GooberEar

Cubeboobies

In my early school years, we only had round tipped plastic safety scissors that could barely cut tissue paper. As a kid, I was terrified at the degree of responsibility and potential to take another kid's life those scissors represented.

The adults in charge when I was a kid had us convinced that if we ran with scissors in our hands we were going to kill the other children in the vicinity by accident in the most horrifically bloody and violent manner. They even showed us video re-enactments of children getting stabbed in the heart, neck, and eye complete with fake blood gushing out and Bugs Bunny worthy death performances.

A lot of us thought this was some super common way that kids were dying by the millions all across the world.

For real though?

Clearly he was cruising. It's right there in his name.

I've had all 3 issues since I was a teenager. From my perspective, doctors in the USA don't give a shit about any of them.

Back pain? You need to exercise more and lose weight. Great advice, of course, but ignoring the fact that it was an issue even when i was at my skinniest and most active.

Constant anxiety? You need to do breathing exercises. Oh, that didn't work for you? That's not possible, you're doing them wrong.

Sleep problems? You need to exercise and lose weight. Great advice, of course, but it ignores the fact that my sleep issues were a problem even when I was at my skinniest and most active.

This reminds me of a site I used to visit every once in awhile back in the day. It was known for 2 things and 2 things only. Loved it.

30 years ago, I was dating a guy whose family's love language was mean, spiteful shouting at the top of their lungs at each other. His mom and his sister, in particular, seemed to despise me right from the start of our relationship. My boyfriend insisted that they both liked me, though, and had a special place in their heart for me. The sister and mother both made it clear that they believed I was not good enough for him but also acted like I was too good for him.

Towards the end of our relationship, my boyfriend's brother-in-law passed away suddenly and tragically due to a drug overdose. I was on a trip out of town when it happened, but I was able to get back home the morning of the funeral. Because I'd been out of town, I hadn't actually gotten a chance to talk to my boyfriend's sister or any of the family before hand.

We get to the funeral and there's a line of friends and family going in, each person stopping to talk to the widow. While in line my boyfriend told me that his sister was maintaining her composure well, but that she's probably going to break down when she sees me because she didn't think I was going to be there, and how it was going to mean so much to her that I was able to make it. Really talking it up.

Finally we get up there to her, and I said something like "I'm so sorry, how are you holding up?"

The sister's whole demeanor just flipped. She immediately went into rage mode, "How the fuck do you think I'm holding up? My husband just died." She didn't quite yell it, but she said it loudly enough that everyone there could hear it. Awkward. To be honest, she was a hateful person in general and lashed out in pain, but come on.

Anyway, I know it's not fair to judge, but she did move on to a new man (her dead husband's drug dealer) in a matter of weeks after the funeral. I mean, good for her, of course, but it does make people talk.

I really pissed off a bunch of my family when I was a kid with this general concept.

"Illegal Mexicans" are taking all the jobs was a common sentiment with some of my adult family members and their friends. Being young, precocious, and naive, I remember asking why they are mad at the people "taking" their jobs, but not the owners who were hiring illegal immigrants. It didn't go over very well.

I'm in the USA, so if they were made in China they'd probably cost me $30 USD by now.

I grew up poor in the southern part of the USA. Anti-intellectualism is a core tenant of most of the common religions in this region, which trend heavily towards evangelical christianity. One of my earliest formative memories is being called a "Scientologist" and getting condemned to hell because I believed in evolution. Lots to unpack there, I know.

On the other hand, I somewhat regularly get accused of using AI to write my comments/replies on various social media platforms, something which I have absolutely never done. Simply writing in my typical style, even with all the poor grammar and misspellings, is enough to make all the Dunning-Kruger mother fuckers crawl out of their basement long enough to make accusations against me.

In the third grade, I won the science fair.

The competition was pretty strong. There was a kid who built a contraption to simulate a mini-tornado. Granted, it was probably his dad who built the thing, but still. There was another kid that built and programmed a robotics project. Again, probably his parents did a lot of the work, but the guy was super smart so I'm sure he did some of that work. One girl came up with an experiment to use fungus to grow plastics or something like that, I don't remember. It's been decades.

Me? The afternoon before the fair I had literally nothing. I grew up poor, we had a lot of junk laying around the house because my parents would go to the county dump site, dig through the trash, and bring home anything they thought was valuable or fixable. I managed to hobble together one of the light sensors from a broken night light to the electronics from a toy radio so that it only played when the lights were off. I stuffed that into a cardboard "robot". And the people judging the science fair loved it.

So fuck you Stephanie Petty, Chris McDonald, and Dequan Shaw and your rich ass parents and your entitled ass selves. I won bitches.

If they were cheap and not made in China, I would buy these. They look neat.