Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
this actually reminds me of when i was in second grade and it was snack time but we had been misbehaving so they gave us assigned seats on the rug and i had to sit next to this girl who’s snack was mangoes but i didn’t like her because she bullied me so i told the teacher that i was allergic to mangoes and i couldn’t sit next to her and my teacher was like “oh it doesn’t say anything about any food allergies on this paper right here you might have to update the school nurse on that” so i went to the school nurses office and she called my mom and my mom was like (and i genuinely have no idea why) but my mom was like “yeah sure she’s allergic to mangoes” so then the school had on paper that i was allergic to mangoes so at this point i was like in wayyy to deep so i just pretended to be allergic to mangoes for the next 5 years like i went full throttle into this lie i even came up with a backstory to explain how i found out i was allergic to mangoes it got to the point where even my parents just genuinely believed i was allergic to mangoes until one day when i was 12 i just came clean and explained the story to my parents and they where like “yeah that sounds like something you’d do” but anyway i never got to enjoy my new found mango freedom until about a year later when i was over at my friends house and they had mangoes and i was like “actually i haven’t had a mango in 6 years” and they where like “omg they’re so good you have to try some” so i did and they were sooooo good like i look exactly like the picture above i was gobbleing that shit up like cookie monster it was insane and anyway basically 20 minutes later i broke out in hives.
As I’ve previously mentioned, my grandmother grew up on a farm in Småland.
Her father had hired a farmhand to help with the cattle and the farm work. The farmhand had a disabled brother named Gunnar.
This was back in the 1930s, so Gunnar didn’t have any diagnosis or anything. But his body simply didn’t allow him to do heavy lifting and physically demanding jobs. He also seems to have had a poor immune system. And so he struggled to make a living. Working as a farmhand was one of very few career opportunities for a man with no (formal) education back then. (At least in that area.)
So the able-bodied brother asked if Gunnar could come and work on the farm, despite not being able to do hard manual labor. And my great-grandfather agreed to this.
Gunnar started helping my great-grandmother around the house. He was physically unable to do “a man’s job”, but he turned out to be incredibly good at “women’s” work. My great-grandmother had been feeling lonely, working alone in a big farmhouse all day. Gunnar didn’t just help lessen the burden of running a household. Him and my great-grandmother became close friends. They talked and sang and drank coffee in the comfortable silence between people who truly know, trust and love eachother.
My grandmother was an only child for most of her childhood, and Gunnar was her best friend. He always had time to tell her a story, or to play with her, or to just let her sit in his lap while he drank his coffee. And she loved him to bits.
According to my grandmother, nobody could tell as good stories and fairy tales as Gunnar. He had a way of bringing any story to life, to make you feel like you were there, with the prince in the enchanted castle. (He also accidentally put her off eating liquorice for an entire lifetime, but that’s a story for another day.)
I never got to meet Gunnar. He died when I was just a child. (My grandmother actually brought me along to the funeral.) But despite never having met him, I still feel like I know him, because my grandmother has told me so much about him.
The only thing she didn’t tell me about until very recently was his disability.
Because it simply didn’t matter. Not to her, and not to the rest of the family. He wasn’t “the disabled one” - he was just Gunnar. And if Gunnar couldn’t do heavy lifting, someone else could do it so what did it matter?
Gunnar had his own responsibilities on the farm. He was allowed to work and contribute to the survival of the farm pretty much on his own terms. He wasn’t forced (or expected) to do things that hurt his body. He was allowed to focus on the things that he could do, and he was respected for doing them.
Gunnar was not a burden. Gunnar was a skilled and diligent worker. He was also a good friend and a loving member of the family.
I wanted to share this story with y'all because I feel like this is a perspective on disability that’s almost never brought up.
So, rewind a little more than a year. I’d just started my new job, which is unimportant to the story apart from the basic nature: I get on the phone with people to help them open financial accounts, and I spend maybe 15-30 minutes helping them do so. It’s complex, the computer systems I have to use are finicky, and it’s laden down with a lot of bureaucratic red tape.
My very first day live on the job, I was a nervous wreck. There were so many things I needed to keep track of, and I was having to talk to people over the phone for the first time in years, which meant my voice dysphoria was at an all-time high.
Then I got this client. I don’t actually recall his name and I couldn’t tell it to you even if I did, so let’s call him Bob.
