Today one of my students threw a stuffed animal across the room and it landed directly in a plate filled with paint
And I had it narrowed down to a few kids but no one would confess so I made them all put their toys away and have five minutes of quiet time to Reflect on Their Behavior
During that five minutes of relative silence, this group of three year olds INVENTED A NEW CLASSMATE, named him, and unanimously blamed him for throwing the toy across the room
There was not a single weak link, they were all ride or die
i saw this post earlier about therapists and it reminded me of my old therapist paul, who in my opinion is one of the greatest men alive and who did not put up with my bullshit for even one second
anyway i go in to see paul one week in the summer of 2016, and i’m doing my usual bullshit which consists of me talking shit about myself, and paul is staring at me, and then he cuts me off and says that he’s got a new tool for helping people recognize when they’re using negative language, and gets up and goes over to his desk
and i’m like alright hit me with that sweet sweet self-help article my man, because i’m a linguistic learner and whenever paul’s like here i have a tool for you to use it’s pretty much always an article or a book or something
paul opens a drawer, takes something out, and turns back around. i stare.
i say, paul.
is that a nerf gun.
yeah, says paul.
i say, are you gonna shoot me with a nerf gun in this professional setting.
he happily informs me that that’s really up to me, isn’t it. and sits back down. and gestures, like, go ahead, what were you saying?
and i squint suspiciously and start back up about how i’m having too much anxiety to leave the house to run errands, like it was a miracle to even get here, like i’ve forgone getting groceries for the past week and that’s so stupid, what a stupid issue, i’m an idiot, how could i–
a foam dart hits me in the leg.
i go, hey! because my therapist just shot me in the leg. paul blinks at me placidly and raises an eyebrow. i squint again.
i say, slowly, it’s– not a stupid issue, i’m not stupid, but it’s frustrating me and i don’t want it to be a problem i’m having.
no dart this time. okay. sweet.
so the rest of the hour passes with me intermittently getting nailed with tiny foam darts and then swearing and then fixing my language and, wouldn’t you know it, i start liking myself a little more by the end of the session, which is mildly infuriating because paul can tell and he’s very smug about it
anyway i leave his office and the lady having the next appointment walks in and i hear what’s all over the floor? and paul very seriously says cognitive behavioral therapy tools.
also while im waiting for my tea to steep, since im petty, and they cant fire me any more than they already have i can tell you about the Button That Makes You Lie To People because i CANNOT stop thinking about it and its driving me fucking nuts
i worked at a fancy gourmet coffee shop, but not everyone who came in knew that or cared, so we’d occasionally get ppl who got all their coffee knowledge from starbuckses. starbuckae? starbukakke
anyway sbux has this thing where they’re literally just wrong about what they call some drinks. for example, a cappuccino is traditionally a double shot of espresso with milk foam, like a few sips of drink, but at starbucks the smallest possible “cappuccino” is 8oz and espresso with that much milk? is really just a bastard latte.
but to explain that to someone who doesnt know better takes time, and there a line forming, and a latte… is close enough to what someone who thinks of a cappuccino as a 16oz drink is expecting.
so if someone asked for a “large cappuccino” we were instructed to go “okay :)”, plug in a large latte, and then, before they could see, scroll down to the secret buttons, the forbidden buttons, the deceit buttons, and press the one called “cappuccino”, in “quotes”, which would not only put a cappuccino on their receipt, but would send a message to the barista, across the room, who would then make a latte, see the pink “cappuccino” indicator, and go
“large cappuccino? :)”
and i just, like, that’s just, i love how, food is made up and not real
So at work someone just brought up the Tide Pod thing as proof that kids these days are dumb and I pointed out the fact that the fad in the 1920′s was to swallow whole live goldfish (look it up, my grandparents told me about it years ago, it was a Thing.)
And of course some kids choked to death on live goldfish.
He didn’t believe me until he looked it up on his phone. And then he was just quiet for a minute and said “Ok maybe people have just always done dumb shit” and the glow of victory is going to carry me until lunch.
