Alexithymia

Me: Okay well. Maybe if I go to sleep super duper early, I’ll get a decent amount of sleep.

Me: Okay well. Maybe now I can get some stuff done.

Well, Romanian is Polish for romance languages. Let me show you:

war

Spanish: guerra

Portuguese: guerra

French: guerre

Italian: guerra

Catalan: guerra

Romanian: …

Romanian: război…

earth

Spanish: tierra

Portuguese: terra

French: terre

Italian: terra

Catalan: terra

Romanian: uhh….

Romanian: pământ..

half

Spanish: mitad

Portuguese: metade

French: moitié

Italian:  metà

Catalan: meitat

Romanian: … *sigh* ….

I found out why after I’d been working there, oh, about a month. My period started suddenly, as it sometimes does, and I asked to excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room. He wanted to know why. I told him.

He started ranting about how lazy women were. How we wasted time. How we were so careless and unhygenic, and that there was no call for that. He finished by telling me that I certainly was NOT going to the ladies’ room and that I was just going to sit there and work. He finished this off with a decisive nod, as if I’d just been told and there could be no possible argument.

“If I don’t go,” I said in an overly patient tone, “the blood is going to soak through my pants, stain my new skirt that I just bought, and possibly get on this chair I’m sitting in. I need something to soak up the blood. That’s why I need to go to the bathroom.”

His face turned oatmeal-gray; an expression of pure horror spread across his face. He leaned forward and whispered, “Wait, you mean that if you don’t go, you’ll just keep on bleeding? I thought that women could turn it off any time that they wanted!”

I thought,  You have got to be kidding.

Several horrified whispers later, I learned that he wasn’t. He actually thought a) that women could shut down the menstrual cycle at will, b) that we essentially picked a week per month to spend more time in the bathroom, i.e. to goof off, and c) that napkins and tampons were sex toys paid for by Health and Human Services. I didn’t know the term then, but he believed that tampons were dildos. Which was why he and a good number of his friends considered them luxuries.

chaotic neutral: calling our lord and savior Dimitri Shostakovich shosty

She saw gender and went to click female when she noticed the “other” choice

She looked at me confused and I started to explain that some people don’t think they fit in with strictly male or female

“Oh! You mean like transgender and stuff like that. I was freaked out for a second- I thought they meant robots.”