had to make it clear that was NOT going to happen. I had to get up and walk out and after multiple texts from him, I had to go ahead and block his number. I can't believe this guy had the nerve to judge me and treat me as less of a human being all these years when he's a total creep and a massive hypocrite. Always get a face picture, people.

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21. I Take It All Back

So last Thursday night, I saw everyone tagging their stepdads in this Budweiser commercial. Without watching it, I sent it to my stepdad. About an hour later, my stepdad and mom call me and ask if I’m hinting at something. My stepdad is like, I know you had intent. I’m like HUH??? Then it hits me. IN THE COMMERCIAL THE ADULT CHILDREN ARE ASKING THEIR STEPDADS TO ADOPT THEM.

So he starts crying, thinking I want this. Now I can’t tell him that I didn’t mean to. Friday he squeezed me so tight and said he wants me to take his name and make it official. All I can think is wow, that sounds like a huge hassle. But I can never say anything about it being an accident. So now I’m being adopted and changing my name.  I’m 31!

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22. The Vampire’s Kiss

This morning, I decided to surprise my girlfriend with a proposal in bed. Not the most original or romantic approach, I know. Initially, the plan was to pop the question over dinner last night, but alas, the build-up towards the big moment got the better of me. However, today I woke up determined to do what needed to be done.

So, there I was, on one knee next to my girlfriend's side of the bed, waiting for her to open her eyes and see me holding the ring. The moment I attempted to wake her up she groaned and rolled over, leaving me with nothing to look at but the back of her head. My heart was beating hard enough to hear. I leaned over my girlfriend and gently tapped her on the shoulder.

Instead of waking up like a normal person, she hissed in her sleep like a vampire before elbowing me in the face. I stumbled back and dropped the ring. My girlfriend woke up during the commotion and the first thing she saw was me bleeding from my nose. Not gonna lie, when she rushed over to comfort me, I flinched. The hissing thing she did scared the heck out of me.

After all the drama calmed down, I managed to recover the ring without her noticing. Speaking of recovery, my nose still hurts. Tonight I'll try again. This time I'll make sure to propose while my girlfriend is wide awake and still human.

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23. It’s A Wash

Right off the bat, I want to say that I am in no way shape or form making light of self-harm or people taking their own lives. This was not a prank gone wrong, or something I did on purpose, but rather a very unfortunate series of usually perfectly benign activities that led to me accidentally terrifying and mortifying my wife. This happened a couple of weeks ago. I tripped and sprained my ankle.

It's been bothering me enough that I've been taking Epsom salt baths in the evenings after work. In addition to helping with the sprain and swelling, I also find it incredibly relaxing. Say what you want about a grown man taking a bath, I enjoy a good soak. I also deal with a condition called angiokeratoma. It's basically blood vessels that have expanded and cause a few small (albeit slightly unsightly) dark spots in a rather sensitive area.

I call them old man spots. They're harmless, and most of the time I don't even notice, BUT every once in a while...I'll irritate one of these small bumps and it bleeds a ton. Additionally, it takes FOREVERRR to get the bleeding to stop. It’s not like I can elevate my balls, let alone put a band-aid on. Well, on the day in question, I get a text from my wife that she's going to be working late.

So I get home and decide to soak my ankle and enjoy a little peace and quiet. It's not really important how I did it, but I ended up nicking one of those spots. After cursing a reasonable amount, I start the lengthy ritual of holding toilet paper against it and checking every so often to see if it's stopped. Even after the bleeding stops I have to be very careful for the next few minutes to not get it started again, almost like scratching off a very fresh scab.

I finally get it stopped and a short time later proceed with my bath. I put on my headphones, closed my eyes and relax. I wasn't asleep but I was really zoned out and relaxed...until I was snapped out of it by my wife screaming in absolute terror. I've never ever, ever heard her or anyone scream like that. It scared the living daylights out of me, and I jolted awake and nearly flew out of the tub.

I shouted "HONEY? WHAT?? She didn't answer me. She was in a heap on the floor, bawling. It took me a second to figure out what was going on before shouting "Jesus Christ!" I could see what it must look like to her. I had apparently NOT stopped the bleeding as well as I thought I had, and my wife walked in on me eyes closed, slouched over in a bathtub full of very bloody water.

It took me a long time to calm her down, and I don't think that's something you just get over. Hopefully one day we can laugh about it, but it won't be any time soon.

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24. Not Like In The Movies

This happened two years ago on this day, which will make sense a little further down the road. In 2016, I started using Tinder for the first time after a bad breakup. I had met a few people but nothing had ever really panned out beyond a few hook-ups. My profile was filled with some stuff along the lines of "not the love of your life. Perfect date for when you want your family to question your life choices".

It was mostly filled with pictures of me hanging out with my dog. Fast forward to March of 2017 and I matched with someone. After a couple of one-off messages that don’t really go anywhere, we ended up talking one night and stayed up until 5 am messaging each other back and forth. A couple of nights after that, we decided to meet up and she invites me over to her house for dinner.

This all sounds great. Except for two problems. The first problem is that I have a beard in all of my photos. And even calling it a beard is a bit of a stretch. My facial hair is like if someone shaved a Guinea pig and then superglued it to my face. If I grow it out too long, it looks like a tuft of crotch hair growing out from a chin. Wiry and sparse. It’s not good.

For six years, I’d still kept a reasonably trimmed beard length because it was better than nothing and actually looks full when it's shorter. But for some reason, the week before we started talking, I had decided to shave my face for the first time in years. I just wanted to know what it looked like. The answer? Not. Good. At this point, I was 27 but still looked young for my age.

Shave the beard off and I look like a 12-year-old with a bunch of tattoos and insomnia. Really awkward. So I pulled up to her house and text before I got out of my car to say, "Hey, by the way, if it looks like a 15-year-old is knocking on your door, it’s just me". Luckily, she's not as turned off by my baby face as I expected. All good so far.

I went inside and we end up hanging out all night. She cooked a great dinner and we decided to watch a movie. She was blown away by the fact that I’d never seen Labyrinth and demanded we watch it. We ended up watching three movies that night. For Labyrinth, I was about five feet away on the couch.

For Young Frankenstein, we were sitting next to each other. For the third movie (which I can’t remember for the life of me) we were cuddling. And this is where the second problem comes in. After my breakup in 2016 and realizing I’d been battling lifelong depression, I started taking antidepressants. One of the SUPER FUN side effects of SSRIs is that it can be really hard to climax.

Like, try as you might, nothin. Dust. Moths. Nothin. Thanks, Big Pharma. And so commenced the next two hours of the worst intimacy either of us had ever had. Two hours of awkwardly grinding and sweating, stopping to try new positions, and statements like "I might have a heart attack. Why are my ears ringing so loudly?" and "What about this position?"

"OUCH!" "Oh my god, I need a towel. So. Much. Sweat. I can't see". We were in the basement on a large three-piece couch. You know, one of those ones with seams to connect the pieces. Well, at one point I tried to plant my toes in the seam to get some traction and ended up kicking the couch piece away from us and sending us both flying to the floor.

