The Lets Read Podcast - 344: HE WAS THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY | 14 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 330

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Thanksgiving  & retail workersHAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?[e-mail] ME ON -►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/♫ Music & Cover art: INEKThttps://www.youtube.com/@inektToday's episode is sponsored by:- Betterhelp

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. So it had been a very busy Black Friday at the 7-Eleven. Now, we don't usually even do specific Black Friday deals. This was 2019, and we'd done that Bring Your Own Cup deal the year before, and plenty of people had arrived with cups for infinite refills this year, too, and we had to explain our store wasn't doing that promotion this year. Like every store, we had certain things on discount,

but nothing really worth getting excited over. Now, despite that, from how busy the damn store had been, you'd have thought that we were giving Doritos and Mountain Dew away for free. I'd taken the shift thinking that it couldn't possibly be that stressful. I've worked retail at Target and Best Buy on Black Friday, and holy God, I'd rather drop a 60-inch TV on my head than do that again. This really happened to a customer, by the way. Anyway, that's not the point of the story.

The point is that I've been rushed non-stop on my feet, and it wasn't until around 4 a.m. or so that I finally had a break where the store was at its usual, basically empty late-night state. And basically, what I'm saying is that I was so busy, so rushed, that I have an excuse for failing to lock the back door when I'd taken out some of the cardboard earlier. I should have been more careful, but I wasn't expecting the store to be so busy with only me, bugs, and January, this chick that I've been crushing on managing the store. And so, yeah, I left the back door open.

and you know when I said that the store was finally empty at 4 a.m. or so? Well, it wasn't. You see, a homeless, sorry, a seemingly unhoused individual had snuck his way in through the back door and was camped out in the small storeroom, helping himself to as many non-perishable goods as he could fit in his damn face. And by the time my co-worker January had stumbled across him after she went back there to restock the Cheetos, half the guy's face was blue from talkie dust. Now, she called me in immediately, and I rushed into play hero. This guy had been hungry, but not for anything healthy. He had been tucking into some twinkies and jerky and talkies and so much junk food that it makes me sick just thinking about it.

And my God, he had been necking so many warm cans of Red Bull and Monster Energy. He was a big, big guy, and he'd stripped off his winter coat and sweater, and at this point, he was just wearing shorts and a dirty white vest. Now, based on the little nest that he'd made for himself in the corner of the storage room, I think he'd been planning on actually bedding down for the night there. Now, I was a little taken aback, but all I could really say was, Hey, buddy, you know you've got to pay for that. And the guy just looked up at me and blinked, and I swear to God, I could see the moment it dawned on him that this stuff wasn't just free,

and he was going to be responsible for the cost. Now, I felt a little bad for him because he clearly seemed to be homeless and very destitute and probably on drugs, even if he was colossally fat and eating junk food, but I still hated to be the one to tell this guy who was obviously down on his luck, that he was liable for pretty much hundreds of dollars worth of snacks. However, then he stands up, and that talky dust was flying everywhere, and he points this big chubby finger at me and says, and how the hell do you expect me to explain this to my wife?

Now, once again, I'm a bit taken back. The dudes walked in and just sort of helped himself to our stock, and now I'm being angrily asked how he's going to tell his wife. I don't know, man. Maybe you shouldn't have eaten our snacks in the first place, I thought. And that's kind of what I say, only in a more tactful way. And then he starts screaming at me that if I hadn't wanted him to eat the chill, I shouldn't have left the door open as an invitation.

I guess he kind of had a point. I shouldn't have left the back door open, but if you see someone's house is open, you just don't go in and start eating their food, do you? And I said this to him, and he thought about this for a moment like the answer. It might have even been yes. And then this guy says,

you're not calling the cops, and you're not calling my wife. So I say, okay. We can avoid all that if you can pay for all the items you've eaten. and then we can just sort of make things work. Unfortunately, this guy said that this wasn't going to work for him. He needed to find a solution where the cops and his wife wouldn't get involved, but he wouldn't be stuck with the bill.

I asked him what he proposed, and he gave a few ideas. One, we made them the winner of our Black Friday sweepstakes, which is not a thing. Two, I go halves with him and pay for half the food, and then he could just about manage the rest. obviously no. And then his final offer was that he would pay for all the food he'd eaten as long as January would do a full strip tease for him first.

Having the crush that I did on Jan and not being able to hold back on white nighting, I told the dude exactly where he could shove his talkies before instructing Jan to call the cops and let our other co-worker bugs know what was going on. Jan gave me this look that made me think that my white nighting may have gone down well, so I was feeling pretty cool in that moment when I faced down Mr. Tockey Man. Now, I figured that we'd have an argument for a while until the cop showed up or bugs came to see what was going on. Instead, all 300-plus pounds of Tockeman came barreling at me with a speed I would never have expected from a man of his size. It was like Big the Cat had fused with Sonic and gotten all seven chaos emeralds.

And congrats if you're autistic enough to get that joke. Now, I'm not a small guy. but I'm not big either. I'm pretty average in every way, wink, wink. Now, anyway, distraction aside, I'm not big or tough enough to take the full brunt of being slammed into by this talky man's considerable bulk. His hefty stomach bounced me to one side, and I just went tumbling into a pile of Sharman's toilet paper. It could have been worse, I suppose. So then talky man bursts out of the door of the storeroom with me scrambling after him. I hear Jan screaming something. and then this huge crash that sounded like the sound of a body slamming headfirst into a now-locked back door.

It sounded like that because that's exactly what it was. This guy had tried to flee the way to come, but he didn't count on the fact that bugs had locked the back door while Jan was calling the cops, and so Tocci Man had charged head first into what he believed to be an open door, only to be sent flying backwards into a choke slam by the most jacked, roided biker of a co-rester. that I'd ever had the pleasure to work with. Now, I have no idea why we called him bugs, but he was an absolutely huge, muscular guy who was able to choke slam this homeless dude to the ground

and then pin him in place until the cops arrived. The three of us got into a bit of trouble for leaving the back door unlocked, but there was no camera footage showing who had failed to lock the back door, and we all agreed to keep that bit of information to ourselves, so the worst we had to deal with was just some lecture from the area manager

about mindfulness and safety. Now, the tocky man had faced some weird charges. He avoided a breaking and entering charge due to the back door being unlocked, and despite the sheer volume of what he'd eaten and the fact that he'd eaten it on the premises, it was dropped to a shoplifting charge which led to a fine and a suspended sentence.

Oh, and remember how I said he appeared to be unhoused? The dude was married with a wife and kids. I feel bad for him in a way. He seemed to be suffering from insomnia and some sort of mental health issues due to the stress from his job and had started taking Ambien and it was kind of decided that the Ambien was making him act a little crazy. And I'm not sure, though. And I'm not sure I can really blame the Ambien either. I think the guy may have just been hungry for talkies.

So to start off, my family's generally conservative. We're not like super big on politics or make it our identity or whatever. But if you had to ask, yeah, we kind of sway that. way. And the only member of our family who takes it a lot further is my uncle, who's my mom's sister's husband, he was a card-carrying red hat-wearing MAGA guy with the bumper stickers and everything. He's pulled away from this a bit now after all this stuff with a list, but we're not going to get into that. Now, the point is, my uncle is a card-carrying, devout Republican, and most importantly, a member of the NRA in an absolutely huge gun nut, and I say that respectfully.

Now, family Thanksgiving is normally fairly chill. My uncle might be one of the most zealous of us all, but he's also a very super respectful dude, and we're not the type of family who get into political arguments. Even with my sister, who was a lot more left-leaning, we have our differences, but we're a loving family, and I generally think that we, including my uncle, are all good people. And I could tell that there was going to be trouble at Thanksgiving in 2023 when my sister showed up with her new boyfriend. Now, for starters, you could see that he had a sort of effect on her. She'd done that whole blue and pink hair thing, which even she had always gently mocked.

But I know my sister well, and she kept shooting me these looks of like, I'm sorry about this, and had a kind of nervous disposition. Anyone else might have assumed that she was just referring to her weird new look, but we're twins, and I knew that she meant something else, and that something else was her boyfriend. Now I'm just going to call him Jack, short for Jackass. And right from the beginning, Jack was on the offensive. You could just tell.

He was very snippy and coldly polite with my parents, which put me on the defensive immediately. And the same with other family members. After the food was dished out and he announced that he was vegan, something that we had not been informed of at any point, despite mom sending the usual email out to any family members who might be bringing guests asking if they were any dietary requirements. And so Jack made this big fuss about being vegan, and my mom, bless her, went into the kitchen and went through all the damn boxes of ingredients to work out which food would be safe for him to eat as a vegan, as if it was some peanut allergy or something, while the rest of us all waited to get tucked in.

Now, Mom came back with this beautiful handwritten list of foods that were definitely vegan-friendly and handed it to Jack. I saw the list, and there was certainly enough food on there to have a decent meal. Jack looked it up and down, sort of sneered, and remarked that he'd starve if he only ate the vegan dishes, and so he guessed that he'd have to make an exception this time around. Now, you're probably thinking that he just dished up a vegetarian platter not vegan. No. This guy piled up turkey, ham, pigs and blankets, everything else the rest of us ate onto his plate, and I watched a meat.

He went into that meat in a way that made me certain that this man had never been a vegan in his entire goddamn life. What was the effing point? And I kept glancing on my sister and she just kept flushing with embarrassment. And so we're about two-thirds through the main course

and it's been going surprisingly well, mostly thanks to Jack stuffing his face with turkey so he didn't have room to speak. And we'd just been talking about regular things. I think everyone at the table, especially Uncle Ron, knew to avoid. any kind of political discussions. And then finally, Jack took a break from stuffing his face with meat and dairy and made the quip.

And it went something like this. He pointed out the front window towards my uncle's truck, which, if you remember, was very magified back then and then said, Nice truck, I saw in the driveway. Didn't know Mitt Romney was here. Mitt Romney. Out of literally any Republican you could have picked for the joke, he chose Mitt Frickin Romney. and we all just sort of looked at each other like, is this guy trolling? But my sister shot me this look saying, no, please just let it go.

And that's when I started to worry. Was this guy maybe a bit unhinged? Now my uncle, God bless him, paused for a second, and I saw his neck turn red with anger for the briefest of moments. And then he just laughed and said something like, Mitt Romney. Come on, son. You could have at least gone for someone cool like Hulk Hogan.

So then Jack says, well, I don't think being a maga is very cool in any way. And then started talking about women's rights and Roe versus Wade, something which I would note, most of my family did not support being repealed. And my sister put her hand on Jack's arm and just asked him to drop it and he shrugs it off. A bit too violently for my taste. And my sister, who's normally very bubbly and chatilly, just sort of falls silent. Now, I've got it in my head that this absolute chuckleful. Frick is maybe an abusive partner.

