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.
for years i have lived this lie telling everyone i am allergic to peanuts because i hate the smell of peanut butter and it makes me gag and makes my throat feel gross after eating it and so i don’t really like peanut butter that much but whenever i used to tell people i don’t like peanut butter they’d get all defensive like “peanut butter is amazing how do you not like it?!” and then i’d have to go into this whole thing to defend my taste buds.
but then i got tired of it and started telling people that i’m just allergic to peanuts because that way it’s not my fault that i hate the smell of peanut butter - it’s now like i’m a sad little baby who will never get to taste peanut butter ever in her life and everyone feels sad for me.
but the problem is that i really love peanut m&ms and so now i can only eat peanut m&ms when i’m at home in secret. the only person who knows my lie is my husband. and so at work this evening we had a small celebration for someone and they had peanut m&ms and i really wanted some but obviously couldn’t eat them in public because then people would know my peanut secret.
and so when we got home after work my husband tipped his jacket over and emptied his pockets and at least thirty or so peanut m&ms fell out of his pockets and he whispered, “i was sneakily accumulating them all night for you because i could see the pain in your eyes.”
When I was a kid, my mom was a judge and my dad was starting his solo practice, and they both worked full time. There were four of us kids between the ages of one and seven (the Just Us League) and no decent daycares nearby, so they hired a nanny. She had three almost-adult children, and on days when she couldn’t work, one of her kids would substitute. The oldest kid was named Bob, age 18, and he had just finished army basic training when this all went down. Bob did not have the good sense god gave a rock.
I have an older brother, Jake, who was seven; then me, Hellen, age five, then Seth, age three, and my little sister Gin would have been one. It was late August, and we were at our nanny’s house, though she was gone for the day. Bob was in charge.
Bob should probably not have been in charge.
Bob tried keeping us entertained with board games and tag and movies. Gin took a nap. Eventually he decided to get creative, and sat us down in the living room with a game and vanished into the garage. There was a smashing sound. And then some saw noises. And then some hammering. And then we saw him going around the house to the back yard through the windows, though we were too short to see what he was doing. And finally, he yelled to us to come out into the driveway.
Jake and Seth and I trooped out. Bob had both hands behind his back. He stepped up to Jake and revealed what he had in his right hand.
It was a wooden sword. It was clearly made from what appeared to be parts of a chair’s legs, cut down and nailed together. He presented this, and announced, “You are Sir Jake, the strongest knight!”
He stepped up to Seth and presented what was in his left hand. It was another wooden sword, smaller than the first, also crudely made out of chair legs. He announced, “You are Sir Seth, the bravest knight!”
At this point, I was practically vibrating in place, waiting eagerly for my sword so I could use it to whale on my brothers, as god intended me to do. I was therefore understandably disappointed to be presented with the business end of a garden hose and told, “You are Miss Hellen, the Water Fairy!”
“No,” I said. “I want a sword.”
Bob was confused. “But you get water magic! Magic’s great!”
“No.” I repeated, holding the hose. It had a spray nozzle set to jet. “I want a sword.”
“Magic’s great. Magic’s better than a sword.” Bob insisted. “You’ll see. Wait here a moment.”
And then Bob ran around the side of house and vanished.
We stood in the driveway. Jake and Seth poked each other with their swords. I spritzed them idly with the hose, trying to decide which of them would be easier to steal a sword from.
And then we heard a quiet wooshing noise, and smelled smoke.
We turned. As we watched, a line of fire rushed around the corner of the house, consuming a path of gasoline poured into the dry August grass.
We paused and considered this for a few moments. I raised the hose and sprayed a jet of water at the fire. It went out. We glanced at each other. Then we took off running, following the trail of fire, spraying as we went.
The fire led in a path around the house to the back yard. As we turned the corner, we saw Bob, clad in a bathrobe and holding a curtain rod, standing in the center of a large ring of burning grass. He cackled manically. “I am the FIRE WIZARD! Your puny swords are useless! Nothing but water magic can defeat me!”
I promptly blasted him with the hose. He spluttered. The fire did not go out.
I turned the hose on the fire itself, spraying a section close to us so that it would extinguish. As soon as there was enough room, Jake charged forward, brandishing his chair leg sword with a battle cry. Seth, always happy to be included, followed. They ran into the circle and began beating Bob around the kneecaps with their swords. I kept spraying.