A bruised butt. A lot of questioning of whether this was a good idea. If this had been a movie or a romance novel, a two-hour binge sounds like a dream come true. Well, let me tell you that sucks if you haven’t done any cardio in your life. And Jesus Christ the sweat. So slippery and gross. This wasn't "golden light streaming through the windows and we're both glistening" sweat.

This is bog monsters come to life sweat. This is Ace Ventura crawling out of the rhino sweat. At one point, our chests become suction-cupped together. I could have run and slid on my belly down a hallway like a nightmare slip-n-slide if my heart hadn’t felt like it was going to explode. And the chafing.  No matter how ready either of y’all are when you start out, after two hours, it’s gonna wear off.

We both felt like we’d gone at our bits with sandpaper. Not to mention that she just spent two hours with a baby-faced human who couldn't make her come and who might die of cardiac arrest in her basement. This was no climactic movie scene. This was a John Waters film come to life. Well, after two hours and nothing, we called it a night.

It's obviously not gonna happen for either of us and we figured we might as well quit while we're ahead and no one has perished. We went outside for a smoke and at this point it’s about 6 am. I’m wearing only a hoodie and briefs and she’s only in a bathrobe. We sit down and the next thing we know, her mom came out too; she had just moved back home before finding a new place.

So not only did we both just have the worst encounter of our lives, but now I get to meet her mom for the first time! GREAT! I'm definitely not half-unclothed covered in sweat, and sitting next to her half-unclothed adult daughter. Somehow, the mom is completely unfazed by this whole encounter and actually starts going on about her most recent Tinder match with a self-proclaimed oil baron.

Life is weird. Well, the reason I am posting this now is because this is our two-year anniversary and we’re engaged to be married on the same date next year. Our bedroom life is FAR better now and we both look back in humor/horror on that night and wonder why the heck we decided to keep hanging out afterward. I mean, now we know, but our past selves must have been really, really desperate.

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25. Full Of Hot Air

This happened a year ago, but I just remembered this horrific event and the poor victims that never fully recovered. I was set to go on a 10-hour road trip through the interior of British Columbia, and with me were two of my cousins and my uncle. However, before our 6 am start, I decided the night before to wolf down these chocolate chip Fiber One granola bars that had something like 75% of your daily fiber intake.

These things were crazy good and I ended up eating an entire 8-pack of them in one sitting. After that I went to sleep and woke up in the morning to a bloated stomach but felt fine otherwise. 45 minutes into our ride, the cramps began. My stomach grew larger and larger and I ended up needing to remove my seatbelt, and undoing the zipper on my jeans to give it more space to expand.

My cousin next to me couldn't believe what he was seeing, he said it was like the blueberry scene from Willy Wonka. I couldn't hold the gas in any longer and asked my uncle to pull over. He did and I struggled to get out of my seat as every move was agony. I walked to the back of the car and let her rip. A thunderous roar escaped me like a jerk racing his Harley Davidson around the block on a Sunday morning.

The gas hissed out of me as my stomach grumbled, shuffled, and shuttered. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this lasted AT LEAST 15 seconds. Little did I know that I had just broken the seal. I would proceed to experience uncontrollable and obnoxiously powerful farts that lasted 10-15 seconds on average, with only a brief period of relief between them.

The fact of the matter was that I was now experiencing major flatulence every two to three minutes, and we couldn't stop the car every few minutes to escape the smell, so we decided to roll all the windows down and allow me to let loose whenever I needed. However, we had no idea that this would become a much longer ordeal than we initially thought.

Truth be told, I couldn't stop for nearly seven hours, and each one just HAD to be more epic than the last. By the time hour two rolled around, my butt was sore and aching, and my insides feeling like shards of glass were ripping through me. And the smell had become so overpowering that we had to stop at a gas station and buy as many air fresheners as we could.

I took one of the air fresheners and sat on it in the hopes that each toot will be freshened up. Instead, it just smelt like rotten eggs and pine. My cousins and uncle resorted to using Vicks around their noses to stop the smell. The pain from constant tooting brought me to tears at one point and I realized how ridiculous it must look to see a grown man crying while tooting non-stop. At hour four disaster struck.

I stopped tooting, but I was still swelling with gas. I knew I was plugged up and if I didn't do something soon, the pain was going to become unbearable. We stopped at a Coffee Shop and I ran in to use the bathroom. I gingerly sat down on the toilet and gently pushed but the pain was too much. I resorted to pushing on my stomach to help things along and suddenly I felt this wave of pressure hit me that made my butt cheeks break into a cold sweat and start to tingle.

Suddenly, and without warning, poop rocketed out of me like a cannonball and plastered itself to the back of the toilet bowl. With that came this tidal wave of what could only be described as peanut butter oatmeal. I could feel the muscles in my abdomen squeezing my intestines so hard that it actually hurt. It was like when you are throwing up and you can feel your stomach violently squish itself to push everything out, but instead, it was my butt that was throwing up.

Once everything was pushed out, it was topped off by the longest toot in my short, pathetic existence, one that I could never accurately give the length other than say well over 20 seconds, and that I could literally feel and see my stomach shrinking as it happened. I destroyed that poor coffee shop bathroom and I frequently wonder what happened to the person who wandered in after me.

From that point forward, the toots were just as frequent and long, but they felt cleaner and less restricted. It began to feel like I was airing my colon out, blowing out all the accumulated dust. My ribs and butt ached horribly, but I was starting to feel euphoria wash over me that I assumed was just the endorphin rush my body was giving as a way to protect my fragile mind from this ridiculous ordeal.

However, the smell permeated my clothes and the seat behind me. The family had gone through almost an entire container of Vicks, and they appeared to have survived the ordeal too but I could tell that a part of them was broken that could never be fixed. It was as though they felt violated by having to breathe in my butt breath for seven hours, and I knew my uncle was upset that his car's interior would never smell the same again, as it already smelled like hot garbage by this point.

We eventually arrived without further incident, and we refused to speak of this event. Things were never really the same between all of us after that, and I have a feeling none of us will ever touch eggs ever again. They already ate enough of my farts, they don't need a reminder. I should have never eaten that much fiber. I had no idea it was capable of that.

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26. The Wrong Kind Of Surprise

This happened Sunday night. My oldest son is in the Marines and hasn’t been home in almost a year. He took 10 days' leave so he could come visit. At first, we did not tell his mother in case the leave got denied. When it was approved, he just decided he would fly in and surprise her. I tell the wife I am going over to a friend’s to watch the game as a cover to pick him up.

I get to the airport and actually watched the second quarter of the game waiting for his plane. He gets off the plane and we talk for a bit waiting for the luggage and then he goes to change into his dress blues. Now the whole time I’ve been texting my wife saying I was bored, the game sucked, and I wasn’t going to stay much longer.

We discuss the plan on how to surprise his mother on the drive back to the house. We go back and forth from having her open the front door to see him on the porch to just having him walk into the house. We settle on him waiting a few minutes after I go inside, as I wanted to get the whole thing on video. I walk in and the house is quiet. No one in the living room.

