#& i found a fake smile that works well enough. thank you autism

[coolestfinch]

you have such a cute smile!

hey. uh. shut up

[sign-from-god-complex]

(fake fic title) Four Seven Hate

Four Seven Hate

Summary: There were very few people on Logan’s shit list. He was pretty forgiving, as long as people went the proper lengths to apologise for any missteps, and he was much more likely to declare someone not worth his time than he was to take an active role in disliking them.

One person who was on that list, however, was Remy Wake.

Pairing: Losleep

A/N: Whoops! Looks like it’s not a fake fic title anymore. I’m so, so glad I’ve finally managed to write another fic cause I’ve been trying for like a week and all it’s gotten me was a lot more WIPs and a lot more frustration. But I did it! So here you go!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Logan was not sure why he showed up to this party. He barely knew anybody, he wasn’t interested in drinking and, despite his tendency to get work done weeks before the deadline, he did have actual studying to be doing.

He also wasn’t sure why, when pulled by the hand to join a small circle on the floor by Roman—the only person at the party he actually knew and the driving force that had landed him here in the first place—he didn’t immediately get up and leave. Circles at a party were never a good thing, not if you didn’t want to get roped into some party game you most certainly weren’t interested in, like truth or dare or never have I ever or-

Seven minutes in heaven. Apparently.

And, of course, it was just Logan’s luck that he was selected to go first.

After Roman had lifted him clean off the ground and shoved him into the closet—much to his loud protests—he had nothing to do but wait for his partner in this party hell to arrive. He had already tried the knob the moment the door had been closed behind him but it seemed as if this group must have located the host and obtained a key because it wouldn’t budge.

The wait seemed to take much longer than he had expected it to—if Logan was prone to paranoia, he would say that the selection of his partner hadn’t been quite so random but he wasn’t, so he didn’t—but soon enough the door of the closet opened again and a body was being shoved in beside him.

There was very little light in the closet but, thankfully, Logan’s eyes had already had time to adjust to the darkness and he got the chance to see his partner before they had a chance to see him. And he wasn’t pleased with what he saw.

Remy Wake.

The biggest slacker and most irreverent asshole Logan had ever had the displeasure of knowing.

Based on the scowl on Remy’s face upon recognising his cellmate, Logan would assume Remy had a similar dislike of his person, but as opposed to Logan, he thinks it’s unlikely that Remy’s opinions of him have any basis in fact. (He ignores the niggling thought in the back of his mind that, given their incredibly limited encounters, he’s not entirely sure that his opinions actually have much of a basis in fact either.)

Logan had already been certain that nothing was going to happen in this closet tonight but setting his sights on Remy had only made him doubly as certain.

“What a surprise,” he muttered, his face set firmly in disapproval—not that Remy could probably see it all that well with those sunglasses on in the dark closet, “There’s a party and Remy Wake is present. Surely, it’s unprecedented.”

Remy looked away for a moment, heaving out a sigh. “How the fuck would you know how many parties I’ve attended? It’s not like you ever come. And it seems even when you do you look like a fucking tax accountant.”

Something similar had actually been said by Roman when Logan had left the dorms earlier this evening but Logan hadn’t let it get to him then and he certainly wouldn’t let it get to him now. He simply smoothed out the material of his coat—strange to keep it on even in the house, yes, but he was always particularly susceptible to the cold—and resigned himself to seven minutes of tense, frustrated silence.

Against all odds, they did manage to survive the seven minutes—the time spent glowering at each other, rolling their eyes and making snide comments.

At one point, Remy actually removed his sunglasses. He was muttering something about trying to find a way out of here, blinking around the room with eyes much bluer than Logan had expected by any means. Logan couldn’t even figure out why Remy would even wear sunglasses with eyes that blue. When Remy caught Logan staring, though, he quickly shoved his glasses back on, seemingly trying to look like it hadn’t bothered him by throwing out some comment about Logan’s loss at his debate meeting last week. Logan wasn’t even sure how Remy knew he’d lost debate last week.

It didn’t matter though because they were back to arguing and by the time the closet door was opened, Logan could not be gladder to finally be rid of Remy Wake.

Of course, it didn’t stop there.

No, suddenly, Logan was encountering Remy all over campus. He was lounging about at Logan’s favourite coffee place, he was the new member of Logan’s study group, he was hanging off Roman’s arm, giggling in a way that was just so incredibly irritating.

Logan had tried to ask Roman why Remy had suddenly seemed to become his new best friend (in a way that he thought totally didn’t make him sound jealous or needy, thank you very much) but, in response, Roman just gave him that smile. That stupid smile that usually indicated that Roman thought he was incredibly socially inept—which, true, but why say it—and Logan had stormed off to fume.

Stupid Remy. Stupid Remy with his stupid smirk and his stupid flirting and his stupid laugh and his stupid hair and his stupid eyes behind his stupid sunglasses and the stupid way he hated him even though Logan wasn’t sure why.

Logan wasn’t really sure why he hated Remy either.

Sure, maybe he wasn’t the most invested in his studies but then, neither was Roman with certain classes, and that didn’t stop them from being—sometimes reluctant—best friends. There was just something about Remy that made him feel and, worse, made him feel things he didn’t understand. And Logan hated not understanding.

When he came out of his room, looking vaguely like he’d just gone through something of an emotional hurricane, Roman just gave him a pat on the back and one of the Crofter’s cookies he’d stashed away. Clearly, Logan’s revelation was only a revelation to him. And, hopefully, to Remy.

He tried to catch Remy at the end of the next study meeting, looming over his shoulder as he packed his bag.

“Uh, sorry, hon, but I got nothing to say to you, ‘kay?” Remy snarked, throwing his satchel over his shoulder and raising his eyebrows at Logan, “So why don’t you just get out of my way.”

Logan stood his ground despite Remy’s comment, taking a moment to gather his thoughts. Remy looked as if he was just about to push past Logan when he finally spoke up

“I’m sorry.”

At that, Remy looked… genuinely caught off guard and for just a moment his persona seemed to drop, leaving him confused and… something else Logan couldn’t quite identify.

He took a breath, his brow furrowed.

“I wasn’t… exactly sure why it was that I found you so frustrating. I had convinced myself that it was your lack of study habits and generally—” Logan waved his hand around for a moment—“flippant attitude towards school in general. Though, of course, that excuse fell apart as soon as you joined the study group and I realised that Roman is just as bad, if not worse, in engaging in his classes.”

Remy gave no reply, simply watching him as he took another moment to think.

He cleared his throat. “That is all to say, that I apologise for my behaviour towards you over the time we’ve known each other and I would appreciate the chance to metaphorically… start over, as it were?”

There was another moment of silence as Remy regarded him, lips twisted slightly but in a way that Logan hoped was more considering than it was cruel.

“Yeah, alright,” Remy finally conceded, a slight grin pulling at his features, “Starting over it is.”

Logan stuck out his hand for Remy to shake and at Remy’s equal-parts confused and amused expression, he elaborated.

“I… uh, I never got the chance to properly introduce myself, I don’t think. I’m Logan McKenzie, I like debates, books, astronomy and anybody who’ll give me the opportunity to ramble for hours about things they probably don’t care about.”

A grin spread across Remy’s face as he took Logan’s hand in his. “Remy Wake. I like coffee, cute boys, puzzles and anybody who’ll let me wake them up at three in the morning for a trip to get slushies.”

“Wanna go for coffee?”

Remy grinned, big and bright and real. “Yeah. Sounds good, nerd.”

—————

“So… uh, did you ever figure out why you did seem to hate me so much?” Remy asked, bumping his shoulder against Logan’s as they made their way out of the library.

Logan startled slightly. “Oh! Yes. I find you extremely physically attractive.”

Remy didn’t think he could be blamed for walking directly into the doorframe at that but with the sound of Logan’s laughter echoing in his ears, so pretty and joyful, he wasn’t really hurrying to explain himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tag list: @mutechild @super-magical-wizard @shadowsfromthesun @teadays @sandersships @camcam774 @autism-goblin @deadlyhuggles6 @romanthestarstruckqueer @whispers-stuff-in-your-ear @rainboots-are-for-snobs @sanders-and-sides @spirits-in-my-thoughts @hold-my-hat @goodandbadisallmadeupnonsense @stop-it-anxiety @figurative-falsehood @jadedfantasies231 @idosanderssidespromptssometimes @poisonedapples @sanders-screams @another-sandersidesblog @do-not-just-see-observe @mychemicalpanicattheemo @primaryyblogg @localtransgrape @fandomsofrandom @gattonero17 @airiervessel @ollyollyoxinfree 

and, of course, for the losleep, @sleepless-in-starbucks and @emo-disaster

[acrobaticcatfeline]

Logan and His Little Bumble Bee (Single Dads AU)!!!

