Don’t let the world fool you: consistent kindness is the most quietly powerful thing.
If you ever want to engage in villainy & undermine the social order: Be especially kind to the people society has rejected. Care about the ones the world would convince you don’t ‘deserve’ your kindness.
I genuinely mean this when I say to you: the ultimate act of rebellion is insisting on compassion and grace in a compassionless world.
I was in line at Aldi and this girl with two toddlers in front of me had her card declined and she looked so fucking sad and said “let me call my husband real quick” and it was only 18 dollars, so I just paid for it, and she was very sweet and then as she walked off, the lady behind me said `”You know that was probably a scam, right?” and like, even if it was, like what a sad fucking scam, right? 18 dollars at the Aldi. If you’re “scamming” me for some Tyson chicken and apple juice and cauliflower, then just take my fucking money.
“A scam” people are fucking wild.
This happened to me, too. A woman had used WIC for the majority of her stuff (which I say from personal experience is such a long and embarrassing process) and to buy the remainder of her groceries, which included diapers and wipes, she used a card, and it got declined. I bought the other $30 of her groceries because hey, I’ve been there, and now I’m not. She was extremely emotional and began to cry and even hugged me. My mom called me on the drive home and could tell I had been crying myself, asked what was wrong, and when I told her what happened, she berated me for being “duped.” I couldn’t believe she could be so disappointed in one of her children for doing something- nice? Is that the hill you want to die on? Getting mad about people needing groceries?
I once paid for a woman’s bill at the vet…it wasn’t a big one, but she was trying to pay for some medication for her dog, and her card was declined. And her lip started trembling, and she says “I don’t get paid until Tuesday, would he be ok until then?”
So I just told them to add the $20 something onto my bill, and I thought she was going to break down crying right there.
And I don’t care if it was a scam or not. Just do nice things for people sometimes.
Do good recklessly.
I think “Do good recklessly” would be fantastic word art to hang on one’s wall. Artistic people, go!
So this has happened to me but from the other side. Several years ago when my oldest was around three or so, I had my debit card decline at Walmart. It wasn’t a scam or a mistake, I was genuinely broke. Out of money. I checked my bank and discovered I had something like 7 dollars left to my name and a hungry kid and nothing to eat at home. So I sat there trying to come up with the best way to stretch that tiny amount of money to feed my kid. Not even to feed me. I can live on popcorn or something if I have to but my kid was three and he had to eat. So there I am trying really hard not to cry while I slowly take things out of my basket to get it down to under 7 bucks, when a lady tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up and she smiled at me and started putting the things back in my cart. I opened my mouth to tell her that I didn’t have the money for them but she stopped me right away and said “Don’t worry about it. It’s gonna be fine.” Then she handed the cashier her credit card and said “Ring up all of it.” My kid got to eat because of her. I got to eat because of her. I had laundry soap and deodorant because of her. She could’ve just ignored me silently struggling in that line. She could’ve decided I was a scam and gone home feeling good about avoiding being duped. But instead she chose to help me and she saved us. So maybe the person struggling in front of you is trying to put one over on you or maybe they are just sad and broke and trying to figure out what to do. You get to decide which you want to believe and what you want to do. But I’ll tell y’all, no one has ever been more beautiful to me than that lady in that line who saved me and my baby. Be like her. Be beautiful.
One time, my dad and I were living the grocery store and there was a guy outside asking for money to buy some stuff to take home for his kids. It was around Christmas time. My dad asked him if he could give him groceries instead of money, and the guy immediately said yes, so my dad gave him one of everything we bought (meat, rice, some chocolates, milk, oil). At that time, my dad hadn’t gotten his paycheck because the company he worked for was going through a tough time, but he didn’t care, he saw an opportunity to help someone and he did.
Another time, my dad gave 50 bucks to a guy who said he needed to buy medicine for his kids. I told my dad he was probably going to spend the money on alcohol or something, but my dad said that “whether he was lying or not says something about HIS character, but hearing someone in need and choosing not to help when I have the means to says something about mine”.
I never forget that.
louder, for the people in the back
Part of being a Warrior is doing good recklessly.
-FemaleWarrior, She/They
About a decade ago, I was trying to figure out how to put together a holiday meal for my little household, with only $7 to my name. We were joking around about it and stuff, because it’s better to laugh than cry, and this very nice older lady noticed us, and said it looked like we were having fun. I laughed, and told her what we were doing, and she insisted, then and there, on giving us $20 to help us out. We tried telling her we’d be fine, but she would not take no for an answer. It’s not the first time a stranger’s kindness has helped me during a rough time, but every time it’s happened, it’s made such a huge difference. If I refused to help out in turn when I can just because the person in need MIGHT be a scammer, it would feel like spitting on the kindness that was shown to me.
I'm back
sick of “scottish independence” this and “irish reunification” that
theres 3 of us and 1 of england
i say we just kick the english out the uk
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales kick England out and join the UK as the United Celtic Nations.
We can do this folks we can even steal some of france
the bretons would probably be down tbh
Solid chance that all of France will vote in favour if you promise us it’ll piss off England.
new contender for best community note of all time
I think I’m going to think about this youtube comment forever
damian standing next to billy: father i have made a friend.
bruce: it’s wonderful you’re making friends your own age without the —
damian lightly shoving billy out of the way to reveal a massive bengal tiger: this is tawky tawny a talking tiger whom i’ve befriended, i don’t know who this is
bruce: …
billy unbothered and waving enthusiastically: i’m billy batson!