A little odd but it is after 9 pm, maybe by some miracle my other kids are actually already in bed? Alarm bells start going off in my head when I open our bedroom door and the first thing I notice is the flickering candlelight. What I did not know was that the entire time I was gone, my wife set in motion her own plan for the evening.

She got the kids settled by letting them keep their tablets after bedtime. Took a nice hot bath, re-did her makeup, and when I told her I was on the way home lit the room with candles and put on her lingerie. So there I was, staring at my wife giving me her best come hither look, with our 21-year-old son outside not 30 feet away, waiting to surprise her.

A handful of reactions to this scene are acceptable. Pulling out your cell phone and sending a text message is not one, but I had to do it. The text told my son to stay outside. I had solved the most immediate problem of our son walking in and seeing his mother like that, but I was drawing a blank on how to fix everything else. So my brain latched onto what has to be the most stupid plan I have ever had in life.

I told my wife to get dressed because she would never believe what the neighbors were doing and she had to come to see. The look of confusion on her face was priceless. It took me five minutes to convince her to put on some sweat pants and a sweatshirt to go to the front door. Finally, after dodging all her questions and getting her to open the door, there was our son in his dress uniform.

She was ecstatic. The noise brought all the kids out and everyone was happy. Except, well, me. The wife excused herself after a few minutes and took off the lingerie under her sweats before anyone noticed. It goes without saying I did not get any action that night. Also in trying to salvage the whole surprise, I forgot to video it for my free internet points.

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27. Anatomically Incorrect

I’m a third-year medical student on my gynecology clerkship "assisting" on a laparoscopic hysterectomy. In this procedure, the abdomen is pressurized while the surgeon inserts several instruments to remove the uterus. If you can imagine, maintaining pressure in the abdomen after you remove the uterus is difficult because, you know, air just freely escapes.

As this was my first laparoscopic surgery, I soon found out that my role was to place a rubber stopper up there to prevent air from escaping. Like many of you, I had no idea this role even existed, but I quickly accepted my new job as sealer. I approached from the bottom of the table and stuck my hands underneath the sterile drapes that covered the legs.

I placed the rubber ball in and stood there trying not to make eye contact with anyone in the room. After several minutes, the pressure in the abdomen continued to decrease. The attending physician, frustrated at this point, walked around next to me, ripped the drape in half to reveal the pelvic area, and said, "Do you even know where it is? Get that stopper out of her butt!"

Thank you for reading. I’ll go bury myself now.

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28. Spelling It Out

One of my favorite video game series of all time is the Yakuza series. The narrative, gameplay, everything about it I absolutely love. I bought Yakuza 0 a few days back, as it is the only game in the series I have not yet played. I bought it off the PSN Store for $9.99! I'm absolutely in love with it. So yesterday I was having a conversation with one of my online gaming friends.

I was telling him all about the game, how much I loved it, etc. Well, he expressed interest in wanting to play it too! Money is pretty tight for him, so I offered to PayPal him the money to get it. He did his usual polite, "Oh no it's fine I'm sure I have some extra money I can use to get it". Well, I PayPal'd him the money for the game plus a little extra for food or whatever he wanted.

PayPal gives you the option to send a message along with the money. Me, in my infinite wisdom, sent the message "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY YAKUZA MONEY". Apparently, when sending money to someone online, using the name of a syndicate is not the best thing to do. PayPal does not send the money and tells me my payment is pending while it undergoes an investigation, and that the process will take no more than 72 hours.

Fast forward to tonight, I get an email from PayPal saying that they have now restricted my access to my account and that I have to go through steps to resolve the process. I follow their link, and there is the payment in question. In the text box provided, I then have to explain to them the context of the message and that the money is for a game called Yakuza 0, and that I, a US Citizen who does not have a passport and has never been out of the country, am not a member of the Japanese Yakuza.

I am now waiting for PayPal to review my written statement and hopefully, this is all resolved.

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29. NOT Cool Beans

This is a true thing that happened and is happening, and now there is more to it because I actually got broken up with over it. With all that is going on, my girlfriend and I had stocked up on supplies, including some canned goods. I ordered a few weeks ago 30 cans of beans. 10 are black beans, 10 are kidney beans, and 10 are pink beans.

Also, I ordered 15 cans of chickpeas. I thought this is a reasonable amount of beans and chickpeas to have every now and then and would last for quite some time. However earlier this week, I opened the cabinet because I wanted to make a vegetarian chili using two cans of beans, but all of the beans were gone. What the heck? I asked my girlfriend and she told me she buried all of the beans in the woods.

At first I thought she was joking, but she explained, no, she had buried the beans in the woods. What? I asked her to explain and she told me she was afraid that "if things get bad" we might have to worry about "looters or whatever" and that the beans would be in danger. I said I thought this was completely ridiculous and unlikely. She became angry at me and said she "is protecting our beans".

According to her logic, the beans are safely buried in the woods behind our apartment complex, and if we ever need some beans she will go to the "stash" and dig up a can or two, but would prefer if we save them all for "if things get worse". I said why only bury the beans, why not bury our more valuable items? She said the canned food was most valuable for long-term means, and that since we get fresh food in our online grocery deliveries, it would make sense to continue to stockpile beans.

She intends to go bury more beans in the woods every week. This was too insane for me and I got very upset. I demanded to know where the beans were buried, and she refused to tell me. She said if I knew she was afraid I'd dig them up, I said darn right I would. She said, "I will never jeopardize the beans". The following day I tried to put my foot down.

I'm not usually a foot downer but there are rare issues where compromise is out of the question, and I foolishly decided this was one of those issues. I demanded to know where the beans were buried and I told her if she was going to bury beans I paid for in the woods that I would move out. We fought about it and I kept insisting. In hindsight, I should have just let it go and created my own hidden stash of beans in the apartment.

This would have given her time to maybe cool down about this bean burying scenario, but I blew it all out of proportion. Yeah, it's weird to bury beans in the woods but why did I have to press it? What's the harm at the end of the day? In the grand scheme of things? But I kept demanding her to take me to the beans, or at least draw a map or something, and finally, she BROKE UP WITH ME.

Over the beans. I have lost the love of my life because I couldn't let the beans go. I am in disbelief. She moved out. Not only am I heartbroken but I am now paying full rent instead of 50% which is a huge financial issue for me.

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30. A Student’s Worst Nightmare

To start the semester, I ended up missing the first week of school because I was on a last-minute trip with my friends. It was completely unplanned and actually, a few of my friends who had graduated helped chip in to buy my ticket since I technically couldn't afford to go. Anyway, I came into class a week late and it is scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7-8:15 pm.

On both those days, I have classes all day until 2 pm, so I usually go home to eat and grab a snooze before the night class. So my first Tuesday home I ended up oversleeping and turning up to class five minutes late. As part of my degree, I have to take microeconomics which all I knew about it previously was that it's about the economy and money.

When I get to class, they're talking about supply and demand curves shifting so I just take a spot in the back, not thinking twice. This goes on for 3.5 weeks. I came to class. Took notes. Then did the weekly assignments. On the course syllabus, it had a date for the midterm, which is February 1st. So the class before the exam, January 30th, I decided to stick around after class and ask some questions.

