I remember being 18 in on the beach in Italy with some other American friends. We had been there several hours, and I noticed a girl who was topless. I actually had forgotten that European beaches were commonly topless so I asked one of the older people that was with us, and he told me to be quiet and walk down the beach with him.

What he was showing me was that when we weren’t talking people didn’t recognize us as Americans but as soon as we opened our mouth, many of the women around us started putting their tops back on.

Made me realize pretty quickly, how being an American was perceived by the Italians.

My mom has been sober for 9 years, but she announced her sobriety on April 1st. No one believed her. Happy Sober-versary, mom!

Being told to eat everything on my plate, regardless of whether I was still hungry or not. I now have no idea when I’m full unless I’m over full.

I used to work in insurance and the number of people who think that the value of their car is the only factor which should be taken into account in calculating their premium is too d**n high.

If you cause a big accident on a highway then unless you're driving a vintage Bugatti the price of the car is a mere bagatelle compared with medical bills, lost earnings, paying for repairs to bridges etc.

Cake decorator.

1) Yes, tiered cakes can be expensive. But you aren't just paying for my materials. You're paying for my time. Your three tier fondant covered fifty million details on each tier cake will take me the time that I could crank out at least 15 simple sheet cakes. You gotta pay for that maam/sir. Also, if it was "just cake and icing", you could do it on your own. Don't come in with a Buddy or Ace of Cakes cake and expect to pay less than $400. Ace of Cakes MINIMUM is like $500 so...Yeah.

2) Birthdays are not Easter. The day does not move. So your emergency because you forgot to order isn't an emergency for me and you are not more important than the people who properly ordered. What you consider "quick and simple" usually isn't. You can't just magically bake and decorate a cake in 15 minutes.

Just because you had some side effects from a medication does not mean you are allergic to it.

Also, please don’t f*****g eat or drink before surgery. I will cancel your surgery. It’s for your own safety, so don’t lie about it.

Spay and neuter your f*****g pets


Also, cats shouldn’t drink milk.

Child predators very rare look like criminals, and they rarely look like folks from the s*x offender registry. Those are mugshots taken on what is often the worst day in someone's life.

They look like your youth pastor, your best friend from college, maybe even your brother.

The reason there is so much f*****g paperwork and huge wait to work with children is that it helps us identify those people.

Woo, buddy, here's my chance to vent. I am a climate scientist.

1) Uncertainty does not mean we don't know what we're talking about, or that we're guessing. Any scientific estimate of any kind has an uncertainty. You're just usually not told about it. We're pretty transparent about our math, so you get to see the range of estimates. That doesn't mean we don't know the mechanism behind it, it just means that there are variables involved that can't be predicted precisely.

2) We KNOW the sun goes through cycles. I promise that we've already considered whatever showstopping thing you found on the internet.

3) When we say "climate change" in this current context, we mean the human-caused part. You aren't providing new information by saying that "the climate always changes." We know that.

4) We know that it's the carbon causing the temperature rise (and not the other way around) because we know exactly where the carbon came from. It's not a coincidence that the CO2 concentration started rising at the same time we figured out combustion.

5) Some data sucks. That fact does not invalidate science.

I heard concerning information about the way a child was being treated (not my patient, but a sibling of the patient that I had never met), called CPS and reported it that day, and the following day found out the child had died. It was traumatizing, and 6 years later I still think about it a lot.

A lovely teen girl was brought to her first appointment with me by her dad. Her mom had, as diplomatically as he could spell it out to me, recently up and left the family to go live some selfish new age lifestyle with a “reiki healer.” Just abandoned him with two kids to raise solo, and he was doing his best for them.

Therapy was the daughter’s idea; she had been having troubling intrusive thoughts lately about school shootings, like…how to plan and execute one, and these thoughts were upsetting to her and she did not want to act on them. I can still picture how scared and sad she looked telling me this. I just wanted to wrap her in my arms, but instead I offered so much praise and encouragement for her seeking help and trusting me with this information. She also met most of the diagnostic criteria for onset of a schizo-affective disorder.

We pulled dad into session, caught him up, explained the most urgent part of the plan: he was going to take her for a full eval with a great psychiatrist colleague of mine who understood the situation and was going to get her in stat. Daughter seemed relieved, dad seemed relieved, we scheduled time to talk soon.

Well, mom woke up from whatever festival ditch she had passed out in to angrily call my office and flip out on me.
How DARE I?!
Am I trying to poison her child with pharmaceuticals?!
Did I EVEN draw her blood and check her vitamin levels?!
Do I want a bad google review or worse yet, a warrant issued for my arrest?!
Do I even understand herbal supplements?!


I need to stop now because my head hurts remembering all of this.