Special Snowflake Stories

[suzieQ]

...   Where do you think this woman has her 5 kids, most who look under 10 walk?  Directly down the railroad tracks! If it matters, the right side of the road with a sidewalk is easily accessible with a crosswalk and a traffic light.

I would call the police about this one.  That's not just Darwinish.  That's incredibly dangerous!! 

honestly this one doesn't bother me that much.  It's not like a train can sneak up on you.  They make a lot of noise and vibration coming, and you have more than sufficent time to get out of the way.  Unless there is no way to cross the street, and no way to leave the tracks on the other side (like maybe it's a railroad bridge) I think this is a non-issue.

In the town near me, at least 5 people have been killed in the last few years while walking on the railroad tracks. I believe they were on a trestle at the time, but railroad tracks are no place for pedestrians.

[Decimus]

...   Where do you think this woman has her 5 kids, most who look under 10 walk?  Directly down the railroad tracks! If it matters, the right side of the road with a sidewalk is easily accessible with a crosswalk and a traffic light.

I would call the police about this one.  That's not just Darwinish.  That's incredibly dangerous!! 

honestly this one doesn't bother me that much.  It's not like a train can sneak up on you.  They make a lot of noise and vibration coming, and you have more than sufficent time to get out of the way.  Unless there is no way to cross the street, and no way to leave the tracks on the other side (like maybe it's a railroad bridge) I think this is a non-issue.

I used to work with coroner's inquest reports.  In Alleghany County, getting hit by a train was so common during the period 1900-1950 they had a special FORM to fill out when it happened.  And that was back in the days when they were using steam engines.  Trains today are surprisingly quiet, particularly if they are passenger trains.

[LB]

An acquaintance posted on FB today "Seriously considering telling people who ask me to baby or petsit to f--- off." Another person posted "I think you just did "

I turned to DH and said "I am so glad we've never asked her to baby or dog sit." He agreed with me. It's one thing to post "I just want to let everyone know that I can't watch your wards," it's another to curse at your (general) friend and family list because someone asked you to watch a single house trained dog.

Ah well, at least I've been warned!

I think some people would even be offended by that.

Yeah, but at least it's polite, so then they would be the special person.  Up until today I didn't even know that she doesn't pet/kid sit, this is the first I've heard of it. A few polite words is a much better way to let people know than dropping the f bomb.

Yeah, I mean what's wrong with, say, "No." ?

[faithlessone]

An acquaintance posted on FB today "Seriously considering telling people who ask me to baby or petsit to f--- off." Another person posted "I think you just did "

I turned to DH and said "I am so glad we've never asked her to baby or dog sit." He agreed with me. It's one thing to post "I just want to let everyone know that I can't watch your wards," it's another to curse at your (general) friend and family list because someone asked you to watch a single house trained dog.

Ah well, at least I've been warned!

I think some people would even be offended by that.

Yeah, but at least it's polite, so then they would be the special person.  Up until today I didn't even know that she doesn't pet/kid sit, this is the first I've heard of it. A few polite words is a much better way to let people know than dropping the f bomb.

Yeah, I mean what's wrong with, say, "No." ?

You'd be surprised. I know for one that one of my aunts takes it as a personal insult if you can't babysit her demon spawn* - even if you have a legitimate excuse. She's been known to go around to the rest of the family/other neighbours viciously complaining about certain people (me, my cousin, another aunt, the teenage girl next door, the daughter of a family friend) when they refuse to babysit.

If you have a particularly bad experience, it can be enough to make you have a seemingly exaggerated response to these sorts of things.


(*Exaggeration. They can be lovely, but they can be holy terrors!)

[Jones]

So people were asking her what was up with the anti-sitting post and apparently, she is dog-sitting one of her relative's dogs, and it didn't come when she called it in for dinner.

[wonderfullyanonymous]

When my mom was young, cars were not very reliable and would stall at the worst time, such as across a train track. my grandfather would send one girl one way and the other the other way, to give an engineer a heads up about a car on the tracks, if a train came along before said car was going again.


In the last few months, a few teens in the surrounding areas have been hit by trains, because they walk on the tracks with head phones on.

