I am not a krusty krab

It was spring 2014, early in the week.  Pretty sure it was a Tuesday, but it’s been awhile.  It was so dead in our store, I hadn’t seen anyone in over 40 minutes.  Eventually, in comes this mom and we start chatting.  She said she was here to buy her son a game he wanted, Grand Theft Auto 5, and could I help her find it?

Now, I’m sure many of you are aware how awful Grand Theft Auto 5 is in terms of violence, gore, and sexism.  But in case you don’t, the Grand Theft Auto series has always been one of the most violent series that you can buy in stores.  The very first GTA was banned in Brazil and condemned in several countries, GTA 5 has a graphic torture scene that is player initiated.  GTA: San Andreas had the Hot Coffee scandal which happened in 2004 when modders found unused code in the game for a sex minigame that was player controlled.  And that’s only the beginning of the controversies surrounding the GTA series (click here to read more! X X X X X X X )

Anyways, back to me and the Mom.  Who will now be referred to as Mom because she is that awesome.  Since I was behind the counter I pulled a copy of GTA 5 from backstock and started ringing her up while making polite chitchat, the usual cashier stuff.  But everything changed when I asked for her ID because of the M rating.  At first Mom replied, “Oh sure thing let me grab it.“  And started digging in her purse.  But then what I said registered with her and she paused and looked at me.

“M rating?  What does that mean?”

“Oh GTA 5 is rated M for violence, gore, bad language, and other stuff”.  I won’t bore you with the whole spiel I go into when I’m asked about the M rating but basically I just explain why the game is rated M, what the M rating means, and that they can go on ESRB.org to see why it got that rating. 

So I tell Mom about the website and she whips out her cell phone and gets on the site and starts reading.  And she got MAD.  She starts telling me about how her son knows she doesn’t like this sort of game and how he is going to be in so much trouble because he knows better than to ask for this sort of thing as she doesn’t tolerate this in her house.  And he is so grounded for thinking he could get away with this.  Then, Mom looked me in the eye and asked me to look up several other games for her to see if he’d done this with any other games.

“Yea sure thing, which games would you like me to look up?”

“Bioshock 2.”

“I can already tell you without looking that Bioshock 2 is rated M.”

“MY CHILD IS SO GROUNDED FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR.  What about the first Bioshock?”

“Yep, that’s also rated M.”

“OH MY GOSH, what about Gears of War?”

“That entire series is rated M.”

To spare y'all from another 10 rounds of that, basically take every popular M rated title from the last 5 years and insert them in the above dialogue. 

Eventually, Mom says “Oh my gosh, you must think me a horrible parent.  I can’t believe I let him have those games.”

“Ma'am, I don’t think that at all.  The fact that you’re concerned about this tells me that you are a good parent.  And just so you know instead of throwing out those games you’re more than welcome to trade them in here and get some store credit or cash back for them.”

“Really?  I’ll have to do that, I don’t want him playing those games anymore.”

“Yea, we also take gaming consoles, iphones, and tablets too!”

“Oh that’s wonderful!  Thank you for being so patient with me and telling me all about this. I’m going home and to go through his gaming collection right now!”

And off she went, leaving me bored till I finally got to leave for the night. 

BUT THAT’S NOT THE END.  THIS IS WHEN SHIT GETS AWESOME.

The next day I’m working again, bored out of my goddamn mind.  There’s only so many times you can alphabetize the store before going insane.  As I’m looking out the window I see a car pull up and Mom hops out and then pulls out two huge duffel bags and walks in.

“Hey welcome back to Gamestop!  What can I help you with!”

“Oh I’m so glad you’re here!  So last night I went through my son’s game collection and most of them are rated M!  So I decided to teach him a lesson about why you don’t lie to your mother.  Seeing as I bought him these consoles and most of the games were bought with my money, his game consoles and games actually belong to me.  Therefore, I would like to trade in all this."  And proceeds to pull out his XBox 360, PS3, and every game he had for both consoles (over 50!) as well all the extra controllers and headsets he had. 

"Are you sure?”

“Absolutely."  I will never forget her smile when she said this nor the look in her eye.  This is not a woman to be crossed.

So I traded everything in and she got back over $300 in store credit for everything.  And with it she bought a Wii, a couple extra controllers, and a couple games rated E.  Then she looked me in the eye and asked if we had any extra boxes laying around for the XBox One and if so could she have one?

"Are you going to put the Wii in it and give it to him?" 

"Yes.  Along with a note saying that this is what happens when you abuse the trust of your mother.  I’m going to make sure this never happens again."  It is at this point that Mom ascended to God Tier status with all Gamestop employees falling to their knees for a chance to bask in her glory. 

I got her an XBox One box and sent her on her way after asking her to take the survey on the receipt. 

"Oh of course dear, you’ve been such a big help.  Let me write down your name so I don’t forget it.”

“Of course!  I’m Lexi, but if your son asks my name is Deegan."  (Deegan was my store’s manager at the time. 

And then she left, leaving me with the best trade numbers of the month and the greatest story I’ll likely ever be apart of at GameStop.  Mom, I never got your name, but you are my personal Gamestop Hero.

In Pittsburgh, the three rivers and bravery converge in equal measure.

You hear the term “refugee” in the news a lot, conjuring the image of desperate people who mostly exist in our consciousness as political footballs or scapegoats (how many people do you turn away to prevent the monsters from getting in?). But whatever your opinion on refugee policy, you have to admit one thing tends to be overlooked: In many cases, what these people are doing is fucking amazing. We’re talking about people who fled a bullet-riddled hellscape, traversed the globe, and wound up in a place that to them had to seem like freaking Mars.

We talked to a guy named Abdullahi Abdi, who was born in a refugee camp 19 years ago and eventually finally made it to America. His little corner of Hell was called the Kakuma Refugee Camp. It was founded in Kenya in 1991 to help people trying to escape from the Second Sudanese Civil War. It expanded over the next 23 years and now is home to over 180,000 people from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Rwanda, and more. We asked him what it was like to grow up without a country and try to then adjust to life in the USA.