When I used to walk home from class at night, there’s this dude always there that would always call me “gangsta, major respect” but never anything else (for reference, I’m a nineteen year old short Hawaiian girl, and not very threatening looking). We’ll call him JD. He’d ask how my day was, if I’m getting home okay, if I had any problems getting home, etc. I began to look forward to it when I walked home from class. A couple of times I would be having a bad day and this fella, who was outside rain or shine, would always say hi to me.

One day, I was walking back and he was talking to a buddy. Said buddy looked me over and whistled, to which JD whacked him on the shoulder and said angrily “show some respect!” and smiled at me and said “you have a good night, gangsta.”

I hope he’s doing alright.

About The Great British Bake Off hosts:

When contestants do cry—out of frustration or disappointment, generally—Mel and Sue stand near them and use un-airable language so the embarrassing footage is tainted, and won't make it into the final edit.

I worked in a Starbucks as a student. One day, one of our regulars came in crying as she found out her boyfriend had been cheating on her.

Our shift supervisor took out a full chocolate cake, dropped it on the counter from a height of about 2cm and said "oh no, I dropped it. Can't sell it now."

Handed her the cake, a fork and a canister of whipped cream while I made her a free drink.

He then proceeded to tell people that we were out of cake for the day.

10 years on, still remember the smile she gave us :)

New relationship with a super nice lady. Romantic weekend getaway. She suggests an afternoon float down a nearby river in a canoe. I know from experience canoeing is a serious test of relationship potential.; my ex-wife and I couldn't even carry a canoe from the beach to the bay without getting into an argument.

Anyhow, new relationship, super nice lady. I'm determined to be a great team player and competent man. I have plenty of experience on the water. This should be a cinch. Canoe livery guy drives us to the drop off. While he is taking the canoe off the trailer and telling us how long the float is and where the pick-up point is I am looking at the river. The wide, slow moving river. The extremely slow-moving river.

Along with the fact that it is a blustery windy day, I can't for the life of me tell which way the river flows. Some leaves are floating left, some leaves are floating right. I toss in a stick and it just floats around in a circle. I'm starting to sweat. I figure I have a 50/50 chance of guessing correctly but if I guess wrong it could be a disaster. Having to ask is a total embarrassment. I'm hoping the livery guy makes some reference to direction but no. I'm desperately hoping to see someone else float by but no. I picture us paddling upstream for two hours and being lost on the river.

Livery guy hands us our paddles and says, "So, if there's nothing else I'll see you in a couple hours. Have fun!"

I bite the bullet and decide that asking is the best way forward.
"Uh, yeah. Which way is downstream?"

Livery guy and Super nice lady both laugh thinking I'm joking.

"No, I'm serious"

Livery guy stops laughing and just points. I'm sure he was thinking that was the most stupid thing he had ever heard.

We paddle downriver a bit and Super nice lady says, "Boy, am I glad you asked. I thought downstream was the other way.".

I was on a Christian camping week here in the UK. There were some Americans with us. I found a stone on the beach with some great fossils in it and was showing it to some kids. One of the Americans started talking about how God had put fossils in the earth to mislead the vain who trusted their own observations rather than the bible. I, naturally, thought he was joking and burst out laughing, and he was just so offended.

He complained about me to the people running the camp, and they thought he was joking at first and laughed too.

When I saw someone try and jump off a bridge, only to be talked down as i was driving past and then change their mind and jump at exactly the moment I passed. One moment they were there and then I looked in the side mirror, they fell and were just gone.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

Less than a year after marrying, my husband confessed his alcoholism was worse than I knew and he was over $10k in debt. Counseling, ultimatums, lots of fighting and thinking we would not make it, and especially since I was raised by an alcoholic dad I was not keen to stick around and thought we were headed to an early divorce. Tried to live with it for a while, had a baby, thought things were okay, then a b**b dropped and I found out he was having booze delivered to our house and getting wasted while home alone caring for our infant. I just about set his a*s on fire and never wanted to see him again. I kicked him out and was in the process of figuring out how to get him out of my life for good.

He stayed with his parents while he worked his a*s off to better himself, came clean to everyone in his life and admitted he had a drinking problem, started SMART meetings and got an at-home blood alcohol test to show me his sincerity and hold himself accountable, overcame his alcoholism, and is a completely different person today than he was 3 years ago before we both quit drinking completely. That, in my opinion, was 1000% undeniable marriage-level commitment, that was what I signed up for. He showed me he was fighting for us and was worth that fight. It genuinely made us closer than ever and helped me further appreciate that I married an incredible person.