Bob was elderly and had lived a hard life. He was transferring the contents of his pitifully small 401k from Walmart into a more accessible account, and I was helping him set that up. He came on the line cranky and more than a little paranoid. He asked me repeatedly if we were going to tell the government about his money, grumbled at me about the information I had to collect to get the account opened, made a few political statements with which I heartily disagreed. It was not a bad call, but I was definitely on edge.
Then it came time to set up a beneficiary on his account – someone who would inherit the account if he passed away.
And he paused, and then he said, “My daughter.”
I asked for her name and date of birth for the listing, and Bob told me. But then he went on.
“I want to tell you about her,” he said. “She’s very special to me.
"You see, I didn’t always have her. Years ago I had a son. And my wife and I, we loved our son so much. He was our perfect boy. We watched him grow up, he made it into college, he got a job. I never went to college, you know? But he did. I was so proud of that.
"Then, one day, he disappeared. Stopped calling, stopped visiting, stopped everything. Six years, we didn’t know what had happened to him, if he was alive, if he was dead, nothing. It was…”
He paused there, his voice creaking like it was about to break. I could see where this was going, and I was rapt.
“Then we got a letter,” he went on. “From her. She told us everything, explained it all. That she was–” He paused, then said “transgender” as if it were a foreign word that he wasn’t entirely sure how to pronounce. “That he’d – she’d – disappeared like that because she was afraid of what we’d say. What I’d say. Maybe what I’d do. But she missed us and she wanted us to get to know her as she really is.”
He paused there, pretty clearly waiting for my reaction. I said something – I barely remember what – about how scary it must have been for her, and how hard for Bob and his wife not to hear from their child for so long.
“It was,” he agreed. “But you gotta know this. I love my daughter.” He said it with his whole being, with every bit of power and meaning that his thin, aged voice could hold. “I love my daughter, and I’m so proud of her. She’s getting married next month, and I thank God for letting me live long enough to walk her down the aisle, just like every girl deserves. She is the light of my life.”
At the end of a long, intimidating, tiring day, his fierce love for his trans daughter took my breath away. I’m always going to remember Bob – remember how he wasn’t perfect, wasn’t progressive, didn’t really know the etiquette or the language, but how deep and intense his love for his daughter was. How he told this to me, a stranger, as though daring me to say even the slightest rude word about her.
There is love in this world. Sometimes, it comes from the people you would least expect. It might not look quite like you think it will. But it is out there.
“I love my daughter,” Bob said, intense and emphatic, and I will never forget the sound of his voice.
Two kingdoms have been at war for centuries over a single piece of land. A simple hill which housed a magical well. Its waters are said restore health and happiness to those that drink them.
The kings of both kingdoms are both getting old and sick. Both have vowed to never rest until the land is theirs. Both desire some of the waters of this fountain, so their health may be restored and they can continue their fight.
They order their respective children, the prince of east kingdom and the princess of the western kingdom, to secretly undertake the long journey to the front lines to sneak up the hill and retrieve some of the water. Secrecy is a must, lest their enemies move against them.
Alone and in disguise the prince and princess travel their lands. They see the poverty and sadness that the constant war has brought to their kingdom and their people. Their hearts grow cold and hard toward their enemies and the havoc they brought.
In the dark of the night they sneak past the front lines. All alone they climb their respective sides of the hill. Slowly, to not get spotted. Carefully so they dont stumble and fall in the dark.
By the breaking of the dawn they reach the top, and the prince and princess meet each other for the first time.
In their respective disguises, the prince sees this common girl, while the princess sees this common boy. Both declare their need greater, both speak about how their fathers are sick and need the healing power of the water.
As the day approaches they speak of many things as they try to make their case. They speak of their hate for their enemies and the damage the war has brought.
Yet the more they spoke, the more they came to realise many things. Their people are in poverty because of the high taxes their fathers enforced to fund their armies. The people are starving because all the food they grow is sent to feed the soldiers. Homes and villages are in disrepair because every able-bodied young man has been conscripted into the fight. Homes stand empty because family lines have ended on the front lines.
Both come to realise that their enemies are not to blame. The kings are to blame. Their selfish desire to possess and hoard the waters of the well.
How many have died to try and take this land? And if they did take it, how many will die trying to hold it from their enemies?
And would the people, who suffered so much in the name of their king, ever sample any of the sweet waters and see any health and happiness from the magic of the well?
Both conclude that, no, they wouldn’t.