And so I give my uncle the look. He knows the one. It's the look I give him when I'm saying, Hey, Uncle Ron, me and you are going to screw with this guy, okay? And so Ron starts asking me how the shooting's been going, whether I've been hitting my goals at the range and when we're going to go out hunting again together. You know, completely innocuous things

that would only rile someone up who's going to have a problem with guns. And of course, Jack immediately leaps on this. He starts ranting about gun culture and this and that, and then he says, of course, it's sick just how anyone can own a gun these days despite obvious mental instability and clearly looks at Uncle Ron when he says this. Now, Uncle Ron knows that we're trolling this guy, so instead of getting mad, he just ignores Jack and start telling me all about the new firearms he's purchased recently. It was hilarious. and at one point he was just completely making up guns that don't even exist and also claimed to own a military-grade rail gun that required a train track to move. At no point did Jack call him out on any of this or call BS, just as we suspected. Instead, he starts going on about how concealed carry should be abolished in our state,

and if someone like Uncle Ron should be allowed to own, and it was some gun from Star Wars that Uncle Ron had claimed to own, I forget the name, and that he should at least be forced to let everyone know that he was carrying. Uncle Ron just very calmly smiled and said something like, Ah, son, if I'm going to protect myself with a firearm, then I hardly want the bad guy to see me coming. Now, Jack just got furious about this, and I'm not going to type out the whole damn argument, but it led to Uncle Ron losing his cool,

and they got into a full-blown screaming match about politics and Trump and Kamala and the rest of us just sort of sat there looking at each other like this is the worst Thanksgiving ever. And so then Jack gets so angry that he leaps up from the table, knocking his chair backwards. My sister again reaches out to touch his arm and calm him down, and this time he actually shoves her away. So now, of course, Uncle Ron jumps up too, and he starts screaming at Jack like he's a pathetic, weak little man and blah, blah, blah. And that's when Jack reaches into his cardigan, pulls out the pistol. that he's been concealed carrying for this entire Thanksgiving meal. Everyone just sort of freezes, falling silent.

Uncle Ron stares back at Jack, and a look of peace and calm falls over his face. Because despite being the biggest gun nut I know, Uncle Ron is clearly not carrying at a family Thanksgiving dinner. And so here he is, face down with a supposed anti-gun vegan meat eater who's now pointing a gun at him. And Ron just says, you don't want to do this, son. You don't want to throw your life away over some old man's political opinions. This isn't you, et cetera, et cetera.

And he really started trying to convince Jack that he was a good person, that he was better than this, time to prove it, etc. And Jack had the absolute gall to say that Ron was right. He was better than all of us, and he'd prove it by lowering his gun. And that's when something unexpected happened. From behind Jack, a huge vase came flying towards his head and exploded as it smashed against his skull. Jack then fell, tripping over the fallen chair, and the gun flew out of his hand and landed on the ground and I quickly went for it. Now, looking up, I saw my sister standing there, breathing hard and this absolute look of fury on her face.

Now, as I looked at the gun in my hand, I realized what she'd clearly noticed, which she went on to a explain. Jack, the idiot that he was, hadn't taken the safety off his pistol. He clearly had no idea how to use it, so rather than trust him to actually lower the gun, and just in case he suddenly realized the safety was on and reacted differently, my sister decided to just brain him with the vase that we'd inherited from our great Nana, and I think the old woman would have approved. Now anyway, my sister quite understandably broke up with Jack, and yes, of a very case, of the eventually lost the blue hair. And as a responsible gun owner, Uncle Ron reported Jack's misuse of a firearm to the cops, and now he's banned from owning a gun, I do believe. Now, my sister also managed

to successfully take a restraining order out against him and reported him for some other stuff, because, as it turns out, like I suspected, he had been an abusive partner. So we look back at that story and tell it with a comedy angle. Usually Uncle Ron doing the telling, but I'll tell you what, Finding out afterwards the type of things he put my sister through, psychological torture in particular, it made me wish that we were the kind of gun-toting, root-and-toot and Republican-trigger-happy family that Jack clearly accused us of being.

I'm not a violent person, but I do feel like at the very least he deserved to feel the fear of having seven or eight guns pointed at him to calm him down. So around 2015, I worked retail on Black Friday and agreed to be there from opening. Never, ever again, though. It was the scariest incident of my life, and that was before I was nearly killed by an old man wielding a pickleball racket.

And so the day started like any other Black Friday sales day. That is to say, all the staff were lined up like riot police, waiting for the doors to open, and the customers to burst in and start fighting like it was a mosh pit over their 40% discounted TVs, or whatever else these other people like to buy on Black Friday. I don't know, I'm not a retail worker. I'm a security guard. And so I was on the front lines here, as you understand, but I was the first line of defense against angry moms wanting cheap baby formula

or gnashing grannies trying to get their grandson a cheap Nintendo playbox or whatever, and then insisting that I'm hiding the imaginary product from her. And I could see the crowd was getting restless through the front doors. The poor outdoor security staff were working extra hard to prevent a stampede, or what we like to call a crush, which is basically a stampede of people who could literally crush you. And at one point I was sure that I saw the glass on the front door start to crack. Thankfully, I imagined that.

Now, we were all there, braced like we were ready for a riot when the doors were about to open, and I never felt more nervous in my life. I've worked Black Friday since, but this was my first time, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Now, let me tell you, when you see the footage of those riots and the way people feel, fight each other to get their little bargains, it's not an exaggeration. If anything, it underplays the severity of what it's like. The doors open, and a human ocean bursts into the store. Now, I won't name the big brand store that I work at, I don't want to get fired, but

pick one of the stores with footage of people going nuts over cheap televisions and discounted sound systems, and it's one of them. Now, each type of person you can imagine came bursting in that store that morning. He had the angry grandmothers with the sharp elbows and even sharper tongues, and he had the Joe Rogan wannabies who wrestled their way to the toy section trying to get the cheapest Furby or whatever boy's toy was doing the rounds. And then there were the big ladies trying to get their cheap hair dryers, and then all the types of everyone who wanted to get their hands on discounted 4K TVs and UHD players. Now, you can't blame them. Some of the prices were obscene, and if I hadn't been at work, I might have been right there in the crowd fighting my way through for bargains like

a rockem-sockham robot or whatever. But alas, I was stuck corraling the crowd down the right aisles trying to keep soccer moms from sucker punching deadbeat dads. And I'm pretty sure at one point, I even saw some IRL streamer streaming the whole thing. Now, it was chaos, absolute chaos, just a royal rumble of retail that is far scarier when you're on the ground than any of the footage can possibly convey. But let me try, though. These are some of the things that just went down that day. Two old men got in the fight over a bowling ball, which involved one of them smashing the other's knee out with said bowling ball. In the kitchen aisle, an angry mother of four got in the fight over the last blender, so she used the show model to try and knock her rival unconscious.

Now, this backfired, causing her to twist her wrist and the rival to swipe that blender out from under her. Two different customers got trampled, including a broken arm, and thankfully there were no death so. Quite possibly my favorite, though, was the two adult neckbeards who got into a fistfight over Magic the Gathering cards and ended up trashing the entire toys and games department by throwing each other against the shelving units. This also makes it sound like I wasn't doing my job, but trust me, I was. And so were the rest of my colleagues. If it wasn't for us, I'm convinced that there would have been deaths. multiple deaths. And the cops told us as much in the aftermath of the sale. There was so much damage,

so much carnage that we ended up losing more stock to damage than we even sold. Now, this might all sound comical and even silly, but I want you to consider this. Humans were willing to behave this way towards each other over a little bit of money off of a TV. One man broke another old man's knee with a bowling ball, like I said, and that injury will probably last for life. The blender to the head. Thankfully, that didn't cause damage, but imagine if it had shattered. That could have taken someone's eye out. And on top of that, we've got these absolute clowns who trashed an entire aisle of children's Christmas presents because they wanted to fight over some playing cards.

It doesn't sound so silly and funny when you look at it like that, does it? Working security during Black Friday really severely challenged my faith in humanity. I had to start going to therapy just to convince myself that the majority of people aren't selfish, awful humans. and I'm not convinced that's untrue. The therapy might be for other stuff as well. So when you see these crazy videos online, remember, these aren't just one-off events that happen in far, far away Walmarts. These are your neighbors, your friends, your coworkers,

and they're prepared to crack you over the head with a 4K monitor if it means they can save 20 bucks on that Nintendo Switch they've been coveting. Now, I'm convinced that somewhere, Satan's watching a Black Friday Madness Compilations, on YouTube and just laughing his butt off. I just wanted to send this in to say, be careful if you ever go Black Friday shopping. I'd hate for you to lose your head over a Superman action figure

or some rare Charzard, because know this. I've got dips on that fella. So, funny story, my name is also Joel, weirdly enough. And this story didn't take place on Thanksgiving. It was the day before, but the outcome of the story is probably the thing that I'm most thankful for. I have a pretty overprotective mom, and I mean this in a very loving way.

She's the best mom ever. Now, she didn't have the easiest time raising me and worked her butt off to be the best mom she could. Now, things are better now, and she has a wonderful husband, my stepdad, and we're a tight family. But she worries about me, and in particular a couple of years ago, she read an article about how the night before Thanksgiving has the highest rate of DUIs out of any night in the year. Now, I'm not sure if that's just Michigan, the state that I'm from, or everywhere, but apparently it's a fact. And so the year this happened a couple of years ago, I was due to work the night shift at Kroger that Wednesday night. Now, Mom got really, really worried about this DUI thing, and she found

out that it was so prevalent that it had been nicknamed drinksgiving. Now, she wasn't worried about me drinking and driving, of course, but she was worried about me driving to and from work late at night and some drunk idiot crashing into me on the roads. She got so worked up about it, in fact, that eventually I promised her that I just walked to work and back that evening, even though it was a 40-minute trek either way. This seemed to placate her massively, and I thought, you know, the walk could actually be good for me anyway. The first half of my shift that night covered up until closing time, and then the second half

involved restocking and cleaning and all the fun stuff that goes on at Kroger behind the scenes. Nothing really of note happened on the shift, except I did notice some guy come in absolutely trashed, staggering around and slurring his words. And I made sure that I was close to the checkout when he came to pay, because my younger female colleague was out on checkout, but he was fine, just very wrecked. And then I watched with this mounting horror I felt as he left and walked across the parking lot and got into the driver's side of his vehicle and swerved his way out of the lot. Now, for other things, I would feel like a bit of a narc or a bit of a pest, but I did get the guy's registration and call it in, so hopefully the cops pulled him over.