Word Count: 2170

TW: Breakup mention, uhhh, Logan has a major distaste for his ex? Oh Logan is pan in this and his ex is a female. Minor character death mention, bad self care, I think that’s it? And most of that is in the second paragraph and doesn’t come up again, but let me know if I missed anything!

Notes: This was produced in spite of my brain not wanting to create. I have a week off I’m not letting it go to waste stupid writers block! Pardon me as I go do... more research and writing for the hogwarts au fic I’m writing. I hope y’all enjoy this!!!

Pairings: past Logan and a female unnamed character that I suppose I will have to make now, slight mentions of pining logicality, familial logince, familial moxiety

Summary: “Roman darling, we have to wash your prince outfit ok?” logan sanders is having a heck of a month you know? suddenly hes a parent and has a promotion and honestly its the most stressed hes been since he was in college but you know he gets moments like these sometimes where he can just hold his little bee and maybe things will be alright.

“Roman darling, we have to wash your prince outfit ok?”

Judging by the screams, it was not ok, and Logan was at the point of sticking himself in the washing machine. He’s tired and the past month of his life has been hell. Last month his ex-girlfriend dropped Roman off at his house as a surprise. Yeah imagine how surprised you’d be to now be the sole guardian of a child you didn’t know existed because your ex was petty enough to keep it from you until she got bored of him 2 years later. So he became a father in a matter of minutes, he got a promotion at work, but that involved working more hours, leaving him with the problem of how the hell was he going to be taking care of a 2 year old when he had work usually 10 hours a day instead of what he used to do. Then he had a bomb dropped that his uncle died. That was… not easy news to take for certain. It was worse that his funeral was halfway across the country, meaning he couldn’t go, and he was stuck at work with a baby and was mourning the loss of his family member and at this point he wasn’t sure if he was able to take it anymore. He hadn’t had a full nights sleep in two weeks, he hasn’t eaten properly for just about that long as well, eating fast food on his way to work every day, usually having coffee for lunch and having something weird thrown together from what he has in his house which for the past week has been cheese ramen while his kid gets the perfect diet because yes, he’s currently a hot mess of the highest caliber, but he refused to let himself be bested by a toddler. He refused to let his ex be a better parent than him, which just so happened to make him love the kid out of spite. And that’s how he got here.

“roro, please? I’ll let you wear your bee onesie?”

And the screams stopped in their tracks. Thank god, Logan had already taken the largest dose of ibuprofen he allowed, and he could still feel the migraine approaching. The baby boy in question was sitting in the grass in Logan’s backyard, playing with some dolls and cars. He turned towards Logan and started crawling over to the tired man sitting in the grass. When he got to him, he sat again and reached up with grabby hands, signaling he wanted to be picked up. Logan obliged, swooping up the little kid and starting to stand up. Roman poked Logan’s cheek softly before planting a big kiss there. He smiled widely, very proud of himself, and Logan felt his cold unfeeling heart melt at the sight.

“oh gosh how could she have given you up. Even if you are a little terror sometimes,” he pinched Roman’s cheek softly with a smile as the little one giggled cutely. “you’re still so sweet and cute. Yes, you are Ro! So sweet and cute! Just like a little bee huh? Ready to be a little bee roro?”

The toddler giggled loudly and nodded before making a grab for Logan’s glasses. Logan quickly twirled him upside down for a moment before swooping him back up.

“no no no! no grabbing dads glasses Ro! I can’t see without those! No no, but we can play with yours okay? You want your glasses?”

Logan had made it into his old office, now a nursery for Ro, and grabbed his bee onesie and his fake glasses that Roman loved to play with. He sat Roman down and changed him rather quickly, luckily once Logan convinces him to listen, Ro is very obedient and behaves very well. He’s a good kid, Logan gets livid thinking about what possible reason she had for giving him up. He picks up Roman again, laughing slightly when Roman tries to wrap his tiny arms around his neck. He quickly grabs Roman’s prince outfit and drops it in the wash with the rest of his clothes, starting it finally.

“what do you wanna do little buzz boy? You wanna go to the park? I have time to go to the park. Hasn’t your sitter taken you before? Do you like the park Robee? Hmm?”

Roman giggles and nods. Logan feels a slight tinge of sadness at the simple response. Roman was 2 years old and babies were supposed to be able to say things that sounded like words by 18 months old. Roman never spoke, he giggled and nodded and shook his head, and understood what Logan said, but he never tried to speak back. The bitter part of him wanted to blame his ex, pretend it was her bad nurturing that led Roman to choosing not to speak, but he knew rationally that sometimes kids had speech impairment and wouldn’t start talking until maybe even 3, but it still worried Logan. Everything he read said it might be autism, but he had his doubts as he worked with autism regularly and had to be well versed with the DSM-5 for his career. He would often repeat words a lot, say the words for what Ro wanted, hoping that he would at least say something. He was going to go to pre k this year, but Logan didn’t feel ok with sending him off to school without any form of communication. That was a set up for something to go wrong, what if the other kids teased him? What if the teachers were bad to him! He would have no way of knowing! That terrified Logan, so he decided he would wait. He had enough money to hire a sitter for another few years while he helped Roman speak. He did fear that he would miss his first words, but he had to work, if he didn’t there was a lot of things he would do instead of… being in Florida psychoanalyzing people all day.

Don’t get him wrong, he loves his job, but it was stressful, and he was regularly reminded that just because he’s a qualified professional, doesn’t mean he isn’t more similar to his patients than he was comfortable with addressing.

Logan grabbed his baby bag, refilling whatever the sitter had used the day prior. He strapped Roman into the backpack sling he had, put it on so Roman sat on his chest, preferring being able to actually see his kid, and grabbed the bag and a few other things, being his phone, wallet, and keys. The park was a short walk away and his weekend adventures with Roman were usually the most exercise he got during the week, so he slowly made his way there, stopping occasionally to make a silly face at ro.

“you wanna go to the playground Ro? Or the field?”

Roman held up 2 fingers, and there it is again. Yeah Roman may not talk, but he definitely understands what he’s saying. He’s a really intelligent kid, and Logan may or may not be ridiculously proud of him. They found a rather quiet area in the field and Logan took off the sling and let Roman out of it, letting him wander around. Roman pressed on Logan’s leg softly to help him stand up. He then takes off running, and Logan stays seated, watching his little bumble bee play. Its not until he hears someone clear their throat next to him that he sees another man, a quite handsome man actually, with a baby that seems to have a question. He stands hurriedly.

“oh my, I'm sorry I zoned out a bit I'm running on 2 hours of sleep please forgive me, is there something I can help you with?”

“oh yeah! Oh, sorry to disturb you, you do seem exhausted. Um I was just wondering if you know whose little boy that is? My kiddo is being fussy and wants to play but I always want to check with the parents first, heheh!”

“huh? Oh, that one over there is mine, if your son wants to play, I'm sure my Roman would be happy to join him! How old’s your little one?”

The other mans smile widens and he sits down, letting his son go off to play with Roman. Logan sits down next to him.

“oh, my little Virgil? He’s almost 4! Also, hello, my name is Patton! How old’s Roman?”

“nice to make your acquaintance Patton, I'm Logan. My son is a little older than 2.”

“aww! Really, I thought he was at least 3! He’s pretty big for his age, he looks strong and healthy!”

Roman and Virgil come running over, and Roman is giggling heavily and runs straight into Logan’s arms eliciting a small ‘oof’ from Logan as he wrapped his arms around his child. Virgil also was giggling as he ran into Patton's grasp much faster, knocking them both over. He looked over concerned but lost the worry as he saw Patton laying down and laughing twice as hard as Virgil was, hair sprawled around his head and oh hey there's Logan’s gay showing oof. He turned away, hiding his face in a hug with Roman.

Of course, Roman had to be the curious tike he is right then, pulling out of the hug and patting Logan’s cheeks in confusion. He poked and prodded and pinched because he was Logan’s little scientist and that’s how you figure out things you’re confused by. Logan had a mind to be embarrassed but gosh his Roman is just so cute and curious and man he loves him.

