Things That Make It Ok

Me: Yeah that was on purpose.

Fairy: Oh my god stealing people’s names has been categorized as a war crime for like a hundred years. Do I seem like the kind of fairy that would do war crimes?

Me: Well yes, but that’s just my impression of you personally. Not fairies in general.

Fairy: I think the one from a small corner of Alabama might be but for the most part, no. It’s still decided by a contest between the three oldest children.

Me: What kind of competition?

Fairy: That’s mostly a regional thing but where I’m from it’s insulting to the wealth of the person giving you stuff. Like you really only thank people when what they did was like a huge burden so if you thank someone for giving you something that’s like calling them poor.

Me: Fairies have wealth inequality?

Fairy: I mean we technically still live under a feudal system if I’m being honest but with modern technology and ethics nobody notices.

Me: Do you have Internet down there?

Me: Well not most of them to my knowledge.

Fairy: So I bought these contacts for nothing.

Me: Hey man you don’t have to be a frog spirit to lure men into your clutches. Plenty of dudes are into cat eyes and ghoulish moaning.

Fairy: You really think so?

Me: I know so! Stop doubting yourself so much. You can definitely find some mortal men to lure into the timeless void for several centuries and adopt a demon cat with you.

Me: No? It’ll cut up our insides and kill us.

Fairy: Ooohhhh. Oh no.

Me: What did you do now?

Fairy: More like... what I’ve done over the past three centuries since I moved out of my mom’s house.

Me: Did the coughing up of blood not cue you into anything?!?!!

Fairy: I thought that humans just spontaneously die sometimes!

Me: No we don’t! There’s physical reasons for these things!

Fairy: So... no more bringing nightshade and glass entrees to the potluck?

Fairies: Look man, even we don’t mess with mushrooms alright? Sometimes they open up a portal to the human world and it’s just best to not question it.

Me: So wait. You don’t make the fairy circles?

3.16 | Urgo

👇 Me right now 👇

Their names were Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon. They were kept in the Royal Earlswood Hospital, formerly known as "The Asylum for Idiots". Burke's Peerage listed them both as deceased in the 1940s but Nerissa died in 1996 and Katherine died in 2014.

The hospital had no record of any visit from the family during the time the sisters were there, and they never received a birthday or Christmas card. They also received no money beyond the £125 paid to the hospital per year.

Nerissa Bowes-Lyon was buried in a pauper's grave with a plastic marker and a serial number:

The family didn't even buy her a headstone until a Channel 4 documentary highlighted the sisters' story and showed the grave. None of her family had attended her funeral.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and other distinguished guests” <- inclusive but far, far too formal

If I’m somewhere where there are Educational Personell (Museum Docents, Q&A zookeepers, Park Rangers, Public School Teachers, Professors etc.) I have a question I like to ask them:

“What’s the weirdest question someone’s ever asked you?”

I say weird and not Dumb becuase even buckwild questions can have important answers, but whoever I ask it too usually has to think about it for a bit, then comes out with something different every time.  And I love every single answer becuase it just warms my heart out there to know people are trying to understand the world a bit better, no matter how limited thier starting point. A collection of favorites so far:

Art Museum Host: “A man once asked me “Can you help me find someone and if you can’t can you find someone who can?”  Which I always thought would be a great title for an Artwork.”

Park Ranger: “I’m so glad the Japanese couple asked me “Is bear spray like mosquito spray and it goes on the jacket, or on the bear?” instead of just trying it.”

Zookeeper: “A man once pointed at the live red-tailed hawk I had out for a demo and asked me “Aren’t those extinct?” We eventually figured out he meant “Endangered” but I hear that question every time I see a redtail now.”

Primary School Teacher: “About every other year a student asks me what part of the school I sleep in at night, because clearly I live here.  I tell them I sleep under the bleachers in the gym but it’s actually the Nurse’s office.”

Professor: “A student asked me “So how do I use this in a conversation when my aunt is wine-drunk at thanksgiving and being a jerk again?” Which honestly is a fair question about philosophy and really changed how I teach rhetoric.”

Natural History Docent: “A woman once asked me what the difference between a Million and a Billion was.  Kinda pieced together that she’d just left her church for her safety, and was learning about Earth’s Natural History for the first time. Nobody else was there because it had been snowing, so I walked her through the Hall Of Time and answered as many questions as I could.  She was bewildered, but really trying. It always struck me as a really brave thing, to try to understand all of that while fresh out of a dangerous situation. I hope it helped.”

Forensic Scientist:  “People ask me how to commit murder all the time, but if you really hate someone, stealing thier identity causes much more suffering and is a lot harder to get caught at. A guy did ask me if working at a body farm was creepy and did not like that it was ok until you learned that decayed human fingers are a deer’s favorite midwinter snack.”

Zookeeper: “People call us becuase they think they’ve found an escaped animal all the time, or they think they’re neighbor’s husky is a wolf. One guy asked me if his dog was part hyena because it had spots. But that one guy really did have a Tiger in his toolshed that one time so we try to take them seriously.”

Meteorologist: “A guy once emailed me about how hard you’d have to fan a tornado to make it start spinning in the other direction and included a picture of him holding up a box fan at an approaching tornado.  We printed it out for the work fridge.”

Park Ranger: “I was giving a talk on the Yellowstone Supervolcano and a guy asked if, after it errupted, the earth would be ‘hollowed out’.  I suppose I was just relieved that he understand that the earth isn’t flat.”

Primarcy Shcool teacher: “A student once asked me where she could sell her bones online so she could by a dog.  Which? Same.”

are you a teenager? do you wish you had the space & resources & organization to do a thing, whether that's an anime club or a movie night or a big craft workshop or creative writing group or literally whatever? would you like to do your thing totally for free? yes?

okay, then bring it up to a librarian

seriously, teenagers are the absolute hardest group to engage at most libraries & we'll often organize programs that absolutely no one will show up to & it sucks. if you go up to a public librarian & say "hey, some friends & i want to do this thing. does that sound like a feasible teen program for the library?" most people will move heaven & earth to pull it off for you because we know there's an interest in our community. we will go balls to the freaking wall to make it happen

There's a history of pickled beets in my family. Growing up in the great depression meant that for my grandma that was sometimes the only thing available to eat and she HATES them. But my grandpa loved them so she would always buy a jar and when he opened the jar she'd be all the way in the next room and somehow just KNOW he was opening the jar of beets. She'd come running into the kitchen just to tell him 'yuck!'

Years pass, grandpa died, my dad got into the habit of taking her out to eat at places with a salad bar so we could make sure we all get our greens. He'd always pick out a few pickled beets for himself. Grandma would point at them and say 'yuck!'

Years pass, my grandma is getting on in years. She has a Facebook account, but she just kind of treats it like a family newsletter and barely actually interacts with anyone and just kind of lurks. She has an aide to help her around the house and keep her company and do things that are hard for her. She can't really type anything because last month she had a stroke that messed with her spatial reasoning and typing is hard.

A few days ago, I told Facebook that I had pickled beets on a taco and it was pretty good. My grandmother, age 96, alerted her aide that it was imperative that she reply. And so her aide Naiya, age 22, on behalf of the matriarch of the family, got on her Facebook specifically to tell me...

'Yuck.'