Eventually, Bob the Fire Wizard was brought down and all the fire was extinguished. Seth and Jake continued to work on bruising Bob’s shins, and I quickly discarded the hose to lend my fists and extremely pointy elbows to the cause. Bob lay in the smoldering grass, probably regretting using such sturdy chair legs.
Once we’d all tired ourselves out and lay panting in a heap, Bob decided it was time for the moral of the story. “You see, a sword is nothing compared to the power of a little girl with **magic**.”
We thought about this for a few moments. Bob nodded wisely. Jake and Seth nodded back.
“I still want a sword.” I said.
there’s a lot of people in the tags and replies expressing several concerns, which I will address:
“Where was Gin?” She was sleeping in a crib on the sunporch. We did this a lot–played outside while she napped–because we could hear her if she woke up and started crying, but were less likely to wake her up. She slept through the whole thing and was totally fine.
“You can’t put out a gasoline fire with water.” At the time, my little kid brain assumed that any flammable liquid was gas, but in retrospect it could have been almost anything. It very well may have been something other than gasoline. All I know is I could extinguish it with a garden hose.
“What did your parents say?” A lot of swear words at a very high volume.
“Did you get a sword?” Yes. Lots. Here are a couple of them, and also my pet ringneck dove, Arson. You can see how this all may have had some lasting effect on me.
Is that a real bird?? :0
Yes, she’s real. This is Arson, her mate, Larceny, and their idiot children, Forgery and Fraud.
Arson lives her life constantly wishing she had opposable thumbs so she could light fires.
What a ride
The absolute mania of naming your pets after felonies.
Did I ever tell you guys the story about how my ex-boyfriend nearly became the first person to die in a duel in England in over 100 years whilst duelling my then-boyfriend??
Okay so. In the interest of their privacy I’ll be referring to them by the initials of their first names, so R and B respectively.
Now, I’m one of those people who has always somehow managed to remain pretty good friends with most of his exes, so after dating for close to two years, R and I break up, mutually, and remain close. I’m also pretty good at picking them, so when I get together with B a few months later, I’m pleased that neither of them are weird about me still being close friends with R.
Skip to like 7 months later. Me and B move in together, into a tiny, crappy house in probably the most toxic residential area in Europe. We had a view of a used car place from our bedroom window and a view of another used car place from the back bedroom window. There was also the soft, comforting glow of a chemical plant nearby, which I’m pretty sure gave the soil the same PH level as vinegar, but whatever. Rent was cheap, and they let us have our kitten, Renly.
So we throw this housewarming party. A bunch of friends are there, R included, and everyone is drinking and having a good time.
Now, some background on B; I dated him, which means obviously he had some weird interests. So he’s a history nerd, and part of being a history nerd means he has few really cool 19th century sabres and things. They’re mostly blunt, except for one, which he keeps sharp in case anyone ever breaks in. We were in a rough area, so it was a pretty good idea.
Unfortunately though, they’re all kept together.
So after a few more drinks R and B get talking, and they start to discuss the sabres - only to discover that they both have a background in fencing. They think this is fantastic.
That’s when they decide to duel. They both grab a sabre, very much convinced they’re blunt, and take to the garden for an impromptu fencing match.
So I’m standing there, the most sober person in the house, watching this happen and thinking maybe it isn’t a great idea. They give it a good go, they’re both pretty good, and everyone is cheering them on. It seems harmless enough, they’re joking about duelling over me.
Suddenly though, R stops abruptly, and says, with deadly calm; ‘Oh, I think you got me there.’
Before B can ask if he’s okay R has lifted up one arm and a huge gush of blood comes pouring out. Like, everywhere. This is like that scene from The Shining. Blood all over him, all over the ground, it’s a mess. B looks like he’s about to pass out, he’s already imagining how badly he’ll do in prison, and everyone else is too stunned to do anything. Turns out B didn’t pick up a blunt sabre afterall.
Then R faints. We get him into a chair and I’m fortunately quick thinking - I get a tea towel and wrap it around his arm to stop the blood as best as I can. I then call for an ambulance.
Obviously they have to send the police as well because ‘someone got stabbed with a sword’ doesn’t fly too well. So the ambulance crew arrives, and a police car arrives. When asked what happened I said ‘They were duelling and he got caught by accident’ the police’s response was a long pause, and then to just laugh and say ‘wear armour next time!’ (Can you tell we have white privilege???)