And both knew that, as long as the selfish kings were in power, neither kingdom would ever know peace.
Prince Jack of the eastern kingdom turned his back on his father’s quest and left the common girl to the water. He would take up a new quest. For the good of his kingdom and all of it’s people. The prince would lead the revolution and remove his own father from power.
Princess Jillian of the Western kingdom left the common boy behind to return to her lands, call all of the loyal banners and people to her side that she could. She would not rest until she managed to remove her father from the throne.
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
a bit ago, I saw this post going around that talked about the way Frederick the Great took his coffee. and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. I mean, look at it:
[Image transcription:
“Frederick the Great used to make his own coffee, with much to-do and fuss. For water he used champagne. Then, to make the flavour stronger, he stirred in powdered mustard. Now to me it seems improbable that Frederick truly liked this brew. I suspect him of bravado. Or perhaps he was taste-blind.”]
this quote seems to be from “Serve It Forth”, a 1937 book by M.F.K Fisher about culinary history. it seem like a fun and interesting book! but…I can’t find many other sources that say that Frederick the Great actually drank his coffee this way.
there are some sources that say he drank his coffee with mustard, but some say it was with peppercorns instead, and a few others say it was with mustard and peppercorns. and a lot of different websites mention the champagne thing, either with or without mustard (and sometimes peppercorns), but none of them cite their sources
so, I can’t figure out where any of this is coming from
honestly, the most reliable source so far seems to be what’s listed on his wikipedia page, which mentions him drinking six to eight cups of coffee a day, “laced with mustard and peppercorns”. but I don’t think the champagne thing shot up from nowhere - I just can’t find the origin of that story!
ah, well. I’ll have to keep looking.
anyway, this is all to say that this is not an experiment in historical accuracy. I am not a historian, and although I have learned things about 18th century coffee preparation, I don’t really have a way to make it accurate, even if this really was the way that Frederick the Great drank his coffee.
what I do have is:
coffee that I got from Costco before the pandemic and still haven’t used up yet
Stardancer Sparkling Rosé that I got at the Korean grocery store for $2
and, lastly:
a cauldron
why? ehh, I felt like it. that’s enough of a reason.
let’s get cooking!
welcome to my kitchen!
as you can see, the countertops are as red as the blood of my enemies. I’ve been told it’s because this house was built over 50 years ago, and apparently that was in fashion back then.
and as you can also (kinda) see in the above photos, I have put one cup of champagne into the cauldron, and have started heating it up over medium-high heat.
(and I’ve put some in a glass with some ice, because hey, I might as well enjoy this, right?)
okay! up to temp, and I’ve stirred in about 2.5tbsp of the coffee grounds. it bubbled a lot, which was pretty cool to look at
…it’s really hard to figure out how this actually looks, because with the weird kitchen lighting and the darkness of the cauldron, it just kinda looks like…opaque sludge?
but surely it can’t be that. right?
it is still the general consistency of normal coffee, it seems - and god. the smell coming off of it is really something. coffee and hot wine…it’s not bad, but I wouldn’t call it good either.
(this is when the cats came running in, because they’ve started to associate the smell of coffee with them getting treats. this is my dad’s fault - he likes to give them a little bit of whipped cream whenever he makes his coffee, and they’re absolute whipped cream fiends.
they were very disappointed that I was making them no such offer xD)
anyway, about 4 minutes later, this strange-smelling brew is ready to be strained!
I started like this ^ with a strainer lined with a coffee filter, but tbh? that didn’t work well at all. it clogged and got stuck. so in the end, I took out the coffee filter, and put it through just the strainer.
it seemed to work okay! there’s some sediment at the bottom of the cup, but I don’t see any grounds, so I think we’re in the clear.
before I add the mustard, I’m going to taste it as-is, just to see what the champagne-coffee combo is all about.
…
huh!
okay, so…that. well, that definitely tastes. but I might have a problem here, because what it really tastes like, overpowering every other flavor, is…rust.
when did I last use this pot?
…have I ever used this pot?
I got this cauldron on…ebay? craigslist? I can’t remember, but I bought it online and picked it up from someone’s house probably seven, eight years ago. and in the time since then…I don’t think I’ve ever used it for cooking?
I know that I’ve seen other pots like this called “fire starter pots”, but now that I think of it, I don’t actually know what that means. and I feel like I should probably google that real quick? so give me a minute.