[Midnight Kitty]

I finally caught up so I could post this one:

I was driving down a major road with 3 lanes in each direction and no median.  I was behind Car A and we are cruising because the traffic lights are all green.  With no warning, a young man comes running down the driveway from the shopping center and into the street.  He crashed into the front of Car A, who slammed on their brakes, leaving some black skid marks.  I was able to stop without skidding.  As I glanced to the right, I saw 3 shopping center security guards standing at the bottom of the driveway.  Our young shoplifter made it over the property line and the security guards are not following him.  Shoplifter holds up both arms in victory, giving the security guards the middle fingers of both hands, and saunters across the other 5 lanes, stopping traffic as he proceeds across the street midblock with nary a crosswalk in the vicinity.

[Slartibartfast]

This was more  than  but it was snowflakey anyway.  I was out at my local Wal-Mart alternative this evening, late enough that even though the first dozen or so spots closest to the store were mostly taken, almost everything past that was free.  I lucked into seeing that one of the spots at the end of the row closest to the store was empty.  The car in the next spot (second from the store) was pulling out, so I waited to turn into that lane.  When the car finished pulling out and before I could turn into that lane, an SUV coming from the other side of him came and parked at a diagonal so he took up both spaces 

I only had to walk an extra 20 feet or so, but still!

[Jocelyn]

 

Firstly, you'd be very surprised how a train can come up behind you and you don't notice until it's close by.  It seems counterintuitive but I've seen it happen (and had it happen to me in my youth) more than once.  But more to the point, she had five children in tow, and when you need to get five young kids to do anything, you can easily lose track of one or more for a few seconds, and that's all it takes to end up in a position where some of the kids are on one side of a moving train and some on the other.  While you'd think it's not a big deal, a lot of sober people get killed walking on train tracks every year, so I agree that this is one for the police.

Virg


I developed a fear of trains in 5th grade after the Santa Fe came to our school and made a presentation about how dangerous they were and how we should stay away from them (the SF tracks ran the length of the town, 1 block off Main Street, and right down the middle of a street in the business district. Their trestle was the quickest way for kids from my part of town to cross the river to get to the town pool.) I figure the SFRR wouldn't have gone to the bother of making a film, sending staff out to show it in school assemblies, and creating a truly terrifying comic book illustrating the many ways people are killed by trains. Took me a LONG time not to be frightened by trains after looking at that comic book.

[greencat]

My grandfather lost one of his brothers and an eye to a train when he was a teenager.  I will always be careful around train tracks.

Special snowflake-y restaurant patron:  We were insanely busy Tuesday night, as a politician was holding his press conference in one of the event rooms in the hotel, and the event overflowed.  We didn't have extra staff on - at best, we had half an extra person, me, because I was training, and the sales manager who had booked the group ended up running orders as well.  My trainer ended up having to help tend the bar and I ended up serving the dining room.  One customer ordered wine and food, and then decided to castigate me for the speed at which his food and drinks were emerging from our visibly busy bar and kitchen.  The gentleman, and I use the term loosely, complained that he didn't see many other people with food on their tables and therefore our kitchen couldn't be that busy (he couldn't see the bar where many people were ordering the bar-snack kinds of food); and that he didn't care that the bar was so busy that there were people standing in every available inch of floor space trying to order drinks, plus the thirty or forty people sitting in the restaurant part just ordering drinks, and that the bartenders physically could not make drinks any faster. 

His wife, at least, had the grace to look embarrassed by his behavior.  She must have said something to him between that exchange and me managing to get part of their order out to them, because he suddenly changed his tune and became very polite and gracious.

I did, however, agree with his point that we should have had more staff on, and I'm not sure which member or members of management should be tarred and feathered for that particular gaffe.

[Zenith]

...   Where do you think this woman has her 5 kids, most who look under 10 walk?  Directly down the railroad tracks! If it matters, the right side of the road with a sidewalk is easily accessible with a crosswalk and a traffic light.

I would call the police about this one.  That's not just Darwinish.  That's incredibly dangerous!! 

honestly this one doesn't bother me that much.  It's not like a train can sneak up on you.  They make a lot of noise and vibration coming, and you have more than sufficent time to get out of the way.  Unless there is no way to cross the street, and no way to leave the tracks on the other side (like maybe it's a railroad bridge) I think this is a non-issue.