Drunk drivers can get effed, in my opinion. And so my shift was done, and I started the long, cold walk home. I was about halfway back listening to some tunes on my iPhone, and I admit, it was Taylor Swift. I am actually secretly a big fan, just sort of gazing at the sidewalk to avoid any puddles or ice or anything like that. And that's when I hear the sound of squealing tires and erratic driving, and I immediately look up. There was a car swerving back and forth across the road, and I had almost no time to react. The vehicle erratically spun towards me, and with a burst of speed, mounted the sidewalk and crashed straight into me. Now, it felt like I had moved in slow motion, like some kind of action movie.

I saw this muscle car barreling towards me, and I dove backwards into the doorway. of some store. The car slammed into the bricks, and I heard the sound of crumpling metal and cracking concrete, but I felt very little pain, and I was sure as sure could be that I was either about to die, or maybe my spinal cord had been severed, and I was paralyzed from the waist down. It took me a moment to realize that the car had stopped literally an inch from me, thanks to the depth of the doorway and the strength of the brick. I was shaking and crying and collapsed forward onto the hood of the car. I barely registered when the guy leaps out of the vehicle and was yelling and crying to himself, asking if I was okay, if I was hurt, if I could feel my legs, etc. Now,

eventually I managed to calm and began talking to the very calm, very clearly sober driver of the vehicle. It turned out that he hit a patch of black ice, lost control of his car, and in trying to correct it, it ended up spinning towards me instead. The coughs came, of course, and he happily took a breathalyzer test, which showed a 0.0 alcohol level in his bloodstream, which was nice to know. And it totally wasn't this guy's fault at all, I guess. He was just so, so apologetic. And he kept insisting that I go to the hospital to get checked out, but I knew I was fine, except for a few cuts and grazes from the cracking bricks. So instead, he paid for an Uber to get me home and gave me his car to.

to stay in touch. My mom sent him an email about a week or so later, thanking him for being so kind and telling him that she hoped that he didn't hold any guilt when I sent him something similar. Now that Christmas in the mail, I received a check for $1,000, and on the card he wrote something like, your life is worth so much more than this, but it's the least I can do. And so, you know, almost being crushed to death by a muscular car like that didn't end up to be so bad after all. But let me tell you, those moments when the vehicle came blasting towards me, when I thought it was a drunk driver or worse, someone trying to hit me, that was the goddamn scariest moment of my life. And every year on Thanksgiving, I make sure to give thanks for surviving that terrifying ordeal. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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So some years ago now, myself and my then-boyfriend went to Mexico City on vacation. It was absolutely beautiful, and we followed the tourist guides and kept ourselves as safe as possible. I made sure that my boyfriend and I rarely separated. Well, he made sure, really. He was a protective guy and deeply cared about me and my safety. And as you'll notice, sadly, I'm referring to him in the past tense. I don't know that he's dead, but I've obsessively read and researched similar cases. to have a good idea of what happened to my beloved Mario.

Now, we were visiting a large mall just outside of Mexico City, and it had everything you could want. Cheap technology to the latest fashion, to wonderful old vinyl records. We both grew up in poor, rough parts of Mexico, and this vacation was a dream for us, really. We've been exploring, like tourists, convincing ourselves what it would feel to be like the people who could just visit the country and spend time in the safe areas,

as avoiding the cartels and the violence and the burning tires and the screaming and all the parts you don't want to hear about. Now, visiting rich parts of Mexico City was kind of like our Disneyland. Now, the night before, our tour guide had taken us to the Capolitas out in the wilderness. He said it was little known by Taurus, but because we were locals, he was happy to take us to visit. It was the shrine to Santa Muerta. It used to be common to find public affrendas that locals would come to in print, and there would be tributes to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Santa Maria, or Saint Jude, Santo Juan Diego, etc.

And many classic saints, but in recent years, worship and tribute to Santa Muerta has flourished throughout Mexico. We are people living in the shadow of death, and why should we not turn to Lady Death herself to hear our prayers? Death is invited upon us all, Dios Mediante, and should not the Madre de Muerta receive her tribute. Will death not smile upon us if we kiss her feet and pray for bliss in the inevitable? And that is what many believe, anyway. Many others believe that the cartels have drenched our country and blood and forced Santamuerta into the spotlight. I don't know. I just know that myself and my

dearest Mario followed our guide out into the desert that night and we made our offerings in front of Santamuerta. And then within 24 hours, I never saw Mario again. We were exploring. We were exploring the mall. We didn't have many pesos to throw around, just window shopping was fun and we would dream, looking at the latest fashion, trying on risque dresses for Mario's approval, checking out the latest iPhones and browsing the latest records. We felt like shiny, happy people like the song goes, and then Mario needed to go use the bathroom. It was the first time all day that we've been intending to separate and I wanted to browse the lingerie store and maybe buy something secret for him, so it seemed like the perfect time.

I found myself caught up browsing the bras and panties and fascinated and kind of horrified at how expensive it was to buy a piece of fabric that barely covered anything. And in the end, I settled for a lacy nightgown that was tasteful but sexy. And the sales clerk rang it up, and I went outside ready to greet Mario. But there was no sign of him.

I walked around the mall, calling for him, looking for him, but to no avail. And I went to the bathroom. Now, I must have seemed like some huge freak standing outside the men's room, calling Mario Mario through the doorway, but there was no reply. And in the end, looking around and seeing nobody present, I quickly ran in there just in case. All the stalls were empty, all the urinals, unoccupied. And I kept on investigating until an old white man came in and exclaimed,

goodness me, in a very shocked voice, and I pretended that I was the cleaner and just quickly left. Now, I contacted Mall Security, and at first they wouldn't take me seriously at all. But then I kind of lied and said that we'd been worrying someone was following us. Now, on the cameras, we were able to see Mario enter the area where the bathrooms were. And then he never left. They checked the women's room in case he was in there somewhere, and of course he wasn't. And the only option that was left was that he'd left through the window, which was positioned in one of the many blind spots of the outdoor cameras.

and then he left in a vehicle and was seemingly never seen again. Now the next part was tearfully a blur to me. I remember telling detectives how Mario had recently proposed to me and seeing a look past between them like, yeah, this guy's left her at the altar, so to speak. But I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe my Mario would just ditch me like that. That wasn't him. It just wasn't. And then I started researching cases of people going missing from malls and public places.

usually a member of a couple to make it look like they ditch the other. As there was this one case that I read about where they eventually found the missing woman and she was dead and her body had been entirely hollowed out and filled with high-grade heroin and then attempted to be smuggled over the border. Now every night I dream of Mario walking into that bathroom and being accosted by someone who'd entered through the window. They could have been led in by anyone, and then they could have knocked Mario out. out, taking him through the window with his accomplices, bundled into the back of a van, and then

God knows what had happened to him since. Maybe he's still alive somewhere, being forced to work for the cartel. Maybe his body was used as a mule. Maybe whatever happened, Santa Muerre saw fit to make sure that his death was a peaceful one, if that's what occurred. Or maybe Mario really did just leave me alone while I was buying lingerie by fleeing through the bathroom window. If I found out this was true, I think I'd forgive him just so I knew that he was still alive.

Every night I find myself praying to Santamuerta that Mario simply got cold feet or decided he didn't love me anymore. The alternative is far too heartbreaking to bear. So I'm a woman in her early 20s and last year was my first Thanksgiving alone as I'd moved cross-country and couldn't make it back home for our usual meal. Now, I was pretty sad and depressed about all of this, even though dad and my stepmom made a big effort to have a Zoom call with me and have a little party that day before Thanksgiving. Now, I decided that I was going to turn my frown upside down and be a good Christian and spend my Thanksgiving volunteering at a local soup kitchen. They've been really struggling for volunteers for that day, apparently, so when I went in the week before and asked if they needed me, the large, older lady who runs it, her name is, was Belinda gave me the biggest, warmest hug I'd ever had from someone I wasn't related to. And that made me feel a lot better and almost like I'd made the right decision.

Now, on Thanksgiving Thursday, I arrived at the soup kitchen early and found myself waiting outside for Belinda to arrive. There were already a few folks hanging around, even though it would be another hour or so before we actually started serving food. Belinda arrived and was greeted by some of the folks who were waiting for the food, and clearly some of them were regulars, and Belinda greeted them warmly and they responded in kind. Only she introduced me as a new helper who was with us for Thanksgiving, and I quickly added, and hopefully more than that if Belinda will have me, because I had already decided that I wanted to volunteer at this place regularly, just seeing the way that these people's faces lit up

at Belinda's arrival, knowing that they get a hot meal inside them. And so Belinda opened up. I didn't realize this, but they opened up an hour before the food went out to allow people a bit of time in from the cold. It was a particularly cold Thanksgiving that year, and I thought that this was a very kind gesture. I don't know what it's like at other soup kitchens, but there was a lot more than soup on the menu that day. We couldn't afford to put a whole Thanksgiving spread, of course, but a number of local businesses had contributed dishes, which just needed heating up, including three incredibly prepared turkeys and two glazed hams from a local butcher. And the rest of the volunteers showed up and we immediately went about cooking the food,

as well as the traditional vats of soup, which would be the first thing on the menu, since it would be ready before the meat and casseroles. Belinda told me that the line to get in was around the block and we were set to have the busiest Thanksgiving on record. And I could already see every seat was filled in the seating area itself and spirits seem high. I felt great and I felt genuinely proud of my decision. So the soup was ready and I was put on serving duties, filling up cups of the pumpkin and chestnut soup specifically. And I handed every cup over with a smile and a happy Thanksgiving

and then in my head, may Christ be with you as a little bit of a personal prayer that Jesus would watch over these people who clearly needed it. Give me soup, bitch. And the demand caused me to look up, almost expecting to see someone I knew or some kind of joke. And the guy who stood there looked about 80 and had a hard-lived 80 at that. He was blind in one eye and his face was pockmarked with scars, and his hair was long and lanky but bald on the top,

and he was stick thin and wiry wearing a military-style coat. And I'll never forget his face or his holy fingerless gloves or the look that he gave me with his one good eye. It was a look of utter disgusting contempt as he eyed me up and down. Now, I tried to act as if though I'd misheard him in case I really had, so I told him that the soup was coming up, and that's when he starts to rant, saying I'm clearly some sanctimonious rich bitch with my fake-ass boobs.