…
so, the internet seems to think that there’s a chance that this cauldron once contained kerosene, and considering how that’s pretty much jet fuel, I’m going to maybe make this coffee in something else?? jfc
I am going to add some mustard first though, because fuck it, that’s why
yeah, this isn’t much improved. I can’t really taste much over the overwhelming rust flavor.
welp.
okay! attempt #2!
I am lazy, and not willing to clean another pot today, so we’re using a pyrex measuring cup! and because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, we’re heating it up in the microwave!
(you can see just how much I’ve given up at this point. but it’s okay! we’ll get there!)
wow, it really foamed up when I added the coffee, which is interesting! I know it did that in the cauldron too, but it was harder to see, so it’s fascinating looking at it like this.
followed the same procedure as before - steep about 4mins, strain (I washed the strainer first, it’s fine), and now I again have a cup of champagne coffee.
now I can truly experience this!
…
interesting
by itself, this really isn’t terrible. it’s very warming, and I dunno if I’d drink it again, but…yeah, that certainly is something.
it’s tricking my brain in a weird way - it smells more like coffee than like wine now, but when I go to take a sip, the alcohol is what hits me first.
still, it’s not bad? it’s not overwhelmingly fruity - maybe it’s the champagne I picked, but this isn’t a huge conflict of flavors like I thought it would be. honestly, it’s pretty much okay. it’s just coffee with alcohol in it, and I am not mad at it!
so.
you know what the next step is. I know what the next step is.
let’s do this.
I’ve added about half a tablespoon of mustard. which is, for the record, a lot of mustard. at least, for this amount of coffee it is.
…
the smell…oh, the smell is horrible. but the taste is…improved?
the mustard seems to mellow it out a bit, somehow. maybe it tones down the bitterness?
I like to smell coffee as I go to drink it, but with this one I just can’t. I just will not. the second I tip it towards my mouth, I am overwhelmed with the scents of deviled eggs, coffee, and hot wine. and these smells do not mix well.
if Frederick the Great did actually like his coffee like this, I have some questions for him about the functionality of his nose, because jesus christ. it’s not a good smell.
but if I don’t sniff…it’s fine? it’s just black coffee, with a bit of an alcohol-fruit flavor, and some sharpness that’s not out of place. maybe like a mulled wine gone wrong?
this is better than the pumpkin spice ramen for sure, though. I don’t know if I’d do this again, but compared to some of the other things I’ve tried, it’s really not horrible.
it does look kind of sickly, though
the color is not appetizing. there’s sort of a yellow ring around it
drinking more of it…I mean, it’s like halfway to an Irish coffee? a really bad Irish coffee. made by someone who only has a loose understanding of what an Irish coffee is.
I wonder what it would be like with sugar?
…
okay. bad idea!
nope. nope nope. nope!
the sugar brought out the fruitiness of the wine! and now it’s clashing with everything! a horrific war going on in my mouth, each flavor fighting to see which is the strongest!
the winner: unclear. the loser? me.
I feel like I’ve learned something today.
final thoughts:
I did save some of the unsweetened Frederick coffee, and chilled it to see if it was better or worse cold. it was, in my opinion, mildly worse. I think the heat helped hide the wine taste, whereas the cold made it a bit more obvious what I was drinking.
I tried adding peppercorns and steeping them in it for a while when it was hot, but tbh, I couldn’t taste anything different, so I didn’t think it was worth mentioning in the main part of the post. and I’m still sad that I couldn’t taste it, because I love pepper :(
Frederick the Great sounds like a weird dude (affectionate)! but I feel like anyone would be weird after being forced to watch their boyfriend’s execution by beheading
like, really, that was a thing that happened! I am not joking! go read the wikipediapages about him if you’re interested in hearing about the tragic romantic life of this fascinating and probably-gay man
…I say “probably” above, but no, let’s be real here. straight people don’t say things like, “Fortune has it in for me; she is a woman, and I am not that way inclined.”
anyway, this has been fun! I’m gonna go eat some pasta and drink more of that cheap champagne.
Two identical infants lay in the cradle. “One you bore, the other is a Changeling. Choose wisely,” the Fae’s voice echoed from the shadows. “I’m taking both my children,” the mother said defiantly.
Once upon a time there was a peasant woman who was unhappy
because she had no children. She was happy in all other things – her husband
was kind and loving, and they owned their farm and had food and money enough. But
she longed for children.