“daddy daddy!!! He’s so funny, he doesn’t talk but he’s funny!!! He’s like me!!! can we play again later?”

Patton sits up, and Logan restrains himself from pulling the leaf out of his hair.

“aw we have to ask his dad first but maybe! Logan, could we set up a playdate later?”

Heck Logan stop being gay for a second, staring at him is creepy, answer him you doofus!

“uh, yeah sure! Ro seemed to enjoy himself, so why not. I only have weekends off, but he has a babysitter that would love to have another thing to do with the little bug. Um, here, let me give you my number and theirs.”

Logan quickly repositioned Roman so he could reach into his baby bag for a pen and paper. He quickly scrawled it out then handed it to Patton.

“oh, you’re left handed? Neat so am I! can I see that paper too? I should probably give you my number so Ro’s sitter knows it.”

Logan hands it over and a few minutes later Patton's phone starts going off.

“oh geez that’s my alarm, I gotta go, some family is visiting for the weekend, it was nice meeting you Logan! I look forward to seeing you and your itsy-bitsy bug boy again! Bye bye Roman! Virgil say bye!”

“BYE ROMAN BYE LOGAN!!!”

And they turn and leave, and Logan lets himself watch for a few short seconds before turning back to Roman. Roman’s face becomes a smile again and he hugs Logan tightly.

“what's up bug? You wanna keep playing or do you wanna go home and take a nap with dad?”

And Roman giggles and hides in his chest before-

“DAD!!! Play dad!!!”

And Logan can feel his jaw drop and he has to quickly fix his expression because Roman starts looking shy.

“Roman! You just! Oh my god you just said your first words!!! Roman I'm so proud of you my little love bug!!!”

And Roman smiles widely again and bounces up and down.

“bug!!! Bee bug!!!”

“yes Roman, yes bees are bugs oh I love you so much roro I'm so happy! You make dad so happy roro!”

“happy dad!!!”

“I, I need to tell your mom! She’ll be so proud of you Ro just like me!”

“noooo! No mom! Mom… mom bad!”

And Logan’s face drops. He swoops up Roman and hugs him tight. He doesn’t want Roman to think that, his mom, his mom still loved him, he’s sure of it… she was being responsible and having someone else take care of him… or at least that’s what Roman should think.

“no, no Roman she… Roman she loves you so much you know that. She’s not bad she’s just not ready to take care of you.”

“you too! You too but… I… here. You here. Mom bad. Mom gone.”

And if Logan started crying that was no one’s business but his own. Besides, this wasn’t the time, right now he had to deal with a ridiculously self-aware 2-year-old.

They would play in the grass for another hour, and Logan would blink the tears in his eyes away and prepare to have one heck of a conversation with his ex when they got home. Right now, though? Right now, he was reveling in the short amount of time he had with his son.

Let me know if you want to be tagged in my writing!!!

Thank you for reading I will see you later ladies lords and nonbinary royalty!!!

[prorevenge]

Teacher tells me I am lying about my mother having cancer.

This is a long one with TLDR at bottom

This was in my grade 11 year of high school, My computer class had a year long substitute teacher because our amazing teacher was out for a year working on a government contract. Our previous teacher was outstanding. He had six different classes in our classroom all happening at the same time which were: computer repair, programming lvl1, programming lvl2, networking lvl1, networking lvl2a and lvl2b. He would give a lecture for each of the classes on a specific day of the week, programming on Monday, repair on Tuesday and so on, we would all work in our own groups and everything went quite well.

The next year came around and I found out that we had a sub for the year I had two back to back blocks in this class cause I was doing two courses, I wandered up to the class to see what kind of teacher we were dealing with, mainly interested because i was almost certain whoever they found did not have the credentials to teach at least half of those classes. The new teacher was a foreign woman that none of us have ever heard of before, for the purpose of the story we will call her Mrs. S.

I went and found my friends to tell them what I had seen. We were all optimistic cause from a very short conversation she seemed quite informed and had a good background.

It didn't last long, on the first day of class Mrs. S introduced herself as a programming teacher who had been in school for four years. She went on to tell us about her programming experience in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access. She then told us that the programming students would not be doing the Java and C++ course we had signed up for and would instead be doing database and Excel because those are what she learned and she said and i quote 'they will be more useful than C and The Java'. She also went on to suspend all at lunch clubs because she didn't think high school students could be trusted with computers alone.

Understandably some of us were quite upset about that considering that we came there to program. She also did not give the repair people or the networking people any kind of support and completely stopped their lectures as well, preferring to let them figure it out themselves and 'self teach' without giving any of the resources to do so and occasionally throwing out a test pre-written by the last teacher for her.

This continued for about two weeks till one day she came in and said quite irritated that we would actually be doing 'The Java' now unless we wanted to keep doing database, so we switched to Java and she basically left us out to dry from there. because she wasn't teaching Database anymore she came to harass people in computer repair. First she told us the shop room was too messy and made us throw out 90% of our training workstations and equipment because they were not important in her eyes. Equipment that did not belong to the school but actually belonged to the other teacher. We took home what we could steal for safe keeping but she did end up throwing out a few thousand in equipment.

Then she started imposing stupid rules on us such as;

"You can't have the computer on while you are troubleshooting inside cause you could electrocute yourself"

Or

"You don't need the case open to troubleshoot motherboard lights"

Or my personal favorite and the most scary

"maybe you should change the power supply to 240v if you aren't getting enough power"

We followed most of her stupid requests as much as we could because she threatened to lock us out of the lab room and give us only textbook work if we didn't. Needless to say it was a challenging time. One of the students in the networking area got fed up and started doing up his own course work and lecturing to us so that we could at least get some kind of use out of the courses. To his credit it was all very good but Mrs. S had the balls to force him into doing it from there on out and then turn around and give him low grades for not getting his own work done on time.

A few months of this very uneasy balance go by and my mother comes down with Colon cancer. I have already had a handful of other family members suddenly taken from me by cancer so understandably this is a very stressful time. I was joking with my friends and trying to not break down over the whole thing. I had a very unstable laptop running Linux that would crash if looked at funny and had a horrible habit of corrupting the OS when the battery died because the reserve shutdown sensor didn't work anymore (battery always read 0% but would go for an hour or two). while I was working on the school desktop computer I had a few pages open that I was taking notes in and a facebook tab so I could keep in contact with my mother cause she was in surgery and I was waiting for her to come out. I look over and the teacher is snooping through my laptop opening folders and closing windows and eventually pushes the power button in till it shuts down (which also usually corrupts anything I was doing). The following happened.

M: What the hell do you think you are doing?

S: You shouldn't be on facebook or writing notes on a personal computer during class time, especially when your grades are slipping.

Thanks for bringing that up in front of everyone...

M: That gives you no right to touch my stuff! You better hope you didn't just corrupt everything! this laptop breaks easy.

S: Then you shouldn't have it out during class, keep that tone up and I'll see you get a detention.

At this point I am trying just to keep calm because if I get too emotional I have a tendency to explode. This is often made worse because of my mild autism. I took a second replied in a calmer tone.

M: I'm sorry, I'm just having a hard time at home right now... My mother was diagnosed with Colon Cancer and I am waiting to hear back.

And this is the part which REALLY set me off.

S: You don't look like a kid who's mother has cancer, quit making sob story excuses.

are you FUCKING kidding me‽

It took every fiber of my body not to stand up and slap the bitch right there. I gave her the dirtiest thousand yard stare I think I have ever done while also trying to not burst out crying. I spoke to nobody for the rest of the day till I got home, people kept asking if I was okay and I ignored everyone. My mother was out of the hospital and home by the time I got there. I broke down crying and told her about my day, her face was comforting but you could see the fire of an angry woman behind her brown eyes. She told me not to worry and that it'd be okay.

A few weeks passed and I was called into the office for a one on one parent teacher conference someone forgot to tell me about. There were all the teachers I had that year, good and bad, my Learning assistance teacher the VP and the principal herself. They told me that we were there to discuss my grade slippage as soon as my mother came. My mother was about 10 minutes late, leaving me to awkwardly sit with all these people. She comes in and is all smiles,

M: Sorry I am Late! I got held late at the hospital.

Someone but i'm not sure who asked her why she was at the hospital and if everything is okay. My mother answered in her happy way.

M: I was just getting my C̭̟̦̤̕A̰̣̰̼Ń͕̝̬C̵͕E̯R̥̫͇̹̳͝ checked on, Because I have cancer.

