In 1982, Quite By Accident, A Zookeeper At Izu Shaboten Zoo In Shizuoka Prefecture Discovered That Capybaras

when I was around twelve I used to sit at the family computer and send hatemail to a white french dude named Jacques who was a self proclaimed communist on Tumblr. This was back in the day when you didn't need a blog to send anon hate. I had no real beef with him but I just didn't like his tone. used to send him "SHUT UP Jacques" periodically. and he'd answer every single one of my asks like "who is this?? show your face or I'll fucking kill you" and I'd be like "now now, that doesn't make sense, jacques" all haughty and he'd get so fucking mad at me. One time he posted a selfie and I sent him an ask claiming I was a psychologist and that his hair parting suggested that he wasn't a communist at all. and he took it deliriously serious and went off on a 2,000 word rant. I can remember going to stay at my grandparents over that weekend, so I didn't even respond to the rant until I came back. I could've chosen to end it there, but when I returned, I sent him another ask which was like "psychologist here again: if you were a communist your hair parting would be in the middle. evenly distributed. All behavioural signs point to someone who doesn't take their own values seriously." and he went ballistic. really swearing at me. all caps type beat. he never turned the asks off, btw. which always made me wonder if he didn't know how to, or if he didn't want to cause he was convinced he was fighting a war, and this action would ensure he lost it. anyway this went on for weeks until one day I completely forgot about him like he was some kind of childhood imaginary friend I'd conjured up in my loneliness. but yesterday I happened to recall the whole scenario, because my buddy was like "remember when you were twelve and I came over to your house, and you showed me on the computer how you'd been terrorizing this random French guy for days on end. And you were laughing like fucking crazy. and I said it wasn't funny because he probably had problems, and you were like 'oh.' and you looked a bit guilty for a second, but then you went and got a grapefruit from the kitchen and threw it out of the second story window at my kid brother, who was playing in the street, and then you started laughing again?" Well. when she put it like that, needless to say I felt bad. so Jacques if you're out there I'm sorry I was such a little shit. you had totally normal hair, and you only wanted people to share stuff. If it's any consolation I know every day of my life that I'm probably going to hell for the sick things I have done

you know how some people go to parties and befriend the pets there like the dogs & cats? whenever i go to social functions i somehow end up randomly in charge of children. i don’t know how it happens. people are always just foisting children off on me in public places.

and the thing is it never stops at one child, because once you have one with you, another child approaches, and then parents start to think you’re perhaps some sort of hired childcare at the function and they don’t ask you. more children appear whose parents pointed at you and the other children and said, “oh look! that’s where all the kids are! go over there!”

I was at a work picnic once and a man from another department asked me to hold his 5-month-old while he filled up his plate. Then he got distracted talking to friends and didn’t come back for thirty minutes. I stood there with this baby whose name I actually didn’t know, chit-chatting a meeting new colleagues, and everyone assumed it was my baby and kept asking about him and what was I supposed to do? Say, “oh this isn’t mine” ?? Because then they’d ask whose it was and we actually hadn’t exchanged names. So then what would I say, “I don’t know” ??????????

I started wondering if I needed to make up a fake backstory for this baby.

The baby’s MOM eventually showed up looking for her husband, saw me, and said, far more pleasantly than she needed to, “hi! You seem to have my baby????”

I was just like, “indeed. so I do.”

I once volunteered to run the bubble table at a local festival. The point was to come get bubble wands & soap to use around the festival, but people just started sending their children over en masse. The festival ended, and I still had like 17 unattended children. I needed to go home.

I had no idea what to do. I needed to find an event organizer but I couldn’t leave them alone? So I started walking around the festival with a line of hand-holding children to find an authority I could give them away to like some sort of reverse Pied Piper

once I ended up in charge of a 3 year old at a funeral and she realized what death was and that she was going to die one day. I was holding her & she was crying while I was desperately trying to locate her parents.

Idk where I’m going with this.

I need to find a way to seem less approachable so no more strange toddlers have mortality crises in my arms.

smacked right in the mouth

time for me to laugh at old internet posts again

*sidles up to you at the bar* would you like to hear my wise aphorism