She went to church and prayed for a child every Sunday, but
no child came. She went to every midwife and wise woman for miles around, and
followed all their advice, but no child came.
So at last, though she knew of the dangers, she drew her brown
woolen shawl over her head and on Midsummer’s Eve she went out to the forest,
to a certain clearing, and dropped a copper penny and a lock of her hair into
the old well there, and she wished for a child.
“You know,” a voice said behind her, a low and cunning voice,
a voice that had a coax and a wheedle and a sly laugh all mixed up in it
together, “that there will be a price to pay later.”
She did not turn to look at the creature. She knew better. “I
know it,” she said, still staring into the well. “And I also know that I may
set conditions.”
“That is true,” the creature said, after a moment, and there
was less laugh in its voice now. It wasn’t pleased that she knew that. “What
condition do you set? A boy child? A lucky one?”
“That the child will come to no harm,” she said, lifting her
head to stare into the woods. “Whether I succeed in paying your price, or
passing your test, or not, the child will not suffer. It will not die, or be
hurt, or cursed with ill luck or any other thing. No harm of any kind.”
“Ahhhhh.” The sound was long and low, between a sigh and a
hum. “Yes. That is a fair condition. Whatever price there is, whatever test
there is, it will be for you and you alone.” A long, slender hand extended into
her sight, almost human save for the skin, as pale a green as a new leaf. The
hand held a pear, ripe and sweet, though the pears were nowhere ripe yet. “Eat
this,” the voice said, and she trembled with the effort of keeping her eyes
straight ahead. “All of it, on your way home. Before you enter your own gate,
plant the core of it beside the gate, where the ground is soft and rich. You
will have what you ask for.”
Now Phil is damn near indescribable as a person. To be honest, if you wrote him as a character, no one would entirely believe it, unless you put him in a comedy show where reality is slightly twisted and therefore people can be much more… Phil-like. He is actually incredibly clever, but no one can really tell, because thanks to a very strong case of the ole ADHD (don’t @ me I have it too) he is also as impulsive as a sugar-high kitten and makes the sorts of leaps in logic that only the super neurodiverse who are connecting random shit together at the speed of sound and then forgetting what they started with can, which means he does not come across as clever; no, he comes across as Very High and also Very Dumb. He combines this with also being astonishingly kind and breathtakingly easily impressed, so he will respond to anything you say at all with the enthusiastic child-like wonder of an eager and delighted freshly-landed alien.
And he’s a standup comedian, which is how I know him. Weirdly, even though he has a billion completely fascinating stories, he never talks about them on stage because he doesn’t see them as fascinating. He once had to swim out to sea to avoid a pack of rabid dogs. He once fought a spider for an Oreo and lost. He once agreed to have tantric sex with a woman without knowing what it was, but assumed that the word sounds a bit like frantic so that must be it, and then spent four hours in a state of polite bewilderment and increasing horny frustration because he was too nice to say anything. He doesn’t think any of these stories are interesting or funny.
Anyway, he’s decided he wants to be an engineer, and so has gone back to uni. As part of this, his maths needs to be good, so he’s paying my husband to tutor him, because Steff is very good at maths. At the same time, though, because comedy gigs dried up somewhat during lockdown, he got a job in a call centre for a phone company whose name I shall redact for the purposes of this story.
Now, this company has a policy of doing a Big-Ass Weekly Meeting, and everyone has to attend over Zoom, once a week. Except, obviously, these meetings are very boring, and contain over 50 people at any one time, and most people are mute participants to the whole sorry affair and just count down the minutes until they can log off. Phil is no exception to this, so he uses the time to practice his maths.
On the day in question, a couple of weeks ago, that’s what he was doing. But Phil being Phil, he made something of an error.
Everyone has to have their cameras on, you see. But rather than muting himself as well, Phil decided to just turn down the volume on the meeting and then carry on with some sums. This itself wouldn’t be a problem, but for two things:
Phil, when he does maths, mutters under his breath to himself (”Okay but if that’s 2… can that be a four? That doesn’t seem right. Let’s divide it by that number instead, that’s probably it. Wait, is that balanced?” etc)
On this particular day, Something Happened.
Part way through his maths, Phil suddenly becomes aware that… something is wrong. Something is not happening that should be happening. A noise he hadn’t been hearing had stopped. He pulls the meeting screen back up.
Fifty people are silently staring at the screen.
This is weird, thinks Phil, and tries to work out what the fuck is going on. The screen is not frozen. The sound is still working. Fifty people are just staring into their cameras.
