My first week of college I broke out in tears because I didn’t understand why all my peers were such incredible douchebags.

Took me years later to realize it’s because they were mostly spoiled rich kids who didn’t actually want to go to college and thought I was an asshole for being happy and grateful to get to go to college.

Not a personal story, but a historical confluence I find interesting and rarely have the occasion to share:

There was once a German Calvinist teacher named Joachim Neumann. He was known for his hymns, and would frequent a valley of the river Dussel to seek spiritual retreat. At the time, there was a fad for Hellenizing one’s surname, and so Neumann (New Man) became known as Neander.

The valley (German Thal/Tal) was eventually named after him. Centuries later while excavating a quarry, the remains of an archaic species of human were found and subsequently named after the valley, giving us Neanderthals. Whenever the subject of neanderthal culture comes up, I can’t help but imagine them as Calvinists.

As for a personal story, as the family IT guy, I’m often summoned to troubleshoot issues with printers and streaming boxes. As often as not my mere presence seems to resolve the issue. Now you could say having someone looking over your shoulder would make you subconsciously more careful when entering text, or force you to think through the steps of whatever you’re trying to do, so you’re less likely to mess up. But we all know the real reason, the presence of a powerful tech-adept has appeased the machine spirit.

When I was around 9 or so I went on a road trip with my mother, grandmother, and sister. I believe it was the time we went to Savannah, Georgia. It was the second day of driving around noonish and we were thinking about getting lunch. At this point we were in southern North Carolina and for the past couple hours of driving we’d seen a number of billboards for some barbecue restaurant. So, the adults decided that’s we might as well try it.

Once we actually get to the place it’s a little run down and it’s also obvious that it used to be a Burger King in the 90s. Upon entering the little area that old Burger Kings had before the main room it’s clear that they’re using it as a kind of gift shop. However, it’s not a normal gift shop. It’s all pro-Confederate literature and memorabilia. We really should have left at that point, but my sister (about 1 year and 10 months old at the time) was getting pretty cranky, so we went against our better judgement and went in anyway. The food ended up being awful. The meat was overcooked and dry. Additionally, the only sauces they had were mustard and a mustard-based barbecue sauce.

Random story on my mind right now.

I just got the the US. So we found about these amazing thing called libraries and its free to the public, so… my mom tooks me and my brother there. I didn’t like books (other than like comics… probably due to my partial-aphantasia, which I didn’t know about at the time), but I saw they had computers, with internet access, which was new to us.

I saw kids playing games on it, I think it was flash games or something.

So anyways… we got library cards… and I used it to register on the thing and wait in line. Each session was 30 minutes, and once the sessions is up, next in line goes there. (adults and kids are in different sections) So I’m uo next. I log in, I don’t think I even know how to use it, literally never had internet before, so I ask my ABC (“American Born Chinese”) cousin, who was in the library with us, for help, so she kinda reluctantly did. But then after getting to the browser (I think) she left me and I think she just assumed I knew how to use a computer and just said something like “just look it up” or something…

But I literally have no clue what websites to type in, didn’t know how to do a google search…

So I kinda just sat there being sad lol.

Then like after I think 15 minutes(?) elapsed from the beginning of the session, she finally decided help me because my aunt told her to help me.

Wasted so much precious time lol.

Its mostly their attitude that pissed me off. So cold and just thought of us of no more than rural villagers, “peasants”.

These fucking ABCs, I think its the first impression I had of ABCs. Fuck you Tiffany, and fuck you Raymond. Pieces of shit.

I remember my aunt got busy so my parents had to temporarily watch over this Raymond kid (younger brother to Tiffany), DUDE WAS SO FUCKING SMUG, he bullied me while IN MY HOME, this fucking kid… He used his phone camera to take picture of me then use the photo editor to draw over it and make fun of me to send to his friends. I used my dad’s phone and called my aunt and complained, but she was kinda just like… “sorry 🥺👉👈”. I mean I still remember that incident all these years later, so my brain decided it was important enough to remember…

I mean to be fair, they were kids, so maybe I shouldn’t be that mad over it in retrospect, but I was also a kid at the time, and this fucking Raymond kid was older than me, what an asshole.

Never knew who to tell this to, so I always kept it to myself. Probably not the theme you’re looking for, but here goes:

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Edit: changed my mind. Redacted.