The room went cold and her voice seemingly dripped with blood when she said it, my computers teacher went pale and everyone in the room was giving a confused 'what on earth did you do' look

My mother proceeded to relay me coming crying home about how I was treated to everyone present while Mrs: S tried to become one with the wall of the small meeting room. She kept it short but to paraphrase added the following.

M: How dare you say something so careless to my son, I hope you are ashamed and I hope you don't get invited back for another year.

She then returned back to her normal happy self and discussed my grades like nothing happened whilst half the teachers were still trying to figure out what just happened and told them that now she was out of the hospital my grades should improve again. I just sat quiet the whole time and tried to suppress bursting out laughing.

After that day she never directly spoke to me again, had instructions relayed through other people or gave them to the class as a whole, she did her damnedest to be nowhere near me and say nothing to me. My grades improved quite a bit and the year ended with me passing.

Mrs. S was previously offered a job at the school as a secondary computer teacher but after all the trouble the job was pulled back. The next year when our first computer teacher returned he was furious to learn most of his equipment and personal books had been thrown out, we returned the things that we snagged during the purge but he still lost a few thousand in personal teaching stuff. The school payed him back with 10,000 but he says he lost so much more than that in time and pre-set hand made equipment. We told him all about the horror show and he gave us all an extensive test normally given at the end of the year which the vast majority of us failed, we ended up redoing all the computer courses from the previous year because in his words she didn't even teach us the basics. that sub can no longer teach in this or the neighboring districts

TLDR: Shitty year long sub fucks us all over, tells me i am faking my mother's cancer and destroys another teachers personal property. Gets ripped into by mother with all my teachers and VP and P present. looses opportunity to work in my district or any surrounding for being unprofessional and not knowing her subject forcing everyone in her class to retake the next year.

(source) (story by flanigomik)

[gaiatheorist]

Try a bit harder.

There’s an article in The Guardian about the author Tom Cutler, and his diagnosis of Asperger’s. My pedantic head wants to correct that to ‘Autistic Spectrum Condition’, but that’s just as problematic for my twisted linguistic brain to cope with. ‘If you look at anyone hard enough you will see traits consistent with autism.’, the ‘spectrum’ and being ‘a bit autistic’. 

All of my life, my entire life I’ve dealt with the ‘come on, it will be fun’, the ‘come in, sit down’, the ‘smile, fake it until you make it’. Most of my life, I did the joining-in things, and assumed that everyone else was as uncomfortable as I was, and that they were just better at pretending. When my last manager told me they wanted me to be ‘happy, with a sense of belonging’, all of the air was sucked out of the room, and I had to escape, quickly. ‘I have no desire to belong to anyone or anything, can I go now, I lost half a day of work to the interview?’ I CAN work as part of a team, I just don’t do the ‘socialising’ thing. Work is work, and in my peculiar mind, work and home/life are distinct and separate. There’s a half-chuckle there, the ex never actually told me I couldn’t ‘go out’ with work, but the sulky strops he threw meant it wasn’t worth the hassle, the hissed conversations about where I’d been, with whom, and why.  I eventually stopped going out with him, too. If I stayed in the shadows, and didn’t speak to anyone, I was a miserable bitch, ruining everyone’s night. If I spoke to anyone who wasn’t ‘in the band’, there’d be allegations of infidelity. Most of the time, I drank heavily, to blur the edges of my world, and his.

‘Come in, sit down, we won’t bite you.’ Almost 20 years of that from the in-laws, my cigarette consumption was massive, because I could go into the garage to smoke, away from the heat, the smells, the people being uncomfortably close to me, TV blaring away with nobody paying attention... I originally started to sit at the dining table, away from the sofas and TV, but that generated ‘Come here, lass, do we smell?’ Yes, yes they did smell. The father-in-law didn’t believe in anti-perspirant, because ‘fresh sweat doesn’t smell’, it does, and, given that he had a bath about twice a week, the sweat wasn’t always fresh. The mother-in-law was worse, hairspray, perfume, and dental decay, she was only about 5ft tall, and had a habit of touching the person she was talking to. They both needed hearing aids, and I’m very softly spoken. My son despairs at them, the F-i-l will complain that the TV is on too loud, and the M-i-l will say ‘Well turn your hearing aid off.’ 

The family Sunday Lunch was even worse, one of my compulsions/behaviours/traits is objecting to eating ‘contaminated’ food, by, let’s say the M-i-l using her eating utensils that had been In Her Mouth to take food from a serving dish. I’m hyper-sensitive to smells, crowds, and sounds, especially eating sounds, it’s misophonia . Sunday Lunch was torture.

Bugger, I’ve done something to the font. This keyboard is knackered, I’m already contending with missing keys e, r, t and down-arrow, the number keys have stopped working, I’m consciously avoiding contractions within quotation marks, because I’m a Grammar Pedant, and don’t want nested apostrophes.

I wandered off a bit, there, describing the sensory overload of a ‘normal’ environment. It honestly is overwhelming, for years I thought I was being ungrateful, or miserable, because people seemed to enjoy things I found almost intolerable.   I tried, I really did, whether it was my mother taking me to nasty wine bars, and hiking my skirt up, and my top down before repeating that all-men-are-bastards-and-they-only-want-one-thing, or being dragged hither and yon to watch the ex’s band in yet another working men’s club. I ‘put my foot down’ in my last job, procedural-precise, and mostly professional, apart from all the times I flung my exasperated self into colleagues’  offices, and said ‘She is doing that thing with her tea again.’ In the 14 years I was there, I ‘went out’ once, it was a train-wreck.

Going-out aside, there were multiple things at work I found difficult, but worked-around. I can’t apologise enough to the old ‘matron’, when I shared an office with her, I always had the BBC news playing at low volume. I was trying to drown-out her incessant verbalising of what she was typing or writing so I could concentrate, and she was speaking-out-loud to concentrate over the tinny terrible headlines. Chuckling at myself, for the period when I had two walkie-talkies, one on channel 2, for medical, on earphones, and the other on channel 3, for behavioural.

I’d generally do that working men’s club thing of having ‘my’ seat in any given meeting-room, and had a bit of a showdown with the Health and Safety manager, about having a map of the site, in an attempt to ascertain a reason for a student always heading for a precise corridor when he was distressed. I have worked with some VERY autistic students.

The point of this 3am waffle is the ‘try to join in’ ethos, whether it’s employers, friends, or family. A couple of years back, I crossed swords with a man I’d known since I was 18, him saying all the trite ‘you only have one family’ gubbins, and me bouncing back that I didn’t ‘have to’ do Christmas, or family gatherings. I don’t. My brother appears to have drawn the short straw this year, I’ve politely declined his offer of Christmas Lunch. 

Rounding this up, I’m not a size-ten-blonde, I haven’t bought new clothes in years, my make-up kit is one eyeliner, one mascara, and one lipstick, I wash my face with soap, and haven’t been to a hairdresser since 2014. Somehow, for some people, my objection to aesthetic ‘norms’ is easier to deal with than the whole biopsychosocial mess that IS me. I’ve had years of people telling me to ‘try’ to fit in socially. I don’t. I’m not quite as bad as the gentleman in The Guardian, I’m incredibly careful about what I say, so I’ve never been ejected from a house-party for upsetting the host. Even that time when I vomited chilli-con-carne all over myself, and ended up with the hostess hosing me down in the bath, then giving me a pair of her pyjamas to wear.

To some extent, I know that I’ll have to do things that make me feel uncomfortable to ‘fit in’, I’m not unique in that, my odd  brain is the equivalent of trying to access stairs in a wheelchair, I just have to look at it differently. Thanks, head, for the name of the man in the Local Authority that organised the evac-chair training, and the general observation that the interim site-safety-manager looked like Elvis Costello.   

[jenniferisacommonname]

Voiceactors in my Head

One of my many contradictory feature sets is a silent, circumventing stubbornness paired with a pathological fear of confrontation. I will get what I want, and I will not stand my ground if verbally pressed on it. I concede points like it’s an Olympic sport. But as long as everyone's still smiling—gently, snidely, or otherwise—then I can go on forever. Case in point, I once trolled a stranger on the internet for over a year. (Don’t worry; by the end of the story you’ll be on my side again. And if you’re not, well, I mostly agree with you.)

It all started with a CD which was, at the time, exclusively available through the record label’s website. This was back in 2005, when online retailers still ran on frontier justice and only fools uttered the words “free shipping.” Needless to say, I did not have an existing account.