“So,” says his supervisor suddenly. “Is that everything, Phil?”
And Phil says, “Hmm?”
“…That’s great, isn’t it?” the supervisor says.
“Yeah,” says Phil vaguely, calling on every comedian skill and instinct he possesses to stay cool and not cry.
“Okay,” the supervisor says oddly. “Well, let’s move on…”
The meeting continues. Hastily, Phil messages a friend in the meeting to ask what just happened. The story comes out.
Turns out… the week before, Phil had had a phonecall.
Like so many of his customers, it was an old woman who didn’t know how the internet worked and was very confused, and honestly, was lonely and wanted to talk to someone. He gets a lot of people like that, and each time he’ll periodically say just the right scripted sentence like “Is there anything else I can help you with?” that means they can keep chatting to him and he can officially stay on the line if a manager decides to listen in, because Phil is extremely ditzy but really not stupid. Anyway, this old woman, Mari, had mentioned that she lived alone in lockdown, and she missed seeing her grown up kids and having a meal with them.
So Phil, being an extremely kind and exquisitely weird man, says “Tell you what, I’ll order you an Uber Eats if you like, on me.”
Which actually becomes a whole Thing, because Mari does not know what an Uber Eats is, and for a while thinks he’s saying he’ll personally cook her dinner. But after some back and forth, Phil gets her to understand.
“Pick a cuisine,” he says. “What do you fancy?”
“Well,” says Mari. “I suppose a roast dinner.”
“There we are,” says Phil cheerfully. “I’ll send you one.”
“Ooh, lovely!” says Mari. “And a bottle of wine, bach.”
“Sure,” sighs Phil, impressed by Mari’s gumption. “And a bottle of wine.”
So he does, and thinks that’s the end of it. And it is… until the day before this weekly meeting, when Mari’s glowing letter of praise landed on the head boss’ desk, describing what incredible customer service this young man called Phil had given her and how impressed and touched she was.
So, in this meeting, Phil’s supervisor, delighted with his worker, read out the letter. “I have the most astonishing piece of customer feedback,” he says, reading out Mari’s words. “I’m at a loss for words! In all my years of doing this job, of working in this field, I’ve never known such dedication, and such outstanding care for the customers! So congratulations, Phil, we’re giving you a gift voucher and we thank you for your work. Do you have anything you want to say?”
At which point…
Fifty people go quiet to listen to Phil.
Who, to them, is staring into the camera, intensely concentrating, and trying to speak.
“Sorry, Phil,” one person says after a bit. “I think your microphone is turned down. We can’t quite hear you.”
No response. Phil continues, apparently speaking, but unheard.
And then he stops, his concentration changing, and he stares back, now silent.
“So,” says the supervisor, unnerved. “Is that everything, Phil?”
“Hmm?” Phil says.
“…That’s great, isn’t it?” the supervisor says, trying to get SOMETHING out of this, his Weirdest Employee.
“Yeah,” Phil says vaguely.
Everyone collectively decides to move on.
Incredibly, this is not even the weirdest thing he’s done in that job, and I think his supervisor is as surprised as the rest of us that he hasn’t fired Phil yet.
characters who arent canonically gay but whose behavior just makes no sense unless you read them as gay
Ok story time. In high school my English class went to see a production of ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ attention local community theater. The acting was so bad that no one figured out that Brick was gay and once the teacher explained it to us we were all like oh that makes so much more sense.
i went to the dentist today and my dentist honest to god said “can i ask you a question…….what the hell is in your mouth”
it was in awe lmao
then the hygienist and assistant all came over to look too and they were like “wooooow” and my ass was sitting there like
oh my god i posted this and then went to work, and
story time
okay so to preface this, my hometown where i’m originally from is a really fucking weird place. like from the outside it seems like a normal suburban town, but once you’re there for awhile you get the feeling that’s something’s not…quite all together. a lot of people are really fucking weird there — so much so that that was a running joke in school growing up, that people in the town were just like that. everyone knew not to go out to the farm lands surrounding the town especially at night, we called it “the cuts” and people used to disappear out there all the time or get shot at by the especially weird people that would live out there. the news was and still is truly a thing of horror. every time i come back i’m regaled with even more stories of crazy shit that has happened there.