So I’m still in a state of shock whilst R is getting wheeled out on a stretcher. Apparently another police car overheard what happened on the radio and was so fascinated that they showed up ‘just to watch’ because it was a slow night. This is a cop car full of really young rookies, it looks like fucking Mumford and Sons just turned up at our house in uniforms.
During all of this our kitten, Renly, gets out because the doors are all open with people coming and going.
So it’s 2:00AM, and this is the current situation:
- B is crying because he doesn’t want to go to jail for manslaughter and also he’s worried he killed his friend.
- There’s a bunch of police officers in our kitchen drinking tea and eating our biscuits.
- Officers Mumford and Sons are in the used car place outside our house trying to lure our 14 week old kitten out from under a car.
- R is nearly unconscious in the back of an ambulance.
- The neighbours, who had previously been dicks to us, are now terrifyingly quiet because they think B is a dangerous man who goes about stabbing people with swords.
So I get into the ambulance to go to the hospital with R, who is full on delirious at this point from blood-loss and morphine. I was planning to have a fancy dress ‘Game Of Thrones’ themed birthday party that year, and the last thing R says to me before passing out completely is ‘It’s a shame he didn’t get my hand or I could’ve come to your party as Jaime Lannister’.
Anyway he gets to the trauma ward and he’s okay. He lost quite a lot of blood and needed a transfusion. He now has a big scar there.
He came over once he got out of hospital with pizza and we all laughed about it. We’re still friends.
He and B both tell that story to everyone who’ll listen, and I get to boast that I’m the pretty twink who had two men nearly fight to the death over me.
This just hit me. I’m so Southern my family has a matriarch and no one in the family knows for sure how old she is. We all also got into a heated debate about the existence of her glass eye (still not confirmed). She’s in her 90s- we think- beat cancer, outlived two husbands, had seven children and has outlived three of them, survived The Great Depression, and either her dad or her grandfather was a full blooded Cherokee Indian… possibly the tribe’s leader but no one really knows for sure.
She also once lit into my dad’s school bus driver, cussing him black and blue about how he treated the kids and didn’t realize she had a butcher’s knife in her hand until he RAN away. She didn’t have any more trouble out of him.
…I wish to know how and why this just occured to you, please
I had an eloquent reason but really what it boils down to is I think Mamaw is a cryptid. The running joke in the family is that Mamaw will be at the end of the world with the twinkies and the cockroaches.
I’m not sure it’s a joke anymore, I think it’s a premonition.
Two years ago one of my cousins wanted to bring her wife to thanksgiving and Joe was all “ew no way” and Mamaw stood her ass up and said “Who the hell do you think you are, saying who is and isn’t welcome in my house? This ain’t your house- you get out! I say who is welcome and YOU is not welcome. Now SCAT!” while slapping at him and then sat back down and asked my cousin if her wife ate catfish. Joe tried to come back in and she popped the tennis balls off her walker and threw them at him until he left
No matter how old Mamaw gets, her hair is still solid black. She still hasn’t gone gray and she’s never once died her hair. Her kids all have heads full of gray hair, and my father- her grandson- is starting to go gray. Mamaw? Nothing. I swear she looks exactly the same as she did when I was a kid.
Mamaw got Covid-19. She presented with symptoms and was rushed to the ER with a dangerously high fever and next to no oxygen. The doctors took note of her age (she’s apparently 93 as best she can guess) and her vitals and, well, Mamaw wasn’t gonna make it past Monday.
By Sunday night the fever was gone and she was complaining that the hospital didn’t get WWE and she was gonna “miss my wrasslin shows!”.
She was home and completely fine by Tuesday. By Wednesday she was calling up the anti-maskers in our family just to call them idiots and hang up.
Gods above, your Mamaw would scare Cthulu into submission.
Mamaw would probably fish Cthulhu out of the sea and fry him up along with the catfish
So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.
Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.
One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.
All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.
So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.
And Mr. Hargrove loved it.
It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.
Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”
And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.
Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.
One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.
That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.
And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.
And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)
So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.
Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.
Imagine showing up to work one day and people are like “jesus fucking christ there’s a corpse in here”, herd you to the back room and everyone who sees you also agrees that there is now a dead body where you are sitting, with the appropriate amount of shock and disgust about it. You figure it’s some kind of a prank that they’re pulling, but also the people that you know aren’t into pranks, or aren’t very good actors, are treating you like a corpse. They go weirdly back and forth between talking about you as if you’re not there, and politely asking you to stay still while they figure out who you’re supposed to call in case of a dead body randomly appearing.