But we do what we must. So I bent the knee, and delivered my modern-day rogation of name, email, and PII governed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in order to receive my one CD—then I defiantly wasted that effort by never patronizing their establishment again. I mean, the album was fine, and I’m sure they had other struggling artists whose work I would have enjoyed, but apparently I’m against creative expression and the American small business owner or something.

Anyway, five years of blissful non-interaction go by. Then one day in 2010, I get a mass email from the founder of this little indie record label. It was—or at least it aspired to be—a classic “starting a new chapter” kind of announcement, letting everyone know that he had sold his (incredibly!) successful company, and was using the proceeds to start a charity that would bring music lessons to inner city children.

And, hey, I thought, that’s cool. Music is great for kids. Except… the tone of the email was weird. It was more than just casual; it was chummy. The concept of a YouTuber didn’t exist back then, but here was its primordial ancestor, testing the beachhead with its nascent flipper-legs of peppy chic.

“Yo, J-dawg, how's it hanging? Remember back in [mail-merged year] when you bought [whatever]? What a great album, am I right?! Anyway, it's been so long since we rapped, I thought I'd update you on my sitch…”

Obviously, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s how the voiceactor in my head performed it. And it just rubbed me so hard the wrong way. I mean, look, I get it—we live in a promotional society, and there's no avoiding that. I’ve done my fair share of book pimping, and if you have a legitimate fan base the intrusion can even be a welcome one. So, fine. Tell me about your thing—once—and maybe I'll buy it. But don't act like we're friends, like I have some kind of obligation to you beyond this basic consumer relationship that we've established.

So my gut reaction was a hard pass, pleading children’s eyes be damned. But the email didn’t include a link to unsubscribe. This spammer was so brazen, he had sent the message from his personal email account, as if threats like “more updates to come!” belonged in anything but a ransom note font. If I wanted my name off the list, I would have to actually write him back, creating exactly the kind of low-stakes, one-on-one confrontation that we all know is worse than torture.

How would I even phrase it, knowing that his overture was from the heart and my rejection would travel right back along that path? “Listen, amigo, I know you probably spent an hour composing this raw, honest self-reflection on your priorities, but it’s garbage, and I never want to hear from you again. Please keep in mind that while you have failed to inspire me, you’ve also failed the children. Because you’re a failure.”

The actual words wouldn’t matter; I was sure that’s what he’d hear. In fact, I would argue that a polite rejection is often worse, because it leaves no option for the rejectee to write off the loss as a dodged bullet. They really were a nice person, and you’ll probably never find anyone so humble again, you loser.

So instead, I got out my favorite piece of social armor: the ironic “yes, and.” In improv theater, if a scene partner implies that you’re the best of friends, you don’t argue with them. You commit to the bit. So I did.

“Oh my God, Steve, it's so good to hear from you!” I wrote (except I used his real name, of course.) “I can’t believe you still remember our special album. Makes me weepy just thinking about what it meant to us. Anyway, here’s what’s been going on in my life...” Then without warning, I dumped several years’ worth of emotional trauma on him—about severe autism, and how hard day-to-day life was, and how each treatment brought hope and frustration in equal measure while somehow never easing my crippling fear of the future. It was a therapy session on steroids, directed at a stranger under the guise of bitter sarcasm. My flippant sign-off left no doubts about my true feelings: “Anyway, as I’m sure you can imagine, we are flat broke with medical bills, bruh! So I'm gonna need you to take us off your list. But in the meantime, here are some autism charities that you could donate to on our behalf, since we're such good friends.”

To be clear, open snark isn’t remotely in the spirit of “yes, and.” But it felt better in that moment than honest rejection, and I figured he’d take the hint.

Instead, the guy wrote back.

“Wow, what an amazing story!” he said. “Crazy world we live in. I'll go ahead and take you off the list, but I do hope you'll think of us in the future.”

Ugh. He had met my bad behavior with empathy, and I felt moderately ashamed. Then again, you couldn’t argue with results, and at least I knew this ordeal was behind me.

Except he didn't take me off the list. A couple of weeks later, I get another fake-personal email, which I must again paraphrase, though I remember with furious precision the way it made me feel. “Heyyyy Jenn-ster, it's me again! I know how much you've always loved music, so I know you're gonna want to hear about this...”

BITCH. YOU. DON’T. KNOW. ME.

“Steve, what happened?!” I wrote back. “You used to be such a good listener! I think the money's changed you, man.” And I asked once again to be taken off the list.

This time, he ignored me. No reply, and the spam kept coming.

So I just decided that this was going to be our thing. Every time he sent me an email full of stuff I didn't care about, I was going to send him an email full of stuff he didn't care about. Except I kept pushing it a little farther each time, like, “Ooh, potty training's not going so great, let me tell you all about it...” And at the end of every email I'd always remind him, “Hey, anytime you want to stop getting updates on my son's bowel movements, all you have to do is take me off your list.” Sometimes I bolded it; once I super-sized it into a 40-point font. But he never did.

This went on for over a year.

But I won.

It’s a trite saying, but sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. The last email I ever got from this guy was short, which was unusual for him, and it said something like, “Great news! We've just graduated our first class of students—check out these pics!” (Why am I paraphrasing so much, when email is forever and I could just go back and give you direct quotes? Stop asking questions and roll with me for a minute.) Anyway, embedded in the email, like already loaded and filling the screen HTML-style, was this giant picture of… I don’t know, a kid kissing a trumpet or something. It was probably super cute, to be honest—but I was on a mission.

“Great news!” I wrote back, trying as always to mimic the exact structure of whatever he had sent me. “My son just had a colonoscopy—check out these pics!” And I pasted the actual medical photos of my child’s rectal passage into the email, pre-loaded and filling the screen, so he’d be forced to view them against his will, just as I’d been forced to endure his endless marketing crap.

Sure enough, he never emailed me again.

Pretty good story, right? And that closer—I mean how can you top sending medical photos to a complete stranger just to gross them out? Unfortunately (or fortunately; I’ll leave it up to you,) this one has a weirdly philosophical denouement. If you like your narratives sassy and single-layered, I suggest you duck out now.

Around 2015, I was trawling my past for wild stories that could be condensed into a tight three minutes for open mic night, and ‘that time I emailed colonoscopy pics to a spammer’ was an obvious contender. Once I had the basic structure written down, more or less exactly as I remembered it, I went digging through those ancient emails to finalize the details.

And what I found was… not what I remembered. The story I told above clearly had some emotional embellishments (see: paraphrasing), but it was fundamentally true in circumstance, I thought. And, yes, I really did send this guy two pictures of my son’s colonoscopy, though they were just thumbnail attachments, not embedded. But the text of my actual emails to him barely came off as snarky at all, and I never once told him in clear terms to take me off his list. There are a few lame hints at irony that you can pick out if you really squint, but by and large I was just… writing him back. Like we were friends.

Which is a good thing, because his emails to me were even less accurate in my memory than mine had been. He hadn’t cut me off; he’d replied to every single email I’d sent, in a way that made it clear that he’d watched every video and read every article. He was cordial, empathetic, and seemed genuinely interested in my kids. It was a therapy session on steroids, all right—minus the steroids.

BITCH.

YOU. KNOW. ME.

And in return for all this kindness, I had sent him horrific medical photos for no reason. To which he had replied (and this time I’m not paraphrasing,) “Thanks for the update on your son. I appreciate it. Keep up the good work. All the best to you both.” The updates from him had indeed ceased after that, but from what I can tell it was just a coincidental winding down of that particular enterprise, not a removal of my name from any specific list.

Eventually, I ended up emailing him again, this time as a penitential mea culpa to ease my own conscience. I explained the situation, and apologized for my unfair judgment of years past, plus of course the unsolicited sigmoid landscapes. He thought the whole thing was hilarious, and admitted that he’d never once picked up on my poorly-conveyed bitterness.

More important than the personal amends, though, was the lesson I had to swallow about how emotions don’t just cloud memories—sometimes they invent them out of whole cloth. I swear, I swear I remember a photo of a kid graduating from his charitable music lessons, but I can find absolutely no evidence of it anywhere. My brain made it up to retroactively justify my behavior: yes, I sent a photo, but only because he sent a photo first. It’s not even a remotely good justification, but I guess it took the edge off just enough to keep seeing myself as a good person.