Not that it matters, but, you know, they're not. And how I'm pretty and I know it, and I'm just there to make myself feel better. And then he sees the crucifix around my neck, which was hidden under my sweater, but I guess he somehow saw the imprint of the cross, and starts ranting about how I'm one of those do-gooder Christians who only helps people like him because we want a free pass into heaven. Now, I wasn't about to say anything in my defense to this guy,

and I'm not going to explain myself too much here either. All I will say is that in my 25 years on earth, there have been points where I have gone through certain things that would genuinely horrify you to hear. Parts of my childhood was so bad that I couldn't type about it even if I wanted to. And yes, I did feel good about myself for volunteering at the soup kitchen. Yes, I am a Christian. But is there anything wrong with either of those things?

This freaking guy didn't know me, and he didn't have any right to judge me. And I'm sure he'd suffered too, probably terribly from the looks of him, but to assume that I was some privileged B-word, who had it easy just because, in his opinion, I was attractive. How dare he? How absolutely dare he? And so I did what I've always learned to do in these situations. I responded as cheerfully and politely as possible, pretending that I hadn't heard a word he said, because in a minute he'd be gone and I'd never have to see him again. I'd take my break, and by the time I was done, he'd probably have left. So I poured him his cup of soup and handed it over to him with a big smile, telling him that I hope he enjoyed it and had

an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving. Normally this makes people sort of run away, feeling stupid, but not him. Oh no. This enraged this guy more than I could possibly have imagined. He took the cup of soup from me and the scalding hot soup and said, I don't even want it, and called me the C word, and threw the cup of soup in my face. Everyone around him reacted in horror, but I was just frozen, like I'd passed out on my feet. I vaguely remember him running and leaving the building and my face feeling weirdly cold.

And the next thing I remember is actually waking up in the hospital. I have a skin condition that among other things makes my skin extremely sensitive to high temperatures. The soup had been hot enough to burn away part of my cheek and sent me into shock, which had caused me to pass out and stay unconscious for a few hours. The scalding soup permanently scarred my cheek, and it wasn't bad enough to warrant a skin graft, but there is a red mark there forever that gradually kind of looks like a birth mark. And I also required an operation on my eye, which thankfully was successful and I retained my sight,

but a small section of my right eye is now permanently bloodshot. Belinda had been at the hospital with me. I don't remember this, but apparently all I kept doing was worrying whether they'd closed the soup kitchen and that people had been able to get their meals and she just kept assuring me that no. It was still running. Unfortunately, they were not able to catch the man who assaulted and permanently scarred me. He'd come bursting out that front door and nobody really had known why, and the whole thing had just been so sudden and bizarre.

And the chances are, if it had happened to someone who didn't have a sensitive and unpleasant skin condition like mine, it would have just hurt like a mother lover and that would have been that. Unfortunately, though, not in this case. I spent a few days in the hospital, and the thing that I kept telling me, myself was, this was just one guy. There are terrible people in every group, and the lesson that I've been taught here, I believe, is that forgiveness isn't necessarily what's important, but rather the lack of placing blame. So I still volunteer at that soup kitchen. I've become friends with some of the regulars, and I wish I could do more to help them. Belinda couldn't believe it, but it just felt right.

Now, I'm not some kind of saint, though. There's a part of me, a very dark part. hidden deep in the back of my mind, who continues volunteering at that soup kitchen in case that guy returns. And if he does, maybe I'll throw some soup in his face. The grocery store at the end of my block closes at 11 p.m. If you go after 10 p.m., you'll be able to get some good deals on discount products. It's also usually dead quiet, so you don't have to deal with other customers. Just one or two late-night shoppers like me and staff trying to stock the shelves to get things done early. That night, things felt weird on the walk over. It's only a five-minute walk, but I was certain that I was being followed.

I looked around, and sure enough, at a distance, there seemed to be a guy in a pastel blue hoodie in white pants. He didn't seem threatening. He was just sort of walking at the exact same distance behind me the whole way. If I stopped, he seemed to find an excuse to stop as well. And so I go into the grocery store, and down the end of the aisle, I saw. the guy who I believe had been following me. But that was absolutely impossible, I thought, because he definitely hadn't passed me.

And so I head down the aisle a little, keeping an eye on my guy, and eventually I realized it's not the same guy, but he seems to be dressed exactly the same. Now, I don't know how to prove it to you exactly, but it definitely wasn't a uniform or a coordinated gang outfit or anything like that. What kind of uniform consists of?

of a baby blue hoodie and some white jogging pants. Now, I heard the front door at the grocery store open and in walks a guy who's been following me previously. The first thing he does is come and stand right next to me, looking at the same food that I was, these sort of nacho kits, if I remember, and just sort of standing weirdly close to me. It felt threatening, but without any direct threats happening, if that really makes any sense. And so I edged down the aisle, and the guy stuck to me like glue. Meanwhile, I could see the other identically dressed guy just sort of standing there watching the both of us,

pretending to eye up some cheese. Now, after a while, I head into another aisle, and who do I see but a third guy, dressed exactly the same? Now, he was just sort of looking at some cereals the whole time. Now, these didn't look like they were uniforms, and they definitely didn't work at the store. But the weird thing was, they did not seem to make any acknowledgment that they knew each other either. The only thing I was certain of was that they were all watching me. Now, I'm just a guy around 5'10 and not exactly some pushover, so I wasn't as worried as I could have been, but I don't know how to describe it. I got this really sort of dark and wrong feeling from all of it,

like the people who were surrounding me had some kind of darkness to them. I'm normally the kind of person who gets paranoid or attributes things to the supernatural, but I certainly don't think that these boys were actually demons, but they felt demonic, if that makes sense. Now, eventually the one who'd spent most of his time standing right next to me moved off to do some grocery shopping of his own. I go around to the final area near the checkouts, and I see a fourth, identically dressed guy walking towards the second guy that I'd seen.

I expected them to greet each other, but instead, they showed absolutely no sign that they even knew each other. and in fact one of them apologized for getting in the way of the other. And there also appeared to be some kind of slight dislike between the two, which I still can't really explain. I sort of hung back, like a coward, and waited until all four of them had finished their individual small grocery picks. Now, three of them used the self-checkouts. One of them paid at the kiosk because he had also bought cigarettes and a lottery ticket. And they all left at different times, and aside from that brief interaction near the checkout,

they'd never even interacted with each other, really. Now, before you guessed that maybe they were siblings or quadruplets playing a joke, two of them were white and one of them was sort of a light-skinned black guy, and the fourth I don't know what he was as far as race goes. Now, they certainly weren't related, and they seemed to be different heights. Now, they were the same age and wore the same strange baby blue hoodie and white jogging pants, and they all just sort of kept watching me, and I finally started to understand how those guys,

gang-stalkers fall down that rabbit hole. And so when I got to the checkout, the elderly lady who rang up my items was someone that I saw there often as a regular customer, and she glanced around the store and then leaned in and whispered to me and asked if I'd seen those guys just now, who had all been dressed exactly the same. I said, yeah, it was wild that there were four of them at one time. And she shook her head and said that in total there must have been six of these guys. two of them had left the store before I had arrived. And then she gave some speech about how she wasn't normally the superstitious type, but they gave her the hebi-jeebies.

I didn't blame her. I asked her if she had any theories, and now she said that the best she could come up with was that it was the Saturday after Black Friday, but did that even mean anything? Did that have any kind of significance? I've never really been able to find anything. Now, the walk home was five minutes, but it felt like five hours. The checkout lady almost begged me to get an Uber home, but there was no way that I was paying for an Uber to drive her on the corner,

and I would have felt like an idiot. Now, I didn't see the guys on the walk home, and nor have I seen them again. I know it seems like an anti-climax, but it was by far the creepiest, weirdest things that's ever happened to me while out at the grocery store. Now, if anyone has any theories as to what was going on, that'd be great, but two of them watched me intently. One of them stuck to me like glue until he just suddenly didn't.

and two of them ignored me entirely and two of them had left before I even arrived. So one of them at least was interested in me. Why were they all dressed the same? Why did they have the same aura? Were they gang members who decided that I wasn't worth a hassle? What does everyone else really think? Because I may just be the only person out there who gets freaked out when someone's wearing a baby blue hoodie and some white sweatpants. Most families have Thanksgiving traditions.

Some of them are wholesome. Some of them are silly, and some of them are just plain bizarre. I know this because I read a Reddit thread about them, and I was going to post my own family tradition and the outcome, but in the end I decided that I didn't want to bring the mood down into the earth's core. So I thought, hey, why not send it into Let's Read instead? Look, I'm not going to pretend that my dad isn't an idiot. He is.

An absolute goofball, and I love him for it. But he'd be the first to admit it. But sometimes his dumb flippery gets him into a bit of hot water. Things like managing to offend a waitress at Red Lobster somehow or nearly losing a major contract at work for sending a boomer minions meme to the company that they were courting. Now, this idiot is just bad at jokes. He once decided to prank Mom on April Fool's Day for telling her that he'd been cheating on her and wanted to divorce. Only the absolute clown got the date wrong and forgot that March has 31-day dates.

in it and pulled the prank on the morning of March 31st, so Mom had absolutely no reason to suspect it was a joke. And boy, he had a lot of groveling to do after that one. And so you get the point. He's a lovable goofball boomer dad who just isn't funny at all, mostly, but he is indeed lovable. He also caused Thanksgiving to be pretty terrible one year. And so for many years, we had this old serrated electric carving knife for cutting the turkey. It was one of those serrated knives where they're not actually sharp unless you're sawing into something, and on top of that, it was blunted through years of use. And so every year, to entertain the kids, before cutting the turkey,

he'd take this damn knife and pretend to cut his hand off with it. It was this whole gimmicky thing. He'd press the blade against his upper wrist, and then wow the little kids with how strong his skin was because he could just press a knife against it. And then for the final shock value, he'd turn the knife on by flicking the switch. Except, it wasn't plugged in, of course,

and it wouldn't actually operate. And of course, the rest of the family had to then explain to the little kids that they shouldn't do this, and the knife was blunt, yada, yada, yada, yada. And it was just some stupid thing dad always did. And so this one year, the carving knife had finally died, and mom replaced it with a new one.

She told Dad, and she told him multiple times not to do his knife trick this year, and she made him promise. But I guess she didn't explain exactly why. Now, here's the problem. Serrated blades can be crazy sharp if they're of a certain design. Electric carving knives these days are famous for being way, way more sharp than people realize. But Dad, in his arrogant wisdom, was still convinced that this wouldn't matter. Besides, it wasn't plugged in.