It has apparently been ten years since the time one of my professors pulled me aside to tell me I had to clean up after making out before going to class because my lipstick was everywhere and I realized "actually my tapdancing group decided we all had to dress like the Joker for our performance" was an infinitely worse explanation so I just said I was sorry
Based on this addition
To this post
Timothy Drake Wayne, youngest CEO, Times person of the year a year ago (you choose why), and all around impressive business individual is easily recognizable wherever he goes…so long as he’s in a suit. As a CEO Timothy is both a staunch professional and a blatant gen z kid which makes him somewhat beloved and well known by everyone across the county.
But then Tim is wandering around Gotham in a pair of jeans and a flannel over long sleeves and no body takes a second glance.
He’s sitting at the skatepark laughing at “Timothy Drake Wayne funniest moments” compilations with other skaters while they take a break and no one knows the video is about him.
Timothy has to take a public flight and the guy at security checks his ID and then looks up at Tim like “hey you have the same name as that one kid CEO.” And it takes everything in Tim’s power to not immediately respond with “that’s because he is me?” Instead he slaps on the biggest grin and says “what a weird coincidence.”
He’s dressed down sitting in first class because he’s not a heathen and he’s gonna be stuck in a suit for this entire conference. The entire time this lady next to him kept scoffing about his appearance and how he probably never worked for a thing in his life. About how the quality of this aircraft company is going down if they’re letting people like Tim occupy first class. Tim, meanwhile, immediately clocked this woman as the CFO of a company WE was considering partnership with. Lol, fat chance that goes through now.
Tim keeps a suit at Wayne Tower for the emergency meetings he sometimes gets called into. He’s heading into the building when the security of the visiting company shoves him out of the way cause they assume he’s some teen. Needless to say that when he walks into the conference room cleaned an suited up, he found complete delight on watching all the blood drain from their face.
Tim makes fun of Superman because he doesn’t even have to wear glasses to get away with his secret identity. He’s not even trying to hide and people still look over him in a crowd when he’s not in a suit.
Some shady company is trying to buy the skatepark Tim regularly visits and has bribed the GCPD to arrest kids for “loitering” or “trespassing.” Or something. Tim gets arrested one time, sends a snap selfie like “lol got arrested.” and then buys the land the skate park is on and also the company that tried to buy it to build a resort.
There is an entire hashtag full of selfies people have taken with a dressed down Tim out and about in Gotham all captioned with something like “lol, I found our favorite teenage CEO’s doppelgänger!”
Hell is when book covers get redesigned with the actors of the show/movie that was made based on it.
stop saying there are exceptions to this post there are literally no exceptions!!!
I think this might legitimately be characterized as a hate crime
for chinese new year they get all these famous actors and comedians together and they do a lil show and one of the comedians was like “i was in a hotel in america once and there was a mouse in my room so i called reception except i forgot the english word for mouse so instead i said ‘you know tom and jerry? jerry is here’
jerry is here
my chinese teacher once shared this story in class about someone who went to the grocery to buy chicken, but they forgot the english word for it, so they grabbed an egg, went to the nearest sales lady and said “where’s the mother”
When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”
I was done for the day.
This makes me feel better about every conversation I had in both Rome and Ghent.
I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”
I did not find my husband in this way.
In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”
“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.
The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)
Of course. A fucking sack. And so I did get a sack.
I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English.
When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.
“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”
“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”
Which is LITERALLY Sleeping sac … The German word is a basically a one on one translation of the English word and I just… I failed it. At my mother tongue. BIG
My former boss is Italian and she ended up working in a lab where the common language was English. She once saw an insect running through the lab and she went to tell her colleagues. She remembered it was the name of a famous English band so she barged in the office yelling there was a rolling stone in the lab…
I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.
That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.
Best thing is, everyone understood what I meant.
I love those stories so much…
Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.
She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.
American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)
Bus Driver: שתי זוזים. (”Two zuzim” – a currency that’s been out of circulation for millenia)
that’s hilarious
I am officially screamlaughing at my desk from that last one OH MY
Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?
So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.
The minister was making a speech while a candidate, bemoning the state of the world. “The Soviet Union is fucking Egypt. Germany is fucking Syria. The Americans are fucking everyone. But who is fucking us? When I am prime minister, I will ensure we are fucked!”
What the hell Biblical Hebrew.
Just guessing: The path from something like “give someone a blade” to “give someone a blade, if you know what I mean ;)” is probably not that difficult or unlikely.
^Given that the Latin word for sheath (like, for a sword) is literally “vagina”, I can verify that this metaphor is a time-honored one.
Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.
Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English. Or French. Or German. Or Italian. (He tried all of them.)
Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years). He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.
She laughed her head off, but she gave him the extra night.
All of these *chef’s kiss* but the Medea one is hands down the best
s/o to my classics professor who managed to get a tire changed on his rental car while doing research in Greece by telling them his chariot had broken down
Neil Banged out his tunes today, on a train you have the comfort and relaxation to bang out your own tunes