Now I was doing all the assignments and thought the course material was relevant but it was ALL theory-based while the class was heavily math-based. I understood what was going on but there was obviously some disconnect. I explained my concerns about the midterm to the professor and the conversation went like this. Prof: "What do you mean theory? All the assignments are filled with math. Are you using launchpad?"

Me: "No the assignments are online. Like the website we bought the textbook from. What’s launchpad?" Prof: "Pardon? I don't have a textbook for this course". Me: "It literally says in the syllabus, look!" Shows syllabus Prof: "Wait, what class are you supposed to be in?" Me: "What do you mean...? This is ECON 202 right?" Prof starts laughing... Prof: "Haha this is ECON 301, you have to take 202 before you take my class. This is a new one, I've never experienced this before".

Me: "Well this is awkward. I better go see my actual teacher and explain". I then just grabbed my stuff real quick and sprinted through campus to go explain the situation to the other guy. I caught him just as he was leaving the lecture and explained my predicament. I even showed him my ECON 301 notes to prove I couldn't make this up.

He just laughed and said the same thing, "This is a new one for me". Turns out all the assignments for both classes were due the same day. Same with the midterms. They were relevant because it was obviously a level above what I was supposed to be doing and the only thing I got wrong was the building code. They were both classroom 112, just different buildings.

So basically, I just spent the last two nights forgetting everything from this class all month and learning the real material. Wish me luck!

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31. A Modern Romeo And Juliet

I am currently stuck in my girlfriend’s room while she and her family are having dinner downstairs. I haven't eaten since morning nor showered and I need to take a poop. Back story to this morning, I haven't seen my girlfriend for over a month plus. I woke up to my girlfriend's call around 11 am saying that her parents went out to get something.

I thought okay I'll come over, return her camera I borrowed, and maybe we can sit in my car around her neighborhood and hang out awhile. It was a little rushed as her parents just left her house as I left mine. I'm about 20 minutes away from her place. She assured me her parents will be out for at least an hour and a half as they need to get lunch.

I drove as fast as I could and picked her up from the front of the house and we drove to the park nearby to hang out. After a couple of minutes, I ask if she brought some water as I asked her about it before I came and she said no. She said why don't you come in and take some water since her parents will still be far away. I said yes (obviously) and went in, drank water, and we sat on the couch for a while to cuddle.

I was a little paranoid but I haven't seen her in a long time so I needed it. About 10 minutes in, we hear a car outside her house—and it was her parents. They were only out for 40 minutes. We started to panic. Luckily, I parked away from her house and took my slippers in. I contemplated just owning up and lying that I needed to use the toilet but her mom is really difficult.

She would assume my girlfriend was lying and get her trouble and I haven't even met her parents officially as her boyfriend yet. If you are from an Asian family or have heard of Asian parents being strict about relationships, it's true. We both ran up to her room and I hid behind her door. Mind you, her room is really small. It’s about the size of two single beds.

I can't hide under the bed as she has to keep her door open and you can see straight under her bed from the stairs. The only place possible is behind her door. I stood there frozen as she went down to greet her parents. I could hear them coming in as I hugged the wall as tightly as I could. She came back up freaking out, but I said it's okay. Let's just try to formulate a plan.

She said okay and she went down to eat with them first. I then had to stay as silent a possible with no fan or air-conditioning so I sweated my butt off. At 1 pm, she comes back up and we try to listen to whether her parents are coming up or not. They usually sit downstairs after lunch and nap, which they did. This gave me a little bit of relief as I could sit down on the floor.

The space in between the door and her table is super tiny, which is uncomfortable, but I'm not complaining. 2 pm. Her dad comes up to shower and her door is right next to the bath area. I can hear the water rushing. But good news, my girlfriend is in the room doing her work so she can look out. It’s weird as I'm just standing up behind the door and looking at her look back at me.

After his shower, her dad leaves to go to his store, which leaves her mom downstairs. She gets on a long phone call, which gives me a bit of room to relax. My girlfriend and I make out a bit to calm our nerves and I gotta say it did help. For the next three hours, her mom stays downstairs and we try to formulate a plan, but everything involves the timing of her parents which is impossible.

Can't jump out the window cause it's grilled and she doesn't have the key...Around 5:30 pm-ish, her dad comes home and almost COMES INTO HER ROOM. He asks her to print something and she quickly walks to her door to stop him from coming in. I hear his voice right outside the door. Thankfully, he walks away and goes down to watch TV.

And I swear to god the universe wants us to suffer because right after that her mom comes upstairs and hangs about the common area. My girlfriend had recorded a zoom meeting so she tells her mom she has a meeting and plays it, closing the door giving my legs much needed rest and I sit. 7 pm, her mom calls her from downstairs that it's time to eat.

And that's where we are at now. It’s currently 9 pm at this sentence and I can hear her family talking to each other. She has to turn off the lights and fan and air-conditioning so I'm freaking drenched in my sweat in the dark. I'm sitting down but I've got pins and needles in my feet now. I would stand up but because the area is so tight, I don't want to risk any noise.

Oh, remember how I haven't eaten and need to poop. That's attacking now. My stomach is growling. I'm so scared to be caught because my parents are gonna slaughter me, too. My girlfriend and I will discuss our plans for me to escape when she comes up...

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32. A Slip Of The Tongue

I’m currently sitting on the toilet playing chess because I don’t want to show my face until it loses three shades of red...I was going through some project details with one of the engineers at my work before she left to go to a job site. We wrap up, she gets up to leave, and I attempt to say, "go spread your wings". But right as the word "go" comes out of my mouth, my brain decides now would be a terrific time to switch things up.

I go to say "go stretch your legs"...And before I knew it I was having an out-of-body experience watching myself tell her to "go spread your legs". I will never forget the look on her face. I immediately told her what the heck brain just did for that combination of words to come out of my mouth as she is on her way to a worksite full of men.

Thankfully she believed me (seemingly) and laughed it off. Doesn’t make it any less embarrassing, unfortunately.

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33. Kind To Be Cruel

My dad grew up with his family slamming him for not being his father's biological son. The rumor was that grandma had an affair with a man named "Tillery" when she got pregnant with my father. My grandparents always denied it, but the rumors have always hung around my dad. Grandpa was a Native American man, grandma was white, and dad was their only supposedly biological child; his siblings were adopted.

My dad was blonde as a kid but got darker as he's aged, and he looks like grandpa, so because we all believed 100% that he was biologically grandpa's son, we decided to finally set his fears aside and prove it with a DNA kit for his 61st birthday. The kit came back today after nervously waiting several weeks, and there's a lot of matched relatives, with the name "Tillery". No native American DNA results at all, no one with his father’s family's name.

He's crushed and I feel awful. This has to be the worst thing I've ever done to my dad.

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34. Just Golden

This morning I woke up with my girlfriend after a night of drinking together. I say good morning to her and her response was, "Do you remember what happened last night?" And I’m like, "Oh yeah that was such a fun night!" Her answer changed my mood instantly. She’s like, "Well, I’m sure you don’t remember peeing on me then".