He'd just be careful and make sure that he didn't press it in. into his skin too much. Of course, this was his explanation after the fact. At the time, none of us knew that he was going to do it. So picture the scene. There's about 15 family members crowded round the table in our large dining room, ready to fill their plates. Dad's about to do the opening ceremony and cut the turkey. And he does it, and he does the trick. He presses the blade against his wrist. Everyone starts to roll their eyes and then dad suddenly yells the F-word because even being as careful as possible, the serrated blade cuts right into his wrist. And then the pain causes his other hand a spasm, but it's okay right because the carving knife isn't plugged in. Well,

no, it's not plugged in because it was a rechargeable knife. So his finger slips, he presses the switch, and we all watch in horror as his brand new incredibly sharp electric carving knife slices through his wrist like butter. Everyone's screaming, except for dad who's just sort of staring down at his severed hand at the blood spraying from it. He's woozy, dizzy with shock, and sort of lifts his arm up, leaving the severed hand behind. And of course, blood sprays everywhere, all over the Thanksgiving dinner spread, all over the family, all over the screaming, crying family members.

And I'm the one who springs into action. The knife's still running and bedded into the table now, and I reached through the blood and gore and shut it off. And then I grab my own father's hand and rush him to the kitchen to put it in a bag of ice. Meanwhile, other members of the family are trying to snap my dad out of the shock that he's clearly in. We're calling 911. Others are yelling that the ambulance will take too long, etc. In the end, I dragged Dad to my car, throw him into the back seat, place his icebag hand in the passenger seat, and just hightail it to the emergency room.

And I'll never forget it. Dad was unable to say much of anything on the drive there, but he did let out one thing. Thanks for giving me a hand, baby girl. God. If he hadn't been in the back seat with a severely bloody stump of a wrist, I probably would have punched him in the job. jaw in that moment. Unfortunately, they couldn't save his hand, as there was too much nerve damage that had been caused by the cut, and when my mom arrived at the hospital, she insists on making up a slightly less embarrassing story of how he severed his hand. I forget the exact details, but I'm sure they didn't buy it. So, Dad only has one hand now. Thankfully, it was his left, and he's right-handed, and that's the thing he always says each year for Thanksgiving now.

At least it wasn't my useful hand. And knowing dad, he's his left. He wants to say something even more cruder than that. So, that's how my lovable goofballed dad effed around and found out, and if anyone asks, he tells them it was bitten off by a shark. He is a prosthetic hand now, and yes, you can best believe that he uses that damn prosthetic hand for boomer dad pranks wherever he can. And the best was last year. My daughter brought her new boyfriend over for Thanksgiving,

and their high school seniors, and her boyfriend is a sweetheart, and dad introduces himself by walking up behind him, placing his prosthetic hand on the poor kid's lap and saying, this is what happens to the last guy who got handsy with my granddaughter. Thankfully, me and my daughter had warned him in advance, and the smart-ass kid took the prosthetic hand, turned to face my father, and shook it with a very pleased to meet you. I think he's a keeper. So I've been working at a Walgreens for over 30 years now. Now, this happened just a couple of years ago.

And to this day, it remains one of the most disgusting things to ever happen, but not to me, but a colleague. Now, Jamie was a new girl working checkout at the pharmacy. I'm a pharmacist, so I sign off and dispensed prescriptions, but Jamie sold over-the-counter medication and would hand out prepared prescriptions over to the customer, etc. And so checkout staff at the pharmacy have a small degree of medical training but nothing really major. If a customer needs proper medical advice, they'll be safe. sent over to me or one of my colleagues, and if we can't help, we'll advise them to seek

medical attention. Now, this one day, a middle-aged guy comes over to Jamie at her post. I'd seen him before, collecting prescriptions with his wife, and I was pretty sure that he had two daughters as well. This time, he was alone. He told Jamie that he was suffering from a rash on his upper thigh, and it was extremely aggravating. He told her that he'd taken some photos with his camera phone that just showed the rash and would be easier and less embarrassing than having to show his actual thigh. Jimmy should have directed him to me, but being inexperienced, she agreed to take a look at the photo. But as it was, she deduced that the rash was caused by some kind of allergic reaction and to try an antihistamine cream which should help the rash go down. All was well for about a week,

and then that rashy guy returned. He said that initially the cream had helped, but it stopped being effective, and he'd taken a new photo to show the current state of things. Now, this made sense to Jamie, as it was entirely possible that he simply needed a stronger dose of the cream, something she'd mentioned to him beforehand. This time, as she tells it, when he showed her the photo, it was angled slightly differently,

and you could unfortunately see a small sliver of his nut on the right-hand side of the photo. Jamie tried her best to hide her blush, and she was only 19 after all, but this dude didn't seem to notice. She recommended that he try a stronger version of the cream and hopefully that should clear things up. Now, a couple of weeks later, when I'm on shift, he shows up again. I notice him this time and it sort of nags me in the back of my mind that he always happens to show up when Jamie's on shift, even though she worked very limited hours per week as a temporary job while studying some kind of biology at college. Now, this time, when he shows her the photo, you can clearly see the majority of his left ball

and a sliver of, well, you know what. Jamie, ever the professional, did not acknowledge this despite flushing very red. Now, Mr. Rashman asked her if she was okay, and even joke that his bare thigh was turning her on. Now, I overheard this and made a note to talk to Jamie after he had left to let her know that she didn't have to deal with people like that. Now, she eventually admitted to me that the photos had become increasingly revealing, and she hadn't entirely known how to deal with that. At that moment, I was furious. However, she explained to me that sometimes on iPhones, they don't show you the entire area of the photo, and it's possible to accidentally show slightly more around the outskirts than intended. I told her I thought that she was being extremely

generous and to be super careful around this creep. No, eventually he turns up again, and shock and horror, his rash has returned. He tells Jamie that he's taken the photo as tastefully as possible, but he needs to show the full rash. And so, as you can expect, he whips out an entire picture of his weiner, with only a portion of his right ball hidden. Now, furthermore, the rash was the same size as it always has been, which as Jamie then realized was an almost perfect square. And she handled herself great. She said that she was extremely concerned about the customer's safety and that there was a severe risk of permanent loss of function, and she had to call the trained pharmacist right away.

Now, this guy immediately started freaking out and said it wasn't a big deal to not bother me, but Jamie called out saying that she had seen evidence of a potentially devastating injury and could I help. Now, this rash guy was torn between worrying about his harassment being outed and slightly believing that Jamie was telling the truth that he was about to maybe lose function of his yoo-hoo. And so I came straight out of the pharmacy and he refused to show me the photo. I asked him why he was comfortable showing Jamie but not me and I'd seen it all before and he started stumbling over his words and didn't have an answer for me. I half expected him to turn and leave and never christen our door again, but instead he did something very unexpected. He grabbed

a bottle of cough medicine and threw it hard against the counter causing it to burst and then he fled in the ensuing confusion. I'm not sure if he thought the cough medicine would function as some kind of kung fu smoke bomb or what, but clearly he'd forgotten that as a client of the pharmacy, we had his name and address, as well as all the details of his family. Now, we reported the whole incident to the cops who said that they may not have been able to pursue any sort of harassment charges, as he could have claimed accidental revealed, but that by smashing the cough syrup, He implied intent with his behavior which allowed us to press charges for that and involved his wife finding out about everything. Clearly, he just wanted to intimidate a young pharmacy worker, and instead he ended up on the offender's registry.

Probably not the outcome he was hoping for. So this happened in the late 2000s. My little cousins were unholy terrors, to say the least. Two boys, eight and nine, the sons of my paternal uncle. They were born two months apart, have two different moms, neither of whom are my uncle's wife, and they spend other weekends with their dad, and I guess you can't blame them for being a little messed up and out of control when their family background is just so convoluted. Now, this explanation makes my uncle sound like some kind of womanizer who went around inseminating a variety of different women, and, well, I guess that's true, but not for nefarious reasons. First girlfriend actually died in a car accident a month after giving birth to Monkey, the oldest son,

and my uncle had a sort of friends with benefits consolation hookup with one of his best friends, and the contraceptive broke, and she got pregnant. And they decided to keep the baby, who's named Morley. And so thankfully, he has a great relationship with Morley's mom, and things are as good as they could be, I guess. He's also no happily married with a two-year-old daughter who Mikey and Morley idolize. But the boys, who we call the twins, even though they're not, and they have different moms, were absolute prank kings. They loved nothing more than causing chaos, pulling off jump scares, the kind of goose that you get from joke stores. You know the types of things.

Exploding cigarettes, lighters that squirt water, dollar store crap. It was always in good fun, but it was constant. You knew that any family gathering was going to be about the twins, and they made darn sure that we were darn sure of it. Now, it makes me so sad looking back. I miss the days when these dumb little kids were the pride and joy of the family. I miss the days when the family was a thing. Now, fair warning, this is not a happy story. It doesn't have a happy ending.

And when you give thanks this Thanksgiving, make sure that you show gratitude for your loved ones who are still with you. Don't take anything for granted. things can change on a dime and life has no rewind buttons. No kid deserves to have the weight of what happened with the twins on their shoulders. Now that Halloween, the twins had gone as pumpkin ghouls, basically skeleton onesies with creepy pumpkin mass. It was kind of cool, and the twins were very pleased with themselves. I'd taken them trick-or-treating, which made them feel badass to be chaperoned by their cool

cousin, even if they could not grasp why a girl had dressed as Jason Forhees because Jason's a boy. Kids are odd creatures. And so the twins weren't content on using their pumpkin mask just once. And their minds, pumpkins are Thanksgiving related too, which is true, I guess, with pumpkin pie and all that jazz. So they smuggled their pumpkin masks into our family Thanksgiving gathering in their backpacks, just waiting to find the perfect moment to use them. The woman of our family did the cooking at our Thanksgiving get-together. Maybe this is a bit rude, but the truth is, Grandma, my mom, and my uncle's wife were the best chefs by far.

Unfortunately, I did not inherit Mom's pensioned for delicious culinary skills. And you could say I have a particular set of skills, and my skills lie elsewhere, extremely far from a kitchen. I'm a programmer. And so the twins decided a great prank would be to hide in the broom closet in the kitchen and burst out on whichever poor, unsuspecting chef happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. And this just happened to be my grandma, preparing the gravy boats. Grandma just finished mixing up this thick gravy. We always have a selection of different

thicknesses to suit everyone's taste. When the twins came bursting out of the closet, in their pumpkin mass, yelling whatever spooky nonsense they decided to scream. Grandma was not a young woman. She was in her early 70s when this happened. And despite being used to the twins' antics and jump scares, I guess this time it caught her. She dropped the huge gravy boat onto the floor, which shattered, sending gravy and glass spilling all over the tiles near the kitchen door. And then the way the twins told it, she began to clutch at her heart. She was breathing really heavy and lean forward to steady herself and then just collapsed into a chair at the breakfast bar. Now, the twins panicked, pulled their masks off, and ran to Grandma to check if she was okay.