It was an important lesson professionally, too. History is nothing but a mashup of inherently self-serving memories, and multiple perspectives can only draw a narrative closer to objective truth by half-steps, never to fully reach its destination. Even hard evidence is fallible, because my emails as written did not accurately represent how I felt when I wrote them, which is an important part of the story in its own way. Misinterpretations and flawed perspectives are inevitable, but they’re also necessary, and stripping them out as a historian is just as wrong as taking them at face value. A story is both what the participants think it is, and what we know it isn’t—especially when those two conflict—and every non-fiction piece I write is just somebody else’s therapy session on steroids.

[lordofthebigtimesupernatural]

I am in love with your single dad Shiro au. It makes me unbelievably happy whenever I see a new update. I don't know if you're taking prompts right now but if you are, what would Shiro and Keith do if one of Keith's friends started mixing with a bad crowd? Thank you for being an amazing writer and for giving us this wonderful series.

Hello there! Thank you so much for this ask! It was hard to write, because I couldn’t make anyone be so bad! Ah, but I hope this was justifiable and everything was good! I do hope you like it and I apologize for being so late in getting this. I wish I could just write one shots for you all forever, because I love this AU and it warms my heart that others love this AU! I made this a bit longer than usual, so hopefully that makes up for it! Please enjoy! (Also I have your other prompt and I am working on it among others, thanks for the reminder ask!)

x.V.x

              “So,what were you and Pidge doing with those guys today?” Hunk asked, taking a biteof his sandwich when he noticed Pidge finally joining them. For the last coupleof days Pidge had started making excuses of why they couldn’t hang out atlunch. Sometimes Pidge was feeling sick, or they had a project that was duesoon, or Pidge’s robotics club had a meeting.

              Sure,they were sixteen and Hunk seventeen now and growing up. As they got older,they knew their lives were going to start dividing into different directions.Which meant there would be less and less time to hang out, and Hunk didn’t mindit at first. But Pidge was consistently avoidinghim and Keith lately, and that was bothering Hunk.

              Hunkdidn’t know if Keith was too bothered by Pidge’s absence.

              “Oh um,I had to study for a test.” Pidge shrugged tiredly, scratching at the back of theirhead. Keith snorted into his lunch and ignored the glare sent to him from Pidge.

              “Oh,well hopefully you do good.” Hunk tried to smile, in hopes that the awkward tensionwould break. Pidge merely shove their hood over their head and slumped againstthe wall, across from Hunk and Keith. Thankfully Lance was out sick today,because Pidge didn’t feel like dealing with himtoday. “Um, so, what’s with those other kids?”

              “Whatkids?” Pidge frowned.

              “Theones you’re hanging out with.” Keithrolled his eyes while Pidge hissed. “Those stupid druggies that are your newfriends. What are you even doing with them anyway?”

              “Shutup.” Pidge growled and Hunk shrunk back in his seat, but Keith didn’t back down.“You don’t know anything. They’re myfriends.”

              “Really?I didn’t know that you would stoop that low.” Keith snapped back and went backto eating his sandwich. He missed the icy glare look that Pidge gave him, butHunk didn’t and he leaned away from Pidge in surprise. Hunk looked down at hissandwich and Pidge frowned in guilt for a moment, before schooling their faceinto one of anger.

              “Youwouldn’t know anything. You never can get your head out of your ass.” Pidgeslammed their hands on the table, finally startling both Hunk and Pidge. Theygrinned in satisfaction before walking away. “They’re better friends than youcould ever be, at least they know how to be a normal person.” Pidge quicklywalked away before they could even begin to feel the guilt for saying such athing like that to Keith. Even Hunk was watching Pidge in horror at theirwords, and he swallowed thickly when Pidge left the cafeteria with a loud bangof the doors.

              Hunk glancedover at Keith to see him throwing away the rest of his uneaten lunch.

              Oh no…

x.V.x

              “Hey, Pidgeon.”Pidge winced but looked up at the person who had spoken to them. Lotor, anotorious “bad-boy” of the school, was what some considered the “dark prince”of their ragged group of friends. Lotor was well known for his defiance ofauthority in schools. From skipping class to graffitiing the lockers and schoolbuildings; to smoking in the back lots of the school and vandalizing any storehe came across. Lotor was practically a legend and for a time, when Pidge wasfeeling low, he was in awe of the other teen. There seemed to be nothing that could take down Lotor and Pidgewanted that.

              Aftertheir older brother ran away from home without a word, Pidge didn’t know whatto feel. There was no note, no phone call or explanation about why he had left.Pidge’s parents couldn’t get a hold of him, Pidge or even Keith’s dad with allof his resources. No one had any idea of why Pidge’s brother would just up andleave in the middle of the night and everyone was in their own sort of anger orsadness of the situation. At first Pidge had been furious.

              How could their brother just leave him likethat? How could he not even say goodbye? Pidge had been angry, wanting tosmash and destroy anything in order to let out their anger. They tore up allthe photos they had of their brother and tried to tear up their brother’s room,before their mama had started yelling at. Then Pidge tried to take their angerout at school

              Theyfound themselves secluding away from Lance, Keith and Hunk and found themselvesmore and more alone. Always having an excuse for their absence and theirfriends took it without question.

              ThenLotor approached them.

              He hadseen Pidge defiantly destroy an entire chemistry project when a teacher hadmentioned their brother and he was impressed. He wasn’t quite expected thatfrom someone as little as Pidge.Before Pidge knew it, Lotor had grabbed them and they were a part of Lotor’sgroup. They were coming along when Lotor and the others decided to ditch andthey had never felt so exhilarated before in their life. Screw you Matt, look at me. I don’t need you. Soon enough, Pidgewas also coming to their back lot and destroying things with Lotor in theothers and it made Pidge smile.

              Theycould finally release their anger and stop being a perfect genius for once.

              ThenPidge just felt sad.

              All oftheir anger was gone and all that was left was sorrow that was so deep andpainfully, that it left Pidge exhausted. Just coming to school was exhaustedand Lotor was always where Pidge was.And then when Pidge finally joined their oldfriends, they found themselves getting angry again, and Pidge would wind upback in Lotor’s group. It was a vicious cycle that was wearing the teen out.

              “What?”Pidge rolled their eyes, flicking the butt of a cigarette away from them. Theyhadn’t smoked it too much, rather just let it burn.

              “I sawyou at lunch with those group of losers.” Pidge sighed heavily while Lotorsmirked. “I gotta say, I’m impressed. You finally told that freak what he was. Finally.” That was not what Pidge was expecting.

              “What?”Pidge blinked with a frown. Lotor laughed, voice scratchy from years of smokingand his red eyes narrowed on Pidge.

              “Youtold that Keith freak, to finally be normal.” Lotor laughed, causing the restof his goons to also laugh alongsidehim. Pidge swallowed thickly. They hadn’t thought that anyone had heard them.Admittedly, they had hoped that Keith hadn’t even heard them, but if Lotorheard then there was no doubt that Keith had heard too. “Like fuck, that guy isso weird. I mean, he never looks at anyone? He’s always stumbling around like afucking retard. Mumbling all thetime. Isn’t that what he is?” Lotor laughed again and Pidge’s insides twistedat Lotor’s words. He’s talking aboutKeith.

              “No.”Pidge said through clenched teeth. “That’s horrible to say. Keith is fine.” Pidge pushed back their guilt.They knew how Keith felt about his autism. Normally, Keith could care less butwhenever he was told by someone that he wasn’t normal, Pidge knew it always affected him.

              “Oh youdon’t have to fake it.” Lotor snorted with a wave of his hand. “We all knowwhat you said. He’s a freak. Just admit it. Anyway, you’re coming to our raidtonight, right?”

              Pidgeswallowed thickly. “I dunno…”

              “Oh comeon, Katie.” Lotor dropped hiscigarette under his boot before snuffing it out. “You said you were one of usnow right?” He grinned darkly, before throwing his arm around Pidge’s shoulder.Pidge winced and looked at Lotor before sighing. Lotor knew perfectly thatPidge never went by Katie nor were they a girl.

              Eventually,Pidge nodded, even though they really didn’t want to. Lotor’s grin was almostpredatory and he laughed. “Excellent. Make sure this little girl is ready torock by eleven tonight!” Lotor announced and Pidge’s stomach dropped.

              Guys, I’m sorry.

x.V.x

              “Iseverything okay Keith?” Shiro asked when he noticed his son pushing around hisdinner rather than eating, and it was Keith’s favorite dinner. If Keith wasn’teating something was either wrong or today was one of Keith’s bad days.