I am just so taken aback by this. I thought maybe I had peed the bed or something, but no, it was worse. Apparently, and I have no recollection of this at all, she got up to go use the bathroom and like a minute later I stumble in there and she’s sitting on the toilet and I just pee like she wasn’t even there. Obviously, this is a surprise to her, I mean who expects that!?

But she said that she just took care of me and got me back to bed. Luckily she’s really great and we can just laugh about it. What a way to wake up, though.

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35. Say Hello To My Little Friend

Yesterday, I got onto a subway train around rush hour so it was quite packed. I squeeze in with my brother and find a spot to stand. I notice a little dude (about six or seven years old) in the seat next to where I'm standing squish up against his mother to make room for me. He looks up and smiles, his eyes inviting me to sit down next to him.

As a larger human, 6'3" and almost 200 lbs, the tiny half a seat that he had opened up wouldn't quite fit me. Still, I couldn't let his kindness go unnoticed so I decided to half-cheek it, to be sure he understood what he did was really nice. As I sat down, I thanked him for making room and told him I really appreciated the gesture. We high-fived, and in hindsight, I should have ended it there.

I noticed he had his backpack with him so I asked how school was that day. He told me it was just all right. Then I asked the fatal question. "Do you have a lot of homework over the weekend?" He let me, the stranger, know he had a big math packet that he had to get done. Unfortunately for him, his mother was listening to our conversation.

Her eyes lit up when he told me about the packet. She yelled "Oooo boy!! You told me you finished that yesterday! Guess who doesn't get to play his video games this weekend?! You, ya little liar!!!" His head sunk into his chest, as did mine right along with him. A few stops later his mom dragged him off the train by his little jacket.

He looked back at me as they departed, a look that said "Bro, I thought we were cool, how could you do me like that???" His look of betrayal is going to haunt me for days. Hang in there little buddy! One weekend may seem like an eternity at your age, but time flies!

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36. Meet The Parents

I was on my first date with a lovely girl named Michelle. I took her to what people my age consider a pretty nice restaurant for a date. She didn't know where we were going ahead of time. A few minutes after we ordered, her face turned bright red and she told me to hide. I was confused, and about to ask why, when an older couple approached our table and introduced themselves as Michelle's parents.

After some brief, uncomfortable small-talk, her father, who had already casually mentioned twice that he was an officer, each time placing his hand where his holster would be, asked me a question I didn't know people still asked. "What are your intentions with my daughter?" For the record, my intentions were simply to get to know her and maybe start a relationship with her.

Unfortunately, the question caught me off-guard and I tend to (read: unfailingly) use humor as a defense mechanism. So I replied: "I don't know, officer. I have Intention Deficit Disorder". Michelle and her mother both burst into laughter, but her father was not amused. He dragged my date away, never to be heard from (by me) again.

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37. What Could Have Been

I used to be acquainted with another girl my age; we were both about 17 at the time. It was a typical friend-of-a-friend situation. I am bi and thought she was really cute, but never once thought that she could possibly be into girls as well, least of all me. My self-esteem was extremely low around that age and I did all kinds of mental gymnastics to explain away all of her flirting.

I once saw her at the grocery store and she became really shy and didn't approach me (she was very shy in general) but later that day sent me a message saying something like, "I saw you at the grocery store today, you looked cute". But the absolute boldest move I completely ignored was Valentine's day when we hung out as a group with our friends and she walked over to me and gifted me a hint so broad, I can't explain how the wrapper didn't burst.

She had made me handmade heart-shaped chocolates and put them in a small transparent gift bag. There was only one other thing in the gift bag, the only thing in the universe that could be gayer than heart-shaped chocolate from one gal to another: a little paper card with some kind words on it, and printed on the other side was a picture (a manga panel from the looks of it) of two girls holding hands.

And my only thought was: "Wow, what a nice girl! I have to be really careful not to develop a huge crush on her since she couldn't possibly be into me! She probably felt bad for me on Valentine's day because I'm so single and unfortunate-looking. Those straight girls really lead you on without meaning to!" Today I looked back on this situation with horrified realization, as Facebook told me she got married recently. To a woman.

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38. More Than He Bargained For

So my dad has had this didgeridoo in the house since he visited his sister in Australia 10+ years ago. My parents wanted to go out for a walk but I decided I’d eaten too much cheese and couldn’t be bothered. While they were out, the Internet went down so I was sort of wandering around, looking for something to do when I spotted the didg.

I thought to myself, in all these years I’ve never actually tried to play it. It’s more of a decoration and I barely take it in when I see it, but maybe it’s time. I pick it up and put it to my lips. I felt like I knew what I was doing and that it was similar to playing a trumpet and I wanted to play a long, loud note. I take a sharp inhale and immediately feel something hit the back of my throat.

I splutter really hard and a small white globular thing comes flying out and hits the floor. At first, I thought it was saliva and ignored it as I had a weird sensation in my throat and mouth. It felt like tingling to start with but grew into more of a tickle on the inside of my cheeks and a bit on my gums. I glance down at the white stuff on the floor…and see several baby spiders crawling out of it and in all directions.

The second I clock what’s happened I feel something tickling my top lip and hit my mouth with my hand. I have a squished spider on my lip and instantly go into panic mode. I run into the bathroom and spit repeatedly into the sink to see crushed spider bodies and some severed legs, some of which are still attached to parts of the body and are trying to drag themselves away from the drain.

I purge several times and then frantically swill my mouth out with water. I don’t think my mouth will ever feel normal again.

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39. Daddy’s Little Girl

I'm never living this down. It's really destroyed me on an emotional and spiritual level.  The first thing you should know is that I am NOT a flirty, passionate person. I barely ever have "urges," I rarely think about anything like that, my libido is comparable to that of a fence post’s, etc. However, I started noticing that I was becoming increasingly bitter towards things like that.

So I decided, "You know what, I'm going to try and explore that side of me, maybe bring it out a little more!" And so, I did... it. I bought two toys. Nothing extravagant, just basic, cheap little items, plus a bottle of lubricant because I work smart, not hard. Things SHOULD be fine, I think to myself. I'll order them and they'll come in a week or so.

No one's expecting any packages then, so there will be no issues and they'll hand it right off to me, none the wiser! And then that DIDN'T happen, can you believe it? No, what actually happened was worse. It also proved to me that my dad is a monstrous, monstrous man who lives to cause me pain. Unbeknownst to me, I was still under my trial of Amazon Prime.

I'd forgotten to cancel it after buying a Vulpix plush, sue me. Then the package shipped and arrived...the next day. Even this should have been fine, because no one in my family opens packages that aren't theirs except one little thing: MY package came in with my MOM’S packages. I didn't realize they were coming in that day, so I was still curled up in bed watching TV.

When I heard the delivery truck pull up, I thought, "oh cool" and then went back to my show. It just so happened that my mom ordered a lot of different parts for her car, and then she assumed the box was one of hers as well without checking the label since I hadn't mentioned ordering anything to her (obviously). According to my mom, she opened it, thought, oh, *my dad* must have bought something.