She was still clutching her chest, breathing hard, and the kids were maybe crowding her and apologizing or whatever. And Grandma told them to give her space, and she was fine. She just needed a minute. But the way the twins tell it, they were absolutely sure that they'd given Grandma a heart attack and killed her. Thankfully, that was not the case. Now what did happen, though, was that Granddad came running in from wherever, panicked by the sound of the gravy smashing onto the floor, and he threw the door open, ran straight into the kitchen, and immediately slipped on the thick, spilled gravy all over the floor.

Now, I was behind them when this happened. I saw it all go down. I saw Granddad skid, his arms pinwheeling in a way that was almost comical, if not for what happened next. He fell forward, his nose hitting the corner of the table. And they say it killed him instantly, the bone of his nose being thrust backwards into his brain. But I don't believe them. I saw him writhing on that floor.

I saw him clawing at his face and the way his neck was flopping at an almost impossible angle. I saw him take at least a minute to die. And so did Grandma, and so did the twins. We all watched as our beloved granddad died in a pool of gravy and glass in front of his wife and grandsons, all of whom would later blame themselves for his death. Grandma blamed herself for overreacting and dropping that gravy, and the twins blamed themselves for pretty much everything. And you can understand why they did, even at that age.

Grandma didn't even make it to Granddad's funeral, as she passed away a few days later of what, I like to say is a broken heart. Her heart just gave out, and of course the twins blamed themselves for that too. They insisted that they weakened her heart by what they did. And no matter what we said to them, no matter how much we tried to convince them that they were just kids having fun, doing kid things, they wouldn't listen. Mikey made it to about 18, Morley's still around, but he's in and out of rehab, and the whole family does everything we can try to convince him to forgive himself, but he just won't. None of us blame Mikey and Morley. I just wish Morley wouldn't blame himself.

So, this Thanksgiving, be grateful for the ones you love and what you share with them, because you never know when the most ridiculous, unexpected, and unseen event might just change your whole family's lives forever. I remember when I did my onboarding at my grocery store, and I had to watch some BS video teaching me all sorts of crap I already knew, and a bit of stuff that I didn't. One of the main things that I did know was that you shouldn't directly confront aggressors or shoplifters. You should let them steal the item and then call the cops. I knew this with or without the video, but it's such a hard thing to actually convince yourself of. If I see some dudes stealing something, it's in my nature to want to mess that guy's day up. I don't want to

sit back and call the cops, you know. I want to dive in there like some kind of manly, badass hero like Let's Read, my favorite YouTuber male role month. And so this video says something like, Do not engage. Under no circumstances must you put yourself in danger. The shoplifter could be armed. They could be dangerous. Your life is worth more than a tin of spam or a potato.

This isn't the Apple store. Blah, blah, blah. And so I'm thinking, fine, sure. I'm not dying for a company that probably won't even remember my name five minutes after the funeral. So I kept my head down, followed the rules, and did my job exactly as I would. trained. It was just a stupid grocery store job. I was a stalker. We all got by via doing our jobs and really nothing else anyways, and it's how you survive a minimum wage job in the first place.

But then came in a guy named Doc. He wasn't a doctor. I don't think he even had a PhD. He was just one of those guys who liked calling himself Doc because I guess his real name was Walter something that didn't sound very cool. And so Doc watched the training videos and he came back saying, to us something like, no way am I letting people steal from right under my nose. Now, we respond, sure thing, Doc, old pal, wait till you're up against a six-foot-five bikers stealing a can of beans. Who needs the money? Should just get a job like the rest of us, Doc said, as if he hadn't gotten the job because his uncle was the assistant manager. Now, from then on, Doc was on the lookout for shoplifters. He was determined to catch one in the act, just so he could prove himself and take down

one of the bad guys. Now, weeks had passed and then months, and Doc was stuck as a shelf stocker just like myself. The handful of shoplifters had been handled by the security guards, and Doc was itching to spot a batty who could be his little nemesis. Now eventually, that nemesis showed up. She was a very old grandmother-looking character, later discovered to be in her 80s, and she walked around with a stick, browsing the shelves, and examining the items. Occasionally, she put some old person food in her basket. But then, while Doc and I were watching her, this old lady slipped a small can of sardines into her purse. And that was it. She'd stolen something, and Doc was ready. This was the moment that he'd been gearing for. Now, I tried to tell him that you have to wait for

them to leave the store to prove intent to steal, and I tried to tell him that there were really good reasons to wait and call the police. But Doc just scoffed at me and said, you don't mess with Doc. and approached this old lady. Now, Doc was not the most tactful guy. He went straight in and said something like, I saw you steal that can of sardines. I think it's best that you accompany me to the security office. As if this junior stalker even had the ability to handle shoplifters.

No, the old woman just sort of looked at him, almost with pity. And she reached into her purse, and I was hoping that she'd just remove the sardines and pretended it had been a mistake and everyone could move on. But no, what she pulled out next was a goddamn butcher's knife. I don't remember exactly what she yelled, but it was something like, You'll never take us alive, officers. And then, with the strength entirely unexpected from a frail old lady,

she plunges this butcher's knife straight into Doc's chest right by his heart. And the next thing I hear is the old lady murmuring something before running faster than I would have possibly ever expected her to, towards the exit, and disappearing off into the parking lot. I don't think any of us ever spared the old lady anymore thought at that moment. We were all tending to dock and putting pressure on that wound around the knife and calling the paramedics, calling the cops. A long story short, Doc survived, but barely. The blade nicked his heart, and if it had been any further to the left, he would have been

done for. And believe it or not, this old... lady got away scot-free. Security footage seemed to suggest that maybe she was someone dressed like that. Honestly, looking back, it was all utterly bizarre. Now, it certainly taught Doc the reason why we were told not to engage with shoplifters. You never know when the old lady's stealing sardines might be a knife-wielding maniac who nearly ends your life. So I'm a woman in my 40s, and I run a Meals-on-Wil service. I run the business all year round, but on Thanksgiving, I go that little extra mile to just bring a bit of extra joy to my elderly and disabled clients. Now, there was this one old fellow that I

used to visit, and he only had me booked in for Thanksgiving. He did fine most of the year, but he liked having a nice Thanksgiving meal prepared for him, and I think he liked the company, too. He told me a number of times that he didn't have any family and it was just him. So Thanksgiving 2018, I turned up at his house with a special ham roast prepared for him with love. I look forward to seeing this old fella. I was kind of excited for him to answer the door and see his usual beaming smile, his shiny white false teeth perched precariously in his mouth. Now I'm just trying to sound silly here, but I was a little surprised when a much younger guy answered the door. Now I told him who I was, meals on wheels and explained that I was here to see that old fella and cook for him.

And the young guy looked confused for a second and then said, oh, damn. His grandfather was in the bathroom and must have gotten the timing wrong. And the guy invited me in and encouraged me to start preparing the food ready for the old guy to finish his bath. And then it would be a nice treat when he got done bathing and realized that he had a Thanksgiving meal to look forward to. Now, the young relative ran upstairs very quickly and I heard him calling through the bathroom, from door, telling his grandfather that the Meals on Wheels Lady was there for him. And I couldn't hear the grandfather's response, of course, but why would I? Now, I went about warming up the food that I brought.

Typically, we cook it in advance, and then it just needs heating up in the client's oven. And the process takes maybe ten minutes, so I went to wander around the living room, which I'd been in many times. The grandson, who I'd imagine was probably in his mid-20s, was still upstairs, maybe getting his granddad out of the bathroom. Now, I started looking at some of the photos on the wall. They all just showed my elderly client at different stages in his life. However, I started to notice something odd. The young man who let me in didn't seem to appear in any of these photos. In fact, there was nothing that I could see that suggested that my client even had grandkids. And then I remembered. He told me previously that he didn't have any living family, so who the hell was this young guy

who let me in? The old man. was upstairs in the bathtub, so there was nothing suspicious, right? And then I realized, I had absolutely no evidence that my client really was upstairs in the bathroom. All I'd heard was the young guy talking as if he was speaking to someone. It could have been completely fabricated for all I knew. I decided to play it safe and called upstairs that the food was almost ready and was my client nearly ready to come down. And the young guy shouted down, sounding almost annoyed in that, yeah, they were coming. He was just helping grandpa dress himself and various things. This was definitely suspicious. The old fella might have been a Meals on Wheels client, but he was

healthy and fit enough not to need home help, and he certainly did not need help getting dressed after a bath. Still, though, it was possible that maybe he'd fall in and there was a reasonable explanation for this. Now, I turned the oven off and left the food in there, and called upstairs that I was going to be going, because I had other clients to see, so I'd left the food warming in the oven. I didn't receive a reply, so I decided that I'd just leave and then call in a wellness check once I was safely out of the house. However, as I tried to leave, I discovered that the front door was locked. Now, it was one of those types of doors with a deadbolt where you actually needed key to unlock it from the inside, and it had been locked with that deadbolt. Obviously, something was wrong here. I could hardly call

the cops and say that I might have had been locked in an old guy's house by a suspicious character, so I just decided to try the back door. And that way, of course, was also deadbolted. I'd left my cell phone in the van, because typically we weren't supposed to bring devices in the client's homes, and so I headed into the living room to either use the landline or see if there was a window that I could open to escape from or something. Now this fake grandson was standing there, wearing nothing but his tidy whitties and a poop-eating grin on his face. He started on some rant about how a dried-up old hag like me would surely be flattered to sleep with him and that it'd even pay me if I did certain things.

No, I was speechless, disgusted. I'm happily married, and even if I wasn't, my God. I told him as much and told him that if he didn't unlock the door right this minute, I'd call the cops. Now, he just sort of laughed at that as if that was somehow a complete impossibility. And still no idea to this day why he was so confident about that. So the fake grandson approaches me and says that if I won't take him up on his generous offer, then considering I'm technically a home invader, I'm unsure of what logic he was using to decide that,

that he had no choice but to defend himself. I asked him what in God's name he was talking about. and he just looked me in the eye, point blank, and just said, I'm going to touch you. And then depending on how I feel, I might just bury your body in the basement. I could tell he was serious. I could also tell that he was seriously on something. Later, via the police report, I found out that he was on an absolutely ridiculous amount of cocaine.