Paramedics show up, study you thoroughly and agree that while they can’t see any apparent sign of death, you are, indeed, dead, and ask you to climb aboard the ambulance. You’re taken to the temporary corpse storage that hospitals have.
On the way there you ask them whether this kind of shit happens often, and while they won’t look at you, the paramedics agree that they’ve never had a talking corpse before, though they won’t question the fact that you’re moving on your own.
You’re eventually led to a morgue, where you’re shown a slab to lay on, and at this point you don’t really even question it, you just climb onto the Corpse Shelf and lay down, maybe have a little nap, with no idea what’s going to happen next.
Then you wake up to someone walking into the morgue, who has the shit scared out of them when you move, and they’re like “dude what the fuck, you’re not supposed to be here, this place is for storing dead bodies” and when you’re like “aw man sorry I thought I was a dead body” they have no idea whether you’re joking and they don’t care, you’re just chased out of there.
And you just kinda go home and take a shower, show up to work normally the next day and nobody questions it.
And basically that’s probably how those ants feel when scientists spray them with the Pheromone That Dead Ants Smell Like, and just hang out at the dead-ant-pile until the smell wears off.
I was waiting to find out what social issue this was going to be a metaphor for, so that ending really punched me in the face.
Ever since I got a job as a security guard I can’t take heist movies seriously anymore.
Why is that?
Accurate heist movie: The Team is sneaking into a high security facility. An alarm is triggered, they freeze, prepared to knock out whoever responds to the alarm. It takes 40 minutes for someone to respond. When they finally do show up, they shuffle along, annoyed, arms full of 16 bags of pretzels for some reason, and reset the alarm without bothering to check their surroundings. They report that the alarm went off in error. Security control starts a fight about the correct designation of the door. The guard announces that they’re leaving the alarm key in the alarm because it’s always going off for no reason. No one challenges them on this. They shuffle away, leaving an alarm key and several bags of pretzels behind.
The Team knocks out a security guard and steals their radio. The team mimic can perfectly replicate the knocked out guard’s voice. They get caught because they pronounced the name of the company correctly.
The Team disables an alarm. The only way to do this is to rip it out of the wall and disassemble it until it physically can’t make noise anymore. This very loud process is clearly heard by the posted security guard nearby, who rolls their eyes and text their supervisor that the logistics contractors are fooling with the alarms again.
The Team breaks into the facility at night. There they meet a single security guard who is chanting potential names for NPCs in their DnD campaign out loud while they do their patrols. They encounter a fire extinguisher. They pause in their chanting to check that it is properly charged and to apply a sticker that reads, “Anal use only”. This guy is disgustingly good at their job. There’s no way around it, they’re going to catch you. And you’re going to have to deal with the fact that you’ve been had by someone who has a supply of stickers that say “Anal use only” and who unironically wanted to name their NPC shopkeep Mammogrammus.
The Team attempts to bribe a security guard. This is its own post but know there’s no way in hell that would work.
The Team breaks into the high security room and disables all the alarms. Security control sends several guards to investigate why there are no alarms going off.
The Team attempts to break into the high security room but can’t because it’s randomly decided not to let anyone at all in today.
The Team steals a keycard with “””””unlimited””””” access to the facility and gets caught because the computer system that manages keycards randomly revokes access for no reason.
The Team walks past a security guard in broad daylight wearing T-shirts that say, “We are here to rob you”. The security guard does nothing, having seen several people in logistics wearing that exact shirt two days prior.
This sounds like a great movie, honestly
I will always remember that when I worked for a pharmaceutical company in IT, there were massive security procedures, systems with air gaps, locations with biometric scanners and metal detectors and locking revolving doors, but the highest level of security was a human being in a bulletproof proof room with line of sight to the door and a button. To /get/ to the door, you had to go through tons of other layers and badge access and identity verification, but the final lock was a dual physical key (which required two people to open) and a human being with a book of photographs and a button to push.
At the onset of the 2008-onward recession it became more or less impossible to get the sort of summer gig that college students traditionally get. I couldn’t get a callback from any of the area fast food restaurants, the babysitting gigs were gone, I drew blanks on waitressing, dishwashing, landscaping, car washes, summer camps, you name it. The big local summer attraction near me is a horse racetrack, and I put in apps for every position from betting clerk to horse manure removal tech. I got one (1) job offer that summer, and it was to be a security guard. I was a 19 year old girl with a perky ponytail, big ol’ doe eyes, and no experience or interest whatsoever in policing, so I genuinely thought I’d gotten the offer because they’d confused my application with someone else’s… until the first day of training.