And then...she checked the label. And saw my name. Did she do the respectable thing and tape it back up with clear tape like nothing happened? Did she just hand it to me and walk away silently? No, she went to my dad. Because of course she did. According to my mom, she walked in, said, "Our daughter ordered bedroom toys and I don't know how to handle it".

My dad shot up in bed with horror. A moment later, he giggled and jumped out of bed, taking the box from her and saying, "I want to give it to her!" He walks into my room. I say hey to him and sit up to look at him. He tilts the box towards me to show its contents, and then we stare at each other in silence for several seconds before he sets it down next to me with the biggest grin on his face, and then calmly walks off.

I can't look my parents in the face anymore. I might actually have to move out because my dad won't stop making jokes.

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40. Gamer Girl

I used to play an MMO with a bunch of people I knew in real life. Out of all of them, I was the most interested in person to person, but sucked at it. One day a new guy shows up. He used to play but stopped for a few years. Everyone starts talking about how he was basically a legend, a god at one-on-ones, was one of the former top players in the game, was so inhumanly good he got mistaken for a bot, etc.

I immediately developed an awkward crush on him. He heard I was into one-on-ones and challenged me, where he promptly kicked my butt. Then he spent a lot of time condescendingly giving me tips on how to improve and said he would show me the ropes. Being a dork with a crush, I was so grateful for any attention he gave me. His idea of teaching me was basically beating me over and over again.

After a few days of this, he got bored and stopped paying attention to me. I was embarrassed that I was so bad and kept losing, so I thought if I could impress him, he would spend time in game with me again. I spent a stupid amount of time practicing on the side and researching. I'm talking like six hours on weekdays and 10+ on weekends.

I literally lost weight because I stopped snacking on the side and ate the minimum amount at mealtimes. So after like 10 months of nonstop playing, I improved a stupid crazy amount. Managed to jokingly convince him to duel…and I beat him. He thought it was a fluke and demanded a rematch. So we played again, and I beat him again.

He got so mad he changed his build to exactly counter mine, and he beat me. I was so happy because I thought he was into it, so I changed my build to counter his and beat him. And it turned into this stupid back and forth. I was having the time of my life. I thought I was showing off my improvement to a guy I liked. I learned theory-crafting, I learned how to play properly, etc.

Meanwhile, he was raging his head off on his side of the screen. After a lot of back and forth, he finally says he's done and logs off. I had no idea what happened and figured real-life things were going on. Anyways, he didn't log back on for a while and I heard from our mutual friend that he quit the game. He claimed he only came back temporarily from a break and needed to focus on real-life job stuff or something.

I did not connect that with beating him. I just thought the timing was bad and I was sad I wouldn't be able to see him around anymore. He never logged back on again. A few months later, we had another in real life hangout and he basically ignored me, then made a few pointed comments about how he didn't like girls who were as into gaming as he was.

And that girls who liked games too much were basically guys and he wasn't into guys. And that's when I finally realized. He was mad I beat him. And he literally never returned to play again. After a few more years, I quit gaming. And funnily enough, I heard from our mutual friend again that that's when he decided to start playing again.

For what it’s worth, I didn't quit the game because of him. I played for several more years after and got back into one-on-one and shot up the ranks because I went from a keyboard turning skill-clicker into someone who could actually play. Did weekly tournaments for a bit, got good enough to see the occasional pro players in my queue, and formed a little team with other people around my level.

The game itself went through a ton of bad balance patches and a ton of people left. I ultimately left because the game mode was "dying" and I realized it was making me depressed and more angry and toxic the more I played.

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41. Inside Joke Turned Out

This happened on Friday and is still ongoing. I've tried to keep things as detailed as possible but vague enough so I won't be outed since I guarantee someone I know will read this eventually. I still do not know if I am the culprit, but I am 90% sure that I am. I feel like this is a fireable offense and I will step up and take it if it comes to that.

I work at a pretty sizeable software company with roughly 100-150 employees. We migrated to Gmail and other Google services about two years ago and have been relying on them and the e-mail system to do our job. It's safe to say that everyone is using Gmail or Google in one way or another. Now, our Gmail accounts are set up for our company, so everyone is connected. Keep this in mind, as it will be relevant later.

I have a friend who creates Android apps on the side. I do something similar to this, but instead, my apps revolve around cloning .apk files and restoring them, similar to a service called Titanium Backup. As a joke, every time my friend releases an app (usually paid), I buy the app and clone it with my software, and then refund it. After that, I send him an e-mail with the cloned version through Gmail with something along the lines of: "Look at this cool app I found on the store, it was completely free! Try it out!"

Just stupid stuff like that. It was a bit of an inside joke that kind of stuck for a while and was only between us. Recently he uploaded a new app and I did the same thing as usual. I was actually on the toilet at work at about 10 am or so and was doing my business in the stall on my phone. I was on my work account and bought the app and refunded and all that jazz.

I e-mailed it to him and then finished up in the bathroom and went back to work. About an hour later, before lunch, everyone was talking to each other about problems accessing their Google accounts. At the time, it didn't click with me what had happened. One of my colleagues requested help and I went to check it out. It turns out that their account was blocked by Google due to ToS violations.

Their Google Payments account was blocked as well. I thought this was insane and wondered if it happened to me and everyone else in the building, and sure enough, it did. We got banned by Google, all of us. The afternoon was pandemonium. We were all freaking out, our IT guys were trying to get a hold of Google but couldn't get in touch with anyone.

We could sign into our accounts but not do anything with them. All our work was shared with Google services. Eventually, someone realized that their non-work accounts were banned as well. It wasn't until yesterday that someone made the connection. Anyone who had their accounts as a recovery option was also caught in the ban wave.

One of the girls at work was bawling her eyes out since she couldn't access her e-mail. Anyways, we were all told to go home on Friday. I went home and looked this up myself, and I found out that this ban (sometimes on the entire account but always on the Google Payments account) happens when someone misuses their refund policy.

It bans all the accounts associated with it, and remember how I said all our work accounts were connected? Yeah...So it's been two days now and we've been chatting over Skype, no one knows what happened and the IT guys are livid along with our supervisor and boss who are angry that Google isn't helping us out. Their policy is to not share any information about what caused this and they will not reverse these actions.

The posts I've found online relating to this have had similar problems (not to this extent of course), but no one has been able to solve this type of policy breach since Google does not help them, even if it was by accident or due to some other cause...So yeah, that's that.  I'm 90% sure that I am the culprit who caused this. I do not know why Google has a scorched-earth policy when it comes to this kind of stuff, but I messed up.

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42. Friend Of A Friend

I was 25 years old and heading to a 21st birthday for a girl from university at her house; she was living with her parents. It was far from my house but I knew the street, so I just left home. Except when I got to the street, I realized I didn’t know the number and didn’t have the invite. I messaged another friend to find out the address, but he didn’t have it either.

There were only about 40 houses in the court, and it was pretty quiet, so I figured id just have a stroll and listen for music and a busy house. I stroll up to the only house with any music going. I’m a 25-year-old dude, bottle of happy birthday present in hand, and knock on the door. "Hi, I’m a friend of Steph’s, here for the birthday". The mom looks at me a bit confused but pleasantly welcomes me in.