But at the moment, all I knew was that there was no way that this pasty creep was going to get his hands on me. And from visiting my client every Thanksgiving, I knew the living room well. And I knew that behind me there was a fireplace, and besides that, a set of tools for cleaning that said fireplace. A poker, a brush, and one of those long metal dust pans. And that's what I managed to grab when I reached behind me blindly. And that's when I swung forward, cracking my would-be assailant straight in the crotch. He howls, screams, and fell to the floor. and just for good measure, I brought that pan down again on him, the flat underside slamming into his

clearly aroused groin. And I later found out that it's possible to break someone's, you know what, and that's exactly what I think I did. Unfortunately, this is also why my attempted freak managed to get away with a suspended sentence because I was forced to lower the charges to avoid him countersuing for some fairly serious bodily damage. but it felt pretty worth it regardless, and I'm pretty sure I dissuaded him from trying to touch anyone else in the future. I found out that my client had unfortunately passed away the week before, and due to his lack of family, his Meals' Order had yet to be cancelled. The guy who attempted to trap me there was the new tenant,

and apparently decided to celebrate his Thanksgiving by doing a truckload of drugs and trying to kidnap a Meals-on- Wheels worker. I don't know what became of him after the disappointingly short legal proceedings in which I had to back down from pushing too hard after I basically broke his wiener, but again, I think I did the world a favor. So I'm thankful for my near miss that day and also thankful for my perfect aim with that dustpan. I never used to work Black Friday, just I flat out refused. And so as a compromise, each year I agreed to stay late with one other colleague and prepare for Black Friday. Friday. It wasn't such a big deal back then. We'd just run a big sale on the Friday and that was it. You know how Black Friday used to be, but it did mean setting up some nice displays the night before and

making the store look presentable and exciting. Now, this was back when sales weren't run every five minutes, so they were actually quite a big deal if you were trying to save money. Now remember when the January sales used to start after Christmas and offered some really great savings that you'd never find at any other point throughout the year. Black Friday was like that, but just a single day. So I refused to work Black Friday because I cannot deal with that many demanding customers, but I was happy to take charge of the lovely quiet setup the night before. Now, as I recall, I was setting up a pyramid of VHS player boxes when I first heard the sound. It came from near the kitchen appliance section and I knew that neither of my coworkers were around there because I could

see them. And it sounded like a refurb. refrigerator door opening and closing, which was kind of eerie because there was no reason why any of them should ever be opened outside of a demo. In my infinite bravery, I decided to ignore it and move on to the next display, which was a set of discount stereo system components. Then one of my colleagues came over to me and asked if there was anyone else here, because they were sure that they'd seen a fourth staff member hanging around in the area where the camcorders and cameras were. I told told them no, it was just us three, but we'd go investigate. There was no sign of anyone, but one of the cameras was slightly misaligned as it had been moved, and I decided to check

the footage, and that's when I saw something odd. There was a few seconds of film that showed a guy with a very thick mustache and big, thick, coke bottle glasses staring into the camera, almost looking like he was in shock. And then quickly, the footage ended. Unfortunately, the display model was not correctly set up for the time and date, so I wasn't able to see for sure exactly when the strange recording had been made. The answer was soon provided for us, though, when the storeroom door visibly creaked open in front of us and then just slammed shut. Now, there was no way that this was me or any of my colleagues, and so the three of us ran to the storeroom and did the bravest thing we could, and we locked it from the outside, and then looked in through

the window. That same guy that we'd seen on the film was sitting in the corner of the stock room, dressed in pajamas with a sleeping bag on the floor beside him. Obviously, in that moment, we called the cops. And it turns out that what had happened was the customer had hidden in the store at closing that night so that he could be able to be there bright and early when we opened for Black Friday

by never having left the store in the first place. In many ways, it was all kinds of wholesome, other than the breaking and entering. However, things took a darker turn when the cops searched through the guy's belongings, and they found a camcorder taken from the shelf, and I guess I had to notice that it was missing at the time. And the footage they found on there was very disturbing, though. He must have filmed it within the previous few hours, and an included footage of both myself and my other female colleague on shift in compromising and very revealing positions from under the stalls. This creep must have been

hiding in the bathroom waiting for us to enter, and having worked out how the camcorder worked, decided to give him some overnight entertainment to keep himself occupied while he waited for Black Friday. Naturally, we pressed every charge in the book, and he faced some pretty hefty consequences. Now, I was less impressed to the footage having been played back in court, but it was worth it just to send this complete creeper down for a decent amount of time. Now, I'm sure he's long since released by now because this was quite a while ago, but I hope I never have to encounter that creepo, weirdo, Black Friday pervert again, if he's even still alive. And maybe it makes me a bad person, but I kind of hope he isn't. Back in the early 90s, my family had just moved to a new town,

and I had to go through the whole ordeal of making new friends as the new kid in school. It was the first year of high school, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but most of the kids already knew each other and had their established cliques and groups, and I hadn't really found my place. And there was this one kid, though, Tad, he went by, who was a popular and very amicable guy, but he didn't really seem to have any friends that he particularly hung out with. It was like he sort of jumped from one group to the next, being pals with everyone, but not really having any people of his own. Now, after a few days, I guess he decided that I was his people and was rapidly becoming fast friends.

Now, he was super chill, very laid back, a bit of a class clown, but incredibly smart and actually funny, unlike just about every other high school kid who thinks they're a comedian. Now, that November, he handed me an envelope. Inside it was a very formal, very nicely printed invitation to spending Thanksgiving dinner at the Smith's house. Not their real name. Now, Tad was kind of cagey about it, almost as if he didn't actually want me to say yes, but I think I only picked up on that in retrospect. At the time I was unsure because I always enjoyed spending Thanksgiving with my family.

We'd usually go to my uncle and aunt's house and have a big extended family gathering. Now, I talked to my parents about it and they were insistent that I accept the invitation. There would be plenty of family thanksgivings and they wanted me to make friends and have a finally good time. And they sold me on it and by the time the big day came, I was very excited. Now, when I arrived at the Smith's house, Tad answered the door and I was surprised. to see that he was dressed sort of fancy. Like, have you ever seen that review bra guy on YouTube? He was actually dressed like him,

with all of his hair slick back and a waistcoat on like he was dressed for church. And I was dressed in my usual normal 90 kids attire, and Tad looked me up and down, and I saw some kind of worry come across his face and didn't really understand it. Now, he led me into the living room where his mom and young sister were. And they introduced themselves, and they seemed great, although kind of strange and maybe malnourished, perhaps, like a bit skinny. Now, Tad's mom, Jennifer, generally told me that typically the family dressed smart for Thanksgiving. But hopefully Mr. Smith would understand the miscommunication.

Now, this was starting to make me feel a bit nervous. And then there was a little sister who talked to me in such an odd, polite way. The house itself also felt kind of lifeless, like it was almost too clean. It didn't look lived in. There were no family portraits on the walls, no memorabilia, no magazines, on coffee tables, nothing. It could have been a house straight out of a catalog, or what I now know would be called a show home, and it just sort of smelled sterile. It was all so strange.

So Mrs. Smith led us into the dining room. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but my heart just sank. See, I was used to Thanksgiving's spreads being kind of awesome, and this was just pathetic. A turkey, an eight-roast potatoes, a tiny pot of mac and cheese, some very limp-looking vegetables, just really unpleasant, and a spread that adult me would now be ashamed to present to a guest. Now, Mr. Smith, I never did learn his actual first name, was just standing at the head of the table like some goddamn king. Tad leaned over to me and whispered to make sure that I referred to his dad as sir and always made eye contact if I spoke to him and only to speak to him if he spoke to me first. I genuinely felt like this was some type of prank at first, but it was very clear from the atmosphere that this was not.

Now, Mr. Smith did not greet me or introduce himself. He gave me a sort of nod and then continued to acknowledge that I was there. I was seated to his left. Tad opposite me and then the little sister said, sat next a tad, and Mrs. Smith sat opposite her. And this positioning is important for later, because you need to know that I was in reach of Mr. Smith. And so I followed the lead of the others and stood behind my chair while Mr. Smith spouted a rambling, droning grace that seemed to last forever. And weirdly, too, at no point did he actually mention God or Jesus or anything. It was just about giving thanks and appreciating the things we have. But it wasn't directed at anyone or

any particular deity. Now, I didn't really notice this at the time, but looking back, it seemed incredibly odd. Anyway, we finally sat down, and Mr. Smith cut the turkey and started piling it on his plate, and I sort of loosely reached out for a roast potato. Now, without warning, without a word, Mr. Smith backhand slapped me across the face. I was absolutely speechless. It hadn't been hard enough to really hurt or anything, it was just hard enough and belittling enough to leave my face red, both from the slap and the embarrassment of being pimp slapped by my friend's parent. Like, holy crap, I had never in my entire life been struck by a friend's parent before, and certainly not when I was old enough to be in high school. Mrs. Smith quickly stepped in and told me in a very trembling voice

that it's custom to allow the man of the house to dish out his entire portion before anyone else was allowed to take any food. Mr. Smith then added very sternly that usually the man of the house would eat his entire portion before the rest of the family could eat either, but they were making an exception because they had guests who did not seem to understand respect. I wasn't a particularly angry or petulant child, but I was burning with fury inside. Tad kept giving me these looks like I was supposed to understand what was going on here, but I just didn't. I was too scared. to take any food at this point, and I had to be prompted by Mrs. Smith to help myself eventually. And when I did, I was horrified. The food had looked unappetizing, but it was worse than it seemed.

Everything was lukewarm at best. The vegetables were undercooked. The pasta and the mac and cheese were crunchy from being underboiled. And worst of all, the turkey was pink and slimy, perhaps the most undercooked meat I'd ever encountered in my life. And the rest of the family were picking at their food as if they were aware of how vile it was, but Mr. Smith was devouring his portion with almost a sort of gusto, for lack of a better words. And not once did he praise the chef, though, which I'm certain was Mrs. Smith because I can't imagine Mr. Smith being the type of man who did the cooking. Now, about halfway through the meal, the undercooked and horrifically prepared food began to take its own toll on my sensitive stomach, and I felt serious, unpleasant pains coursing through me.

I tried masking it, pushing my food around on my plate with my fork, but Mr. Smith noticed and told me to eat up, son. It's impolite to be ungrateful to one's host. And I finally spoke up and said that I had a really bad stomach ache, and could I please call my parents to come get me because I didn't want to ruin their Thanksgiving dinner. Now, Tad, Mrs. Smith and the little sister all went totally pale and silent at this. Mr. Smith's face went to sort of shade of crimson, and I swear, if this had been a cartoon, steam would be bursting out of his ears. Unfortunately, this was real life. It was my life. How dare you, he screamed, and then proceeded to lecture me on how I was the rude, uncouth little deviant. And then he turned his sights on

Tad. It was Tad's fault for inviting someone like me from the wrong side of the tracks to their family meal. And Tad began apologizing profusely saying that I didn't know any better, and of course I would stay and finish my meal. And I felt so betrayed. But then I kind of realized why Tad had no choice. Mr. Smith stood up, dragged Tad to his feet, and proceeded to force him over his knee, pull his pants down, thankfully not his underwear, and spanked him with such violence that I'm amazed Tad didn't burst into tears. Mr. Smith then looked at me, and it was a very clear threat. Either I play ball or Tad would suffer the brunt of my actions. So I forced the rest of my food down, struggling against stomach pains,

struggling not to throw up, and struggling not to burst into tears when I thought about my own family. and the absolute hell it must be living with this one. And eventually dinner was finished, and in silence we ate some type of sort of slimy jello with some fruit in it. And as soon as dessert was finished, Mr. Smith promptly commanded that I leave and to think on my actions that night in the shame that I brought to myself and my family. It was an hour's way back to my house, and I opted to just take it rather than dare ask if I could call my parents.