Training consisted of a number of retired high ranking New York State Troopers very earnestly trying to convince a room of “dudes who desperately wanted to be a cop but couldn’t jump even that low hurdle” and also “one increasingly incredulous 19 year old girl who could only hear a loud high pitched note in one ear because she stood too close to her amps at the punk show last night” not to bring swords, shurukens, or butterfly knives into work.
We went over the “do not bring in your own weapons” lecture for the majority of day 1 of training. Day 2 was also “do not bring in your own weapons” for a lot of the day, then we moved onto “identifying the different types of fire extinguisher,” and wrapped up the day with “wasp stings.” Well, actually during “wasp stings” we had a sidebar when this one guard who looked like Ben Franklin raised his hand and shared that he, personally, took care of wasps by blowing their nests up with improvised gasoline-based explosives, so technically we wrapped up the day with “do not bring in your own weapons even if those weapons are to harm a wasp.”
Day 3 was a half day, where we reviewed everything we’d learned about no weapons, fire extinguishers, and wasps, and then we took a written test, which I finished with a perfect score in three minutes so Sargeant Minetti made me grade everyone else’s. After that, I was a full ass security guard; I picked up my fake cop uniform, badge(!!!), tiny notebook, strapped a walkie to my belt, and was given my assignment. My beat was very very literally the most public facing one that existed; while most of my colleagues were posted at gates that might never get opened for the entire summer, I had “the wholeass quarter mile of pavement abutting the chain link fence that separated the public from the ponies.” My responsibilities were simple:
1. tell people to move their rolling coolers out of the fire lane
2. take people with wasp stings to the nurse
and oh yeah
3. every time a clerk at a betting window in my section accumulated more than $10,000 dollars in cash, I had to escort them for ½ of a mile through the incredibly dense crowd of drunk people, any of whom might be interested in stealing more than $10,000 dollars, and get the money safely into the giant vault.
I remember the very first run i made. The betting clerk looked at me, the 19 year old responsible for protecting both them and $10,000. I looked back at him through the mirrored aviators that I’d bought at a gas station for 5 bucks because I thought it was very very funny and good fake cop cosplay. My walkie hissed ominously.
“…Uh, so if someone tries to take the money, what are you going to do?” He asked.
“Well, I get paid 12 bucks an hour, so… nothing.” I responded. “How about you?”
We quickly arrived at an understanding.
Two of the guards from my training group got fired that summer for bringing in their own weapons, and at least one of them had both a butterfly knife and at least one shuruken. Many more dropped out as they discovered that they would not actually be doing Die Hard shit. As for me, I did literally nothing to prevent crime all summer, but I also halfheartedly cleared a path through the crowd at the front of a very sad “St. Patrick’s Day In July” parade, which made me enough of a success story that they actually called me unprompted to ask if I’d come back the next year… with one caveat.
See, the next year I returned as a weathered veteran with a spotless disciplinary record, so they gave me three hours of additional training to get a certification to become a peace officer. As a result, from ages 20-23 (when my license expired) I had the same legal powers of arrest as a police officer.
Me. They just gave me that.
In conclusion, if you’re a highly qualified team of heistmen looking to rob an entity that accumulates wealth by convincing drunk desperate people to give them their money and you pick a fucking casino when the racetrack is right there, you’re either thinking way too inside the box… or you have a healthy fear of shurukens I guess.
Only valid response to this post, everyone else can go home.
There’s this ask reddit post about your weirdest childhood and the story is about this guy who was playing in the woods by a creek with his friend when a guy in full late 1800s formal clothing including a top hat just walked out of the forest, said “Hello boys!” and kept walking. This is why I want historical clothing so badly. The ultimate prank.
give someone something to think about for the rest of their life
be the ghost encounter YOU want to see in this world
This reminds me of my great uncle who used to hunt with a musket because he enjoyed the feel of it, and he also had an assortment of deer hide clothes he’d made or bought from local first nations, and he went out hunting when he was like 14 and got lost and came across this man in the woods and was like,,,,, can you help, i’m lost. and the guy looks him up and down and my uncle realizes he’d unintentionally dressed in all his deerskin clothes and a coonskin cap when the guy asks him, “how long have you been lost for?”