She walks me through the house, past a group of roughly 15-year-olds, the family eying me uncertainly. I start thinking maybe that’s just the younger cousins and the main party is out back. She takes me further through the house to her other daughter’s room, who coincidentally is named Steph. "Steph, your friend is here..". As I round the corner into the doorway, I look at this 17-18year old and my face drops.

"I...don’t know you," I say awkwardly, then look at the mother, desperately hoping I have not just become the biggest creep on the planet bringing hard stuff to a 15th birthday as a dude in his mid-20s. Very fortunately, I explained who I was and who I was looking for, and the lovely mom walked me down the street to the house I was meant to be at, as she knew the family.

I apologized profusely again and thanked her for her help and understanding.

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43. Sticky Situation

A couple of weeks ago, my five-year-old daughter found a black widow mom and her egg sack. She wanted to look at it, so I very carefully scooped it up into a jar, twisted on the top, and went around it with duct tape for good measure. She begged to let them hatch so she could watch them, and this seemed to be decent science homeschooling, after which point I planned to put them in the freezer for a somewhat humane end.

What’s the harm? I thought. They are sealed up well. Well, guess what, they weren’t. The jar I used was plastic and something some toys had come in. There were small HOLES in the bottom and sides, barely visible. Smaller than a hole punch, but plenty big for a baby black widow. So today we’re going about our lives when she notices a tiny spider. Then there’s another. Then another. I start to think....oh no.

I grab the jar to find the egg sack has indeed hatched, with hundreds of tiny little venom babies. But I see with relief that the duct tape is still there, there’s no way they could have gotten out. Until I look at my hand. IN THE MOMENT I WAS HOLDING THE JAR, ONE CRAWLED ONTO MY HAND. At which point I noticed the holes. I screamed, said some words that definitely shouldn’t be said in front of a five-year-old, and wanted to fling away the jar but managed to hold onto it for fear that tossing it would further distribute its contents.

Now my child is playing outside while I furiously vacuum and clean and wash every surface. God have mercy.

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44. One Dollar Deal

It was a four-player family game of Monopoly. My brother, our parents, and I were playing, and I wasn't doing well. I wasn't bankrupt or heavily mortgaged yet, but I could tell that if something drastic didn't change in the next three turns or so, I was toast. I didn't have any monopolies, but I did have a couple two out of three properties (New York and St. James being the standouts) and a couple scattered here or there.

My brother was the clear favorite at this point, with my dad in clear second. My mom was losing right along with me. It was my turn, and I was trying to arrange a favorable trade. I'm negotiating with my dad. I have a property that'll give him another monopoly, he has a card that'll give me a monopoly. We both have enough money and side properties to even things up afterward.

With a good trade here, we'd both have a higher chance of winning, significantly cutting in on my brother's lead. Seems like it should be a slam dunk, right? But no, my dad is pushing for the most ridiculous trades possible, and outright refusing to trade away those properties that are most valuable to me. If I don't get a monopoly out of this, I might as well not even bother with a trade.

I'm getting frustrated as the negotiating stalls. But I get an idea. A terrible, terrible idea. I say to my dad: "Dad, I'm clearly in the weaker position, here. But right now, that just means I have less to lose. So here's the deal. If I don't get a trade from you that gives me a monopoly, I'm going to sell all of my properties to [brother's name] for $1".

Dad didn't like that at all, and there was no trade. He also probably didn't expect me to carry through, but immediately after, I sold all my deeds to my brother for a dollar, and my dad lost any chance whatsoever of winning the game. Dad isn't speaking to me right now. Was that a supremely jerky move to play? Yup. I'm feeling a little vindicated, though, for not letting myself be pushed around when I was the little guy.

But will anyone ever want to play Monopoly with me again? I kinda doubt it.

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45. Mean What You Say

This just happened last week. I got home from working out of town Thursday night and my wife warns me that there is a problem with my seven-year-old daughter. "Beth" comes in and I can see that she has a few bug bites on her face and one of her eyelids is a little droopy. She feels fine though. I am off work the next day and my wife is going to the office.

I wake Beth up for breakfast and her eye is now much worse. It is more than half-closed and a little red. She still feels fine. As soon as the doctor opens, I call them and they tell us to come in. We get there and I go to check in. The receptionist that I have never seen looks at my daughter and says, "Oh. My goodness, what happened?" So I respond as a joke, "Eh, she got out of line,"

I know! It’s horrible. I’m sorry! I have a weird sense of humor and I’m a bit socially awkward. Anyway, we all smile and giggle before we head to the waiting area. Soon we are called in. The check-up goes as expected. It’s a reaction to the bug bites and he tells me to use some over-the-counter, Zyrtec or Benadryl. Then there is a knock on the door and the doctor steps out.

He comes back in a few minutes later and says that the authorities would like to talk to me. The doctor is angry. We all head to the doctor’s office to talk. There is a male officer and a female officer. The woman starts making small talk with my daughter and asks if she wants to go in the other room and read a book. My daughter has an irrational fear of the authorities from when her older brother would threaten to call them whenever she went into his room.

So she says no and buries her face in my side. The officers then tell me that it is better that she is in another room. I saw one of Beth’s cheer coaches bring her son in soon after we got there and mention that she may still be there to watch her. The doctor, still visibly angry, goes to check and she is, so Beth goes to sit with her in the waiting room.

The officers explain that they have a report of possible child mistreatment. The doctor explains that this was a simple misunderstanding. He just examined my daughter and there is no mistreatment. I now realize that it is the receptionist that he is angry with. She makes an excuse and leaves the room. He says that he thinks he has to let her go.

He says this is the second incident in two weeks. He says that her bad judgment got his practice and the entire executive park closed for four hours last week and his neighbors now hate him. The officers are apologetic but say they need to do a full investigation and ask if I can come to the station. A friend comes to pick up my daughter, who is freaking out at this point.

We get to the station (they allow me to drive there myself), and my uncle, a lawyer, meets me there. They are apologetic and say they already know what happened but a full investigation and report need to be done. They say it is a minimum of 3-5 days, maybe longer. I call my wife, who goes ballistic. The county attorney says that they normally seek restraining orders in these cases, but if I sign an agreement to stay away from my daughter until the investigation is closed they would not seek one.

My uncle recommends this too, as the restraining order would be on public record. I stay at my brother’s for the weekend and schedule an out-of-town trip that I really don’t need to make for this week. I can’t wait to get home to see my family and sleep in my own bed, but I’m pretty sure my wife will have me on the couch for a little while.

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46. Parenting Is Hard

I go to this "mommy and me" thing every week with my daughter. Not because it’s my kind of thing, but because my mother-in-law paid for the membership for a year as "a Christmas gift" to my one-year-old. In other words, she doesn’t think I am socializing her grandchild enough and this was her way of passive-aggressively correcting my parenting.

Anyways, we go to this thing every week for an hour, and all the Pinterest moms are planning themed birthday parties and discussing screen time and sharing gluten-free recipes while their kids stare at each other. But all these kids know sign language, and I thought that was pretty darn cool. So I start looking into this and try teaching my kid some basic signs for basic needs, and it’s working!