              Keithmerely shrugged and continued to push around his food.

              “Are yousure? Is everything okay at school? With Lance, or Hunk? Pidge?” Shiro askedand Keith remained silent. However, Shiro could see when Keith’s entire bodystiffened at the mention of Pidge’s name and Shiro knew they had to do withKeith’s mood.

              “What’sgoing on with Pidge?” Shiro asked gently as he gave his full attention toKeith. Keith’s face momentarily morphed into a scowl before he shoved his plateaway.

              “I don’tknow. Why don’t you ask them yourself?” Keith grumbled under his breath andShiro sighed. He was fully aware of what had been going on with the Holts. Matt’ssudden disappearance had left a hole in everyone’s hearts and confusion. Shirocouldn’t understand why Matt had left so suddenly and without any sort of awarning to his family. Not even Matt’s friends could explain what had happened.Shiro knew that the reality must have hit hard for Pidge and would have been aheavy weight to bear for anyone, especially someone as young as Pidge.

              “What’s goingon, Keith?” Shiro shifted so that he was complete facing Keith. Keith merely grumbledand tried to avoid any sort of eye contact with his dad, but eventually even hecould not get out of this. Finally, Keith sighed and looked at his dad.

              “Wehaven’t actually seen much of Pidge.” Keith admitted and Shiro blinked butrefrained from interrupting his son. “I mean, they’ve been at school, but wehaven’t actually seen them. They’ve been making excuses of having robot club orstudying for a test or being busy.”

              “Okay.”Shiro nodded when Keith hesitated. “I’m guessing you didn’t believe any of it.”

              “Maybeat first?” Keith rubbed his arms. “But eventually their excuses didn’t add upand then…Lance saw Pidge hanging out with some sketchy kids.” Keith shrugged, continuing to rub and Shiro sighedtiredly. He should have seen this coming. A stressed young teen who had just found out their brother is missing?

              “Whatkind of kids?” Shiro hated to ask.

              “Like Lotor.” Keith mumbled and glared at thetable cloth and Shiro swallowed thickly.

              “Youmean Zarkon’s kid? The one who’s beenvandalizing buildings, schools and homes?!” Shiro almost didn’t want to believeKeith but why on Earth would his son ever lie? Though, that didn’t make Shirofeel any better about the situation. He and many other parents were well awareof Lotor’s destructive behavior within their small neighborhood. The kid was apunk and needed to be taught a lesson but Shiro never bothered to get involved.As long as nothing happened to Keith, it wasn’t really any of Shiro’s business. But now Pidge was involved.

              “Yeah.” Keith whispered.

              “And…haveyou talked to Pidge?” Shiro asked and bit his tongue when Keith noddedmiserably. Of course he did. Why elsewould he look so sad? “And I’m assuming by your mood, Pidge didn’t reallylisten to you.”

              “No.They said they like hanging out with them.”Keith spat bitterly. “But they’re miserable! So how am I supposed to talk tothem about how miserable they are if they are a stubborn butthead?” Keithcrossed his arms over his chest miserably and Shiro chuckled to himself.

              “Remindyou of anyone?” Shiro asked playfully and Keith rolled his eyes.

              “Dad,this is serious.”

              “I’malways serious. Look, this is my serious face.”

              “Dad!”

              “Keith!”

              Knock.

              Keithand Shiro both shared a look at the sudden knock on the door. It was fairlylate in the evening and neither of them were expecting any guests at all thisevening. Shiro’s look instantly darkened as his protective nature leapt intoaction. Keith nodded and Shiro went to the door while Keith hung back.

              However,of all the people that Shiro was imaging just outside of the door, none of themwere Pidge Holt. Standing in the rain, soaked to the bone with a hood overtheir head and face as pale as a white sheet.

              “Pidge?”At this, Keith was instantly by Shiro’s side with wide eyes upon seeing hisfriend in the cold.

              “There’snot a lot of time. Lotor picked your house!” Pidge suddenly yelled, eyesdarting around as if looking for something. Shiro’s eyes narrowed and Keithswallowed, looking out into the dark streets. He knew what Pidge meant and thatwas never good. “Lotor targeted your house! He’s coming here! I tried to stophim but he won’t listen and I had to warn you.”

              “Lotor?Whoa, slow down. Pidge calm down and explain.” Shiro tried to soothe the youngteen quietly.

              “There’sno time! He’s going to wreck your house!” Pidge finally shrieked and Shiro’sentire face became an uneasy look of anger. One that made both Pidge and Keithstep back. It was the look of a Commander. A soldier. A protector.

              “Not onmy watch.” Shiro growled. Then he pulled Pidge inside and slammed the doorshut.

x.V.x

              “Youthink, a punk like you can get away with this? Just because your father is Zarkon?!”

              Pidgeand Keith both shared a look before snickering at Shiro’s booming yell fromacross the house. However, quickly they both looked away and awkwardly waited.Shiro had been well prepared, and had scared Lotor and his goonies, shitless, when he stepped out of hishouse with a gun in hand. Un prepared, Lotor had tried to flee only to becaught by Shiro himself and dragged into the house without breaking a sweat.While Shiro was waiting for the police, he didn’t hesitate to reprimand andtake the time to yell at the usually snarky teen.

              “Oh boy,if you’re quaking in your boots now, just wait until you’re in jail for trespassing.”

              Keithfelt his lips twitch in a smile. Pidge glanced over before swallowing thickly.They couldn’t bring themselves to look at Keith; not without an endlesssuffering of guilt for how they had treated their friend. Their real friends. Not Lotor.

              “Pidge.”Surprisingly it was Keith who broke the silence and Pidge stared at the ground.“Pidge, could you…um, would you sit with us from now on? Instead of Lotor? He’san ass and we miss you. I miss you.”

              Pidgefound their throats closing and their vision was becoming blurrier and blurrierfrom the tears in their eyes. How couldhe be so forgiving and so kind after all I’ve said to him? How could he be thiskind?

              “Keith…I– I’ve been awful to you? Why would you…” Pidge swallowed and their eyesburned.

              “Well, I’mnot the nicest person either.” Keith shrugged and Pidge sniffled pathetically. “Iknow I’ve probably said a lot of mean things on accident before so it’salright. Besides your our friend. My friend and I miss you.” Keith admittedquietly kicking at the ground and Pidge finally looked over at him. Why? However, Pidge found that theycould hardly speak and instead did they last thing that they or Keith had everexpected. They threw their arms around Keith and buried their face in Keith’sshirt.

              Startled,Keith blinked and was frozen for a few minutes before he hesitantly began tohug Pidge back. He awkwardly rubbed Pidge’s back when they began to snifflehappily and smiled. Pidge was back and we’regoing to make sure they never leave again.

              Keithwould always be there for Pidge.

              AndPidge would always be there for Keith.

              “That’sTakashi Shirogane, sir, to you!”

[lifebooksloves]

MISTER MONEYBAGS by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward

Life, Books, & Loves Presents: MISTER MONEYBAGS by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward

      I met Bianca in an elevator.

She was on her way to interview me when we got stuck.

The beautiful, raven-haired reporter assumed I was a delivery guy because of the way I was dressed.

She had no clue I was really Dex Truitt, the wealthy, successful businessman she’d dubbed “Mister Moneybags”—her afternoon appointment.

Bianca told me how much she hated Dex’s type—snobby, over educated, silver- spooned men who didn’t appreciate the simple things in life.

So, after the elevator finally started moving again, I cancelled the interview and let her believe I was someone I wasn’t—a bike messenger named Jay. I loved the way she looked at the fake me and didn’t want it to end.

I began dating her as “Jay”—all the while letting her interview the real me over email.

I didn’t expect that our chemistry online would be just as hot.

I didn’t expect the mess I’d gotten myself into.

I didn’t expect that Jay and Dex would fall in love with her.

And she was falling for two men.

Only, both men were me.

And when she found out, we were both going to lose her.

Nothing could have prepared me for that day. And I certainly wasn’t prepared for what came after.

All good things must come to an end, right? Except our ending was one I didn’t see coming.

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      MEET BIANCA

  I sighed audibly. Are we even moving? It was seriously the slowest elevator I’d ever taken. Frustrated, and maybe a bit anxious to get the interview over with, I took another shot at the elevator panel. Again, pressing the button repeatedly, I groaned, “Come on. I’m already freakin’ late.”