to put it in perspective we generally never had “normal crime” like robbery or anything like that when i lived there, though that did happen sometimes. the news stories were always like, “a kid was kidnapped by local residents and tortured in a house around the corner,” “a random person was chased down and shot for sport in a really nice neighborhood,” “someone was gored to death by a bull while out car shopping,” etc. (these are all real, btw). everyone does drugs and the whole town is located really close to a government site where they test nuclear weapons and chemicals and shit. this is how i grew up, in this bizarre environment.
i need to preface it this way so that you get that it’s weird. it’s a fucking weird place. i used to listen to the welcome to night vale podcast and make comparisons from it to my hometown, that’s how weird it is.
i only say this so you know that this town is where i got my orthodontics from.
all the kids in my town went to this one particular orthodontist. i also used to go to a dentist in town that a lot of people went to as well. i had a permanent retainer put on my bottom teeth after braces and no one had ever said anything to me about the model of retainer itself or it being weird type of retainer at all. i saw a ton of other people (mostly other kids that were my age at the time) that had the same type of retainer as me too so i never thought about it.
so i kept my retainer in — it’s never caused me problems and it keeps my teeth straight, why not?
however i went to a dentist for the first time in a metropolitan area now, and when he saw it in my mouth his literal first reaction was to say “uh can i ask you a question….what the hell is that”
LITERALLY the words that he said
which in hindsight makes almost too much sense. of course my town of all towns would put these weird unnecessary contraptions in kids’ mouths, and of course it happened so much that everyone just thought it was normal. that sounds exactly, to a T, like my hometown.
my permanent bottom retainer is apparently this prototype that is so rare that he’s literally never seen it before in his life, not in dental school, nowhere. it’s not that it’s an outdated type, it’s just rare as fuck. they were still staring at pictures of it on my chart in wonder when i left the office.
so just know somewhere out there, in a weird ass suburban town where they test nuclear weapons and a good portion of the residents go fucking nuts, there’s probably hundreds of people still walking around with this same contraption in their mouth that exists nowhere else in the world thinking, “yeah, that’s cool. that makes sense. let me go drink the definitely not-contaminated water now and never move away from here.”
This sounds like an X-files episode
Okay, so I looked into it and I think that the town is Tracy, California.
I looked up the bull-murder thing OP mentioned and Tracy seemed to be only town that came up with a matching case. Though the man didn’t actually die from his injuries everything else matches up one for one. So just to make sure that it was the right town I looked to see if there was any murder-torture of young people in Tracy, and unfortunately there was. It was a 17 year old boy who escaped and survived the torture. And just to solidify that it was in fact Tracy I looked up shootings in residential areas and there was one of a 20 year old man who was shot and killed in a nice neighborhood.
Okay, but I decided to look into Tracy more to find out more information about it and the town is super suspicious. There’s been a lot of murders and shooting in the town. Back in 2009 an 8 year old girl, Sandra Cantu, was kidnapped and murdered by a Sunday school teacher who said she had no idea why she killed Sandra. Another case happened in 2018 when four underage boys were shot and one was killed by four teenage boys. There’s a lot of news stories on shootings, homicides, and drug busts in that town. It’s a really cute town from the outside, if you just look up Tracy, California there’s a lot of really cute businesses and nice articles on sweet things that happen in the town, but if you actually look into it the town is really sketchy.
So yeah, this sketchy town with a military base, multiple homicides and shootings is maybe Tracy, California.
………………..yeah, you guys caught me
i grew up in tracy
also i have to add another person’s tags to this since it’s honesty hour because they’re hilarious and true
Honestly I wasn’t even surprised when I found out it was in California. Even less surprised when googled it and found out it was near the Bay Area. That sounds about right.
Apparently the motto is “Think Inside the Triangle” and I’m not sure how to feel about that.
So at work there is a soda delivery guy who comes in almost everyday to restock and though we’ve barely said a word to each other, we definitely Know Of each other. Well this morning I finally got a shift where I could sleep in but my dad was like Hey the cable guy is coming at 7 to replace the cable boxes and I was like alright whatever I’ll just sleep in but forgot there was a cable box in my room. So it’s 7 in the morning I vaguely hear my dad let the cable guy into my room to just swap the box and I wake up to see??? Soda Delivery Guy???? in my room???? Turns out his second job is working cable but wow here Soda Man is standing in my doorway and I’m wrapped up in a pink bunny blanket surrounded by stuffed animals like
@my-darling-boy I refuse to leave this in the tags, I’m sorry.