Suddenly, my tiny human who otherwise could not effectively communicate with me knows how to say "more" and "all done" and "drink"! She can call me mom and my husband, dad! Wow, thanks Pinterest moms! I take back all the stuff I talked about you to my kid on our weekly drives home. Well, today with my husband out of town, I didn’t feel much like cooking.

Since my daughter is pretty laid back at restaurants, I decided to go out for a quick dinner. The kid loves French fries and so do I, so we hit the local burger joint and I order a drink, a burger with fries, and a side of fruit. The server brings a little styrofoam cup with a lid and a straw filled with water for my daughter, and I set it out of her reach so she doesn’t hulk smash the styrofoam and make a mess.

So of course every time she wants some, she signs "drink". And every time she wants my attention, she signs "dad" because apparently, the slightly different sign for "mom" isn’t as fun for her. Ok, whatever. Well, I notice a couple of tables away, there are a couple of women who are also signing to each other but they’re looking over at us and snickering.

I’m like okay, I did like four quick Google searches, maybe I botched some of what I taught her. It’s fine. But then as the women are leaving, they stop by our table and one of them lays her iPhone down with a message typed out for me to read. It says something to the effect of "She’s calling you ‘dumb’ and telling you she wants to drink alcohol".

I’m like... wait... what? So she continues to show me that I have in fact taught my daughter the wrong signs, that there are different signs for "drink (non-alcoholic beverage)" and other drinks, and by balling her fist up instead of using a flat hand at her forehead, my daughter has been calling me dumb instead of dad, which was already wrong obviously since I am her mom.

I can only imagine what the Pinterest moms would’ve done had I shown up next week with my kid asking to guzzle pints.

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47. Out And Proud

This happened around five minutes ago. I feel so nervous right now. I’m 17 years old, and I’m bi. My family is very religious and most of them are prejudiced as heck. Today, we had to go to church. Now, for some background information here, I’m considered "the perfect Christian girl" and it sucks. I have to pretend to be someone I’m not just to satisfy many of these people.

Today I was in a really bad mood, and when my family and I went to church, they started talking about LGBTQ people. Nothing out of the ordinary. I don’t know what came over me, but I started to defend them. Definitely didn’t look suspicious. When I was in the middle of an argument with an adult, this kid says, "You sound so gay right now defending those abominations". I just snapped.

I said, " I am bi, you ignorant idiot". Best way to come out. Anyway, the realization didn’t hit me until five seconds after. Currently, I’m in a bathroom typing this. As for the people at church, we had a little talk. They said that this news wasn’t very pleasant in the slightest, but I convinced them to think about giving LGBTQ people a chance.

Some apologized to me, but others looked at me differently. My mother said she actually supports me. Not exactly a mistake in the sense that I’m happy with who I am, but yeah…would have done that differently.

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48. Missing Persons Report

For background, I usually make the bed in the mornings, but I didn't yesterday morning because I was running late. I went to see my dad yesterday, but my wife wasn't feeling well so she stayed home. I got back at around 8:30 and couldn't find her anywhere. I checked the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, everywhere, and I just couldn't find her.

Her wallet was there so I figured she just went out for a walk, which is normal since we live in a big city that's active into the night. I started getting worried at around 9:30 because she also wasn't answering her phone. I called a few of her friends and asked if they'd seen her, but none had. I called her parents and asked them if they knew where she was, which led to them freaking out because no one could find her.

My father-in-law told me to track her phone, so I went into her Apple account and it told me that her phone was in our apartment. I turn on the find my iPhone sound and start running through the apartment thinking I should call the authorities. I hear the sound coming from our bedroom, so I go in and start tearing the room up…when suddenly my wife pops up from the bed and asks me what the heck I'm doing.

Turns out the small lump that I thought was just a pile of blankets since I didn't make the bed that morning was actually my wife, who went to sleep early because she didn't feel well. She sleeps with earplugs in so she didn't hear me in the apartment. I had to sheepishly call her entire family, own up to my stupidity, and apologize for terrifying them.

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49. Regular Old Embarrassment

I work at a popular coffee shop in Canada, and have been here for the last two years. Most customers who come here a lot don’t have to order, because we already know it. One guy who comes in orders something distinct, and was very nice to me when I first started. His order was the first I memorized. For example, he orders a large and a medium coffee but sometimes would just get a large.

He came in today for the first time since I started working again from time off. I told his order to the girl working the counter with me, listing the large and medium coffees, but he ended up just getting the large. Afterward, my manager told me he wasn’t getting the medium anymore because it was his wife's order AND SHE HAD PASSED.

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50. Me And My Big Mouth

This happened a couple of weeks ago. So I sometimes drive for rideshare companies to make extra cash and keep me off of the couch. I live in a touristy area that booms during summer months and vacation rental homes are common. So common that I sometimes do pick-ups and drop-offs at the same homes for different people week to week and family/friend groups of people renting the homes are the norm.

One particular day, I dropped a guy off at a beautiful home near the beach that I had just picked a guy up from just an hour or two prior. So as we arrive I mention this to the rider: "Hey, I just picked one of your buddies up from here about an hour ago". Rider: "No, must be the wrong house". Me: "Nope, he walked right out of that side door. I dropped him off at a bar. His girlfriend is still in there though, she stayed behind".

I had seen her kiss him goodbye at the door but didn't mention this to the rider. "You guys having a vacation?" Rider: "This is a family-owned home, it's been in my family for years and we don't rent it out. Nobody lives here but my wife and I and I've been in New York for work for the past four days". Awkward silence as we both come to the realization.

He got out and I drove away, scolding myself for having such a big mouth.

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51. Wowwww

I seriously can’t believe I had to watch this happen. A family member got tricked into adopting three children because her "friend" was dying of Stage 4 cancer. Miraculously, after the adoptions went through, the "friend" started to get better and bailed on her family by moving to another country. Now my family member is a single stepmother with three kids that hate her.

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52. That’s On Me

With a 15-year-old boy in our house, my husband and I have grown used to the *knock knock* *laptop screen slam* "JUST A MINUTE!" *scramble scramble* "....Ok" dance. We have grown used to silently replenishing his room with tissues almost daily. We have grown used to herding the two younger ones to the downstairs bathroom while they wonder why their brother is taking so long in the shower.

We have even grown used to the occasional tightly bundled sheets or towels in the laundry hamper with a sticky note on top reading "wash separately". But there was one big thing we did not anticipate. We did not anticipate that the minute everyone else was out of the house, the living room would become fair game. Having driven halfway down the block without my phone, I decided to just walk back to my house because parking in my weird driveway takes more time than the walk.

I unlocked and opened the front door in the span of a couple of seconds. This was my mistake. How could I be so careless as to expect to be able to just open my own front door? What was I thinking? I should have knocked. I should have pointedly jangled my keys for 30 seconds before unlocking the door. I should have worn a cowbell.

Anything to prevent me from seeing my darling offspring, my beautiful baby boy, my only son, pants down, humping the couch through a strategically placed towel. WHY?

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