Quite a few people in Ozland have been killed doing this in the past couple of months due to them wearing headphones and not paying attention.  Also, few people have also been seriously injured by trams doing the same thing.

Walking on active train tracks is silly enough, blocking out the outside world makes it very dangerous, this includes headphones, reading anything on your phone, ipads even walking and reading a book. At least once a week I nearly run over a secondary school kid who is doing one of the above and just walks out in the middle of the street without looking. In summer a huge amount of people do the distracted wander and nearly become pancakes on their evening walks :/ Not much you can do about I'm afraid.

[Daquiri40]

deleted

[Wench]

...   Where do you think this woman has her 5 kids, most who look under 10 walk?  Directly down the railroad tracks! If it matters, the right side of the road with a sidewalk is easily accessible with a crosswalk and a traffic light.

I would call the police about this one.  That's not just Darwinish.  That's incredibly dangerous!! 

honestly this one doesn't bother me that much.  It's not like a train can sneak up on you.  They make a lot of noise and vibration coming, and you have more than sufficent time to get out of the way.  Unless there is no way to cross the street, and no way to leave the tracks on the other side (like maybe it's a railroad bridge) I think this is a non-issue.

Sadly, there are lots of tragic examples that say you're entirely wrong. People can misjudge even when they know the train is there. Over 100 people have been killed in accidents along the Los Angeles Metro Rail Blue Line since 1990, many of them trying to cross the tracks when a train is coming. Many of the adults with supposedly superior reasoning capacity. Five kids about 10yo on the tracks is a formula for disaster.

Trains and humans don't mix. The US is unusual in that the right-of-way often isn't fenced and we have lots of level crossings. The UK is generally better, in that they have route separation. If someone gets hit by a train in the UK, more often than not, they were trying to get hit.

Also UK train lines have a third raised track which carries roughly 50,000 volts to power the trains.  That often does the damage before the train has even arrived.  I have seen one Darwinist snowflake cross the track at a train station because he could not be bothered to use the subway and he was incredible lucky that he didn't get hurt.  The thought of actually walking down a train track seems insane to me but that is because the risk of injury or death is incredibly high without the train being involved.

[Hazmat]

I finally caught up so I could post this one:

You miss a day or so and you wind up with 5 or 6 pages!

[twiggy]

I'm a bit late to the SS parent parking at the school idea, I see that it's been discussed in this thread for years. But my son just started preschool, so this is my first real experience with it. DS's school is in a neighborhood. I get on the through street about a mile and a half from his school and actually pass another school to get to his. I typically set my cruise control because it is sooo easy to speed down that street. Several times I've had people riding my bumper and one guy in a big truck was actually revving his engine at me when I had the nerve to slow down at the school crossing (15mph speed limit). On another occasion a driver went into the bike lane (on this street it's as wide as a car lane) to pass me on the right.

Then we get to the school itself. To get our preschoolers, we have to park on the street, walk to the classroom and sign them in/out. On the corner there is a fire hydrant, so clearly you can't park there right? Am I the only one who thinks parking in front of a fire hydrant is not allowed? Even if its only 5 min. Today we got a flyer reminding parents not to park under the no parking signs

**Update**

This morning I got a somewhat frantic phone call from DH--he handles drop off, I pick up. He told me that *gasp* that whole street is no parking and when he got to the school today, he saw a police car parked, with the officer walking up the sidewalk. Apparently the officer yelled at DH something like "what are you doing? This is a no parking zone *gestures up the street* all these people are getting tickets." At which point DH jumped back into his car, found a legal spot and dropped DS off. DH was giving me a heads up so that I didn't get ticketed this afternoon. DH says he didn't know it was no parking.  I told him that there are signs on every.single.streetlight. *eyes roll up into my head*

So, DH is a preschool parking SS, but he didn't get ticketed. He did, however, get an earful, and a list of 4 different legal parking areas. And I feel bad for the officer who was justifiably incredulous that someone would try to park in a no parking zone as he was writing parking tickets.