Now when I got home, our own Thanksgiving meal was still underway, and mom and dad just cheerfully asked me if I wanted to join in. And I kind of snapped at them, burst into tears, and then ran upstairs and threw up. And I spent the next three days bedridden with his food poisoning, during which time I explained to my parents as best I could exactly what had happened that night. And when I got to the part about Mr. Smith slapping me, I could see Dad starting to shake with rage. But then my parents surprised me by saying, that different families just have different customs and values, and that I shouldn't hold it against Tad, and I should continue to be his friend.

I just shouldn't visit his house anymore. Now, I'd expect something else, I guess, some kind of confrontation where my dad, my hero, had gone around to the Smith's and given Mr. Smith a beatdown. Instead, it felt a bit like an anti-climax. Then six months later, Mr. Smith abandoned his family, family, just upped and disappeared. And rumors spread around town that he'd run away was some lady of the night from the local strip club. All sorts of gossip spread about him, and things that would

have made it very hard for Smith to show his face around town again. Talk of inappropriate behavior with the young boys he coached at Little League. Local cop friends of my dad claiming that Mr. Smith was a known curb crawler in the Red Light District, all sorts of things. And as soon as Smith abandoned his family, Tad really came into his own. We'd stayed friends, just like my parents had asked of me, and Tad went on to go from class clown to actually valedictorian, and he spent every Thanksgiving with my family after that. And when it came to his turn to give thanks, he'd always say that he was thankful for whatever caused his dad to show his true self. And whenever Tad would say that, my own dad would give me a look and a bit of a wink, and I never

asked him about it. I never wanted to know. I knew enough to know that Smith was still alive, at least, and throughout the years, he made a few attempts to contact Tad, usually begging for money, and Tad and I are still great friends. He always ignores his dad pleading, and he especially ignores it when his dad mentions the ultimatum that he was given back then, which forced him to leave his family. And Tad doesn't want to know what that means, neither do I. But all I know is that sometimes people do get what's coming to them, and for that, I'm thankful. as all heck. So I've been a head-loss prevention officer at my local ASDA for close to 20 years by this point, and I've seen some wrong-ons on both sides of the fence, let me tell you. There was a shoplifter, big buff tattooed bloke who would only nick scented candles, and then there was the young lad on

the checkout who played five-aside with us who turned out to be pretty weird with kids. Now, none of them hold a torch to Nick, though. Nick made Gary Glitter look like a decent bloke. Well, maybe not quite that extreme, but he was certainly a massive sea word who I would not shed a tear for if he unalived his own life, as the talk-tick kids might say. And so Nick was the most zealous loss prevention officer I've ever met. This was mostly a good thing for lads like me who take the job seriously with military precision. If anyone swiped a jar of marmite or a pack of crumpets, Nick would be on them like flies on poo. like he'd frog-marched them off to the security office and then he'd spent around half an hour in there and I swear it down that that person would never shoplift again.

Now, I'd never heard any complaints about Nick. Not one, but I guess it turns out, when you scare people into silence, they don't tend to complain about you. To this day, I do not know what Nick said or did to persuade the guy to go straight. For all I know was the same thing. But when I found out that he was persuaded, the young girls to go straight, well, it made me sick to my stomach. It was a total idiotic coincidence how I caught Nick at it, though. I was in the security office and I managed to get myself locked into the security closet.

Don't ask me how. To this day, I couldn't explain it. Fate, maybe. And so Nick brings this girl in, maybe 18 or 19, and immediately he's explaining to her how he's not just a security guard, he's secret police. and then he flashes some kind of badge which I couldn't make out through the slats in the door, but I guess it was pretty convincing because the girls start crying and begging and apologizing.

And so Nick tells her that he's only pulled her aside because, get this, she's a suspected enemy of the state. Apparently there are things that flag up to his people and he has to pay extra special attention to them. He's implying to this last that his people will be capable of disappearing her unless she cooperated. Nick's idea of cooperation was, to put it mildly, obscene, and the way he explained it, the items she was stealing, in this case bread, tomatoes and beans,

was a code combination for other agents to know that she was strapped with explosives. It was clearly some absolute nonsense, but long story short, he could make any trouble go away if she let him take some shots of her without clothes to prove that she's not wired or strapped with explosives. Now, I have no idea of this girl believed him, but she certainly believed that she could avoid escalation

if she just did what he said and stripped off for him. And so I was there stuck in the damn closet while he persuades this girl to explicitly make it clear that she's not wearing a wire. Now, had this been how he'd achieved such a high record of handling shoplifters, did he basically just blackmail them to strip down for him in exchange for turning a blind eye? Was the bizarre secret agent aspect some twisted gimmick?

Did anyone fall for it? Did any of this matter? Not me. I saw Red and managed to kick the closet door open, catching Nick in the act of taking a horrifically explicit shot of this girl bent over the table while she was crying and apologizing. Now I have a daughter. All I could see was Red, and I didn't care if this was his first time or his 50th.

I was going to drive Nick away in the same way that he'd been dealing with shoplifters. I told the girl to get dressed and get out of there and ask her to trust me that I'd deal with Nick if she didn't call the cops. But I didn't hold back. I gave Nick the beating of his life and then forced him to strip in the way he'd forced that girl, and who knows how many others, and I took photos. Now, none of this was sensible. I'm not proud of it. Now, I should have reported him, but sadly I know how impossible it can be to achieve.

justice for crimes like this. And so giving Nick a beating he'd never forget and lowering myself to his level, maybe it wasn't right, but it felt like the best option I had. Finally, I told him if he ever quit the job while I was there, if he prevented me from being able to keep a close eye on him, I would find him, and I would make him regret ever trying to avoid me. I told him I had him by the short and curleys, and I'd never be letting go. And if I ever found out that he'd been up to his old tricks, his life would not be worth living. I guess men like him are cowards, because he believed me, and to this day I still work with him. Maybe I should have reported him, but I have no idea who his victims were.

No idea if they'd play ball, and I figured that it would be better that I kept an iron vice grip on his. So this story happened on a Black Friday. The sun had just set and the bargains had been bought, and the nearby target, in my mind, was a war zone. I did not envy the folks who'd be on cleanup duty the next day, and for me, though, it wasn't a problem. I was the manager of a gas station. We didn't have to worry about Black Friday all that much. We just had to make sure that we had enough hot dogs on the griddle, nudie magazines on the shelves, and Baja blast in the cooler and the shotgun loaded behind the counter. It was just me and Bad Charlie, one of my coworkers. He was called Bad Charlie on account of his brain being bad.

Now, nowadays, you probably wouldn't call him that, but it's how Bad Charlie, who was a sweetheart, like to introduce himself. Now, Bad Charlie was mopping the floor, and I was kind of just deliberating over whether it was time to toss the hot dogs onto the roller. And it was. And then an old fellow approached me as I was getting the garbage bag to toss away the weaners, and then he says something like, you tossing them, pal? So I said yes, and he asked if maybe he could have a few. And so I respond, sure, do you want the one? with buns? And then he says, yeah, that's how you do a hot dog. Now, it was a bit sassy for my

taste, but whatever, so I just let him take a few hot dogs, direct them to the condiment station, and then go back to doing some admin on the old Windows M.E. computer that we had back then, you might remember it. Now, around 10 minutes later, bad Charlie comes up to me and kind of tugs my sleeve saying, hey, we got a problem. And there's always some problem with Charlie. Usually he saw an adorable mouse and wants to make sure it doesn't get hurt or some nonsense like that. But this time, he had a point. The old guy had made his hot dogs, but created an absolute apocalypse of sauce over at that condiment station. It looked like someone had exploded over there. And considering Bad Charlie had just been half an hour cleaning up the condiment station, he was a little upset.

And so was I, considering that the hot dogs had been a freebie for this old idiot. Now, I assume that he'd made his mess and long since gone, but it turned out that he was still there, and in fact was storming up to the counter one hot dog in each hand. These doggies be some steaming pile of overcook Shizney, the old man drawled up. And I'm thinking, well, yeah, they were old hot dogs that I was about to throw out, and he asked if he could have them for free. And Dad Charlie was asking me about what he was talking about, and I didn't really care to explain to him. I just told the old guy that if he wasn't happy with his dogs, then he's welcome to provide me with his receipt,

and I'll get right on that refund. Refuse this! He yells, hurling the hot dogs at me. Now, one misses, splattering the hang in there poster in the back, which is a zombie dangling from a noose, and the other dog hits me square in the face, sending the condiments dripping down my cheeks, and the weaner landing at my feet.

Now, I'm too shook and kind of amused to really react, but bad Charlie is not. He grabs the old man by the shirt and starts yelling how, That ain't very nice, and you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Now, before any drama can unfold, the front door bursts open, and some woman rushes in, holding an expensive-looking MP3 player in its box. Now, she's yelling that she needs help because she bought the last cheap iPod at the Black Friday sale, and now there are customers after her, and she please hide out there until they go away.

Now, normally I would say yes, but the angry hot dog guy is still present, so I don't really want to seal the gas station with this dude inside. And so Charlie seems to have an idea. He grabs the old man, drags him to the front door, and throws him outside, and then yells something like, This guy's stolen the lady's iPod. Someone help her. Now immediately, about five or six people come running from the direction of that target towards the old hot dog dude. Now he has no choice but to flee as Charlie locks the door and we stand and watch as the angry customers chase that dude off without the iPod off into the darkness. I go and clean up while Charlie explains the situation to the lady with the iPod. She's extremely grateful and explains that she genuinely believed that the other customers intended to do her serious harm if we hadn't directed them away.

Part of me felt bad that we'd endangered the old dude with a hot dog, but the part that still had sauce dripping down my face didn't feel too guilty and that he'd have to outrun an angry mob. It just goes to show that sometimes charity will get you nowhere, and simply achieving good luck will be enough to make people want to hurt you. On the plus side, Bad Charlie had an opportunity to feel like a hero, so things could have been a lot worse. All in all, not the worst Black Friday I've had.

but that's a story for another time. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube where you can catch all my new video releases

every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. Thanks so much, friends. And I'll see you in the next episode.