I breathed a sigh of relief when the car seemed to finally pick up speed. But then, it jolted to an abrupt stop, and the elevator went pitch black.

“Well now you’ve gone and broken the damn thing,” a deep voice said from behind me. Startled, I jumped and bobbled my cell phone in the dark, which resulted in it falling. From the sound of it smashing against the floor, I knew it had broken.

“Shit! Look what you made me do.” I bent over and patted the floor, but I couldn’t find it. “Can you at least give me some light so I can find my phone?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

“Thank you,” I huffed.

“If I had a cell phone on me.”

“Are you kidding? You don’t have a cell phone on you? Who walks around without their cell phone?”

“Maybe you should try it. If you weren’t so obsessed with yours, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

I stood, and my hands went to my hips. “How so?”

“Well, you were so busy typing away on your phone, you didn’t even notice another passenger was in the car with you.”

“And?”

“Had you seen me, you wouldn’t have jumped hearing my voice and broken your phone. Then we would have had light, and you would be able to see that elevator panel well enough to push that button another twenty or thirty times. I’m sure that would’ve helped.”

I felt the man moving around behind me.

“What are you doing?”

When he answered, his voice came from a different place. It was to my left and beneath me. “I’m on the floor looking for your cell phone.”

It really was pitch dark. I couldn’t see a thing, but I felt the air move, and I knew he must have stood back up.

“Put your hand out.”

“You’re going to put my phone in it, right?”

“No, I’ve taken down my pants and I’m going to stick my dick in it. Christ, you’re really a bitch, aren’t you?”

Thinking he couldn’t see me, I smiled at his sarcasm and put out my hand. “Just give me my phone.”

      MEET DEX

  Wow. My little ball player was quite the fox.

I’d only seen her from the back before the lights went out. Now, I was staring into her beautiful, big brown eyes, feeling like this elevator mishap wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

She cleared her throat. “The lights came back, but we’re still stuck.”

I clicked on some of the buttons. “Seems that way. But this is a step in the right direction. I bet this thing will be moving in no time.”

And by this thing moving, I do not mean my dick, although I could have sworn I felt it twitch when she just licked her beautiful full lips.

Do that again.

Fuck.

She is beautiful.

My eyes travelled down the length of her body then back up again, loving how the small buttons on her conservative blouse formed a path up to her delicate neck. I wouldn’t have minded sucking on that skin.

Maybe I could entice her to play hooky with me.

“Where are you headed once we get out of here?” I asked.

“The thirty-fourth floor,” she said.

What?

What is she doing going up to my floor?

I know she doesn’t work for me. I would have remembered that face, those eyes.

“What kind of business you have going on up there?”

“I actually have the pleasure of interviewing Mister Moneybags himself.”

My stomach sank.

Ohhhh.

This didn’t bode well for me.

I swallowed then cocked my head to the side and played dumb. “Who?”

“The elusive Dexter Truitt. He’s the CEO of Montague Enterprises. They occupy the entire top floor.”

Trying to seem like I was not seriously about to lose my shit, I asked, “Why do you call him Mister Moneybags?”

“I just picture him to be this crabby, money-hungry asshole, I guess. Sounds like a fitting name. Of course, I don’t actually know him.”

“Why do you think that way about him, then?”

“I have my reasons.”

      Vi Keeland is a #1 New York Times Bestselling author. With more than a million books sold, her titles have appeared in over fifty Bestseller lists and are currently translated in twelve languages. She resides in New York with her husband and their three children where she is living out her own happily ever after with the boy she met at age six.

  Website | Facebook Fan Group | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

      Penelope Ward is a New York Times, USA Today and #1 Wall Street Journal Bestselling author. She’s a fifteen-time New York Times bestseller of twelve novels.

Having grown up in Boston with five older brothers, she spent most of her twenties as a television news anchor, before switching to a more family-friendly career. She is the proud mother of a beautiful 12-year-old girl with autism and a 10-year-old boy. Penelope and her family reside in Rhode Island.

Connect with Penelope Ward

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  Other books from Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward:

Cocky Bastard Amazon: http://amzn.to/1LfN3fc iTunes: http://apple.co/1PffE2J B&N: http://bit.ly/1EjxNpY Kobo: http://bit.ly/1UxCSUO

Stuck-Up Suit Amazon: http://amzn.to/1S3LnpZ iBooks: http://apple.co/1Qbwy57 B&N: http://bit.ly/29vrQhV Kobo: http:// bit.ly/1RJdUif

Playboy Pilot Amazon: http://amzn.to/2d5I5rS iBooks: http://apple.co/1Wb06Cf Nook: bit.ly/2caXPEK Kobo: http://bit.ly/2cJDXO1

Other books from Vi Keeland:

Standalone novels

Egomaniac Amazon: http://ift.tt/2kZa0rM iBooks: http://apple.co/2fIsmvC B&N: http://ift.tt/2j9pXvG Kobo: http://ift.tt/2iDoz6w

Bossman Amazon: http://amzn.to/2a8D5B6 iBooks: http://apple.co/25x2jyX B&N: http://bit.ly/29sL4H2 Kobo: http://bit.ly/29lW19I

The Baller Amazon: amzn.to/1PBF2hG iBooks: http://bit.ly/iBooksBaller B&N: http:// bit.ly/BarnesBaller Kobo: http:// bit.ly/KoboBaller

Left Behind (A Young Adult Novel) http://ift.tt/1OkUbJM

First Thing I See http://ift.tt/1PAPKXy http://ift.tt/1ZIYOxO

Life on Stage series (2 standalone books) Beat http://ift.tt/1ZIYL57 http://ift.tt/1ZIYL5a http://ift.tt/1ZIYKya http://ift.tt/1ZIYKyb

Throb http://ift.tt/1HGBNaf http://ift.tt/1OkU9Sj http://ift.tt/1OkU9Se http://ift.tt/1OkU9Si

MMA Fighter series (3 standalone books) Worth the Fight http://ift.tt/1lKkKCQ http://ift.tt/1ZIYLlO http://ift.tt/1ZIYKOD http://ift.tt/1ZIYKOE

Worth the Chance http://ift.tt/1ZIYLlQ http://ift.tt/1ZIYLlS http://ift.tt/1ZIYKOH http://ift.tt/1ZIYKOK

Worth Forgiving http://ift.tt/1tsLJNc http://ift.tt/1OkUd4e http://ift.tt/1OkUbt7 http://ift.tt/1OkUbt8

The Cole Series (2 book serial) Belong to You http://ift.tt/1NwniXI http://ift.tt/1CASPRZ http://ift.tt/1ftzzzg http://ift.tt/1ftzyex

Made for You http://ift.tt/2cwgvSO http://ift.tt/1ftzyeA http://ift.tt/1TpKSql http://ift.tt/1ftzyex

Other books from Penelope Ward:

Mack Daddy: Amazon: http://amzn.to/2kWzE1S iTunes: http://apple.co/2iNrIPj B&N: http://ift.tt/2jRgNIn Kobo: http://ift.tt/2kwHNtL

RoomHate Amazon: http://amzn.to/1TksrpE iTunes: http://apple.co/1PgsvE7 B&N: http://bit.ly/1PLGnSL kobo: http://bit.ly/1POvSnW

Stepbrother Dearest Amazon http://amzn.to/1mFNMeg ITunes: http://bit.ly/YER0mT B&N: http://bit.ly/1taMFjG kobo: http://bit.ly/1fJaaBs

Neighbor Dearest Amazon: http://amzn.to/2aS8BPa iTunes: http://apple.co/29mC6L8 B&N: http://bit.ly/2akQ2aq Kobo: http://bit.ly/2axt1SY

Sins of Sevin Amazon: http://amzn.to/1F9tbc3 iTunes: http://apple.co/1K8mzGg B&N: http://bit.ly/1hTKAKE kobo: http://bit.ly/1OaGY3D

Jake Undone (Jake #1) Amazon: http://amzn.to/1dJrHBC iTunes: http://apple.co/1fJayQ8 B&N: http://bit.ly/1obAwJ6 kobo: http://bit.ly/1SPKl0M

My Skylar Amazon: http://amzn.to/1obOG2F iTunes: http://bit.ly/SLNOTR B&N: http://bit.ly/SLO1qi kobo: http://bit.ly/1kNrtAB

Jake Understood (Jake #2) Amazon: http://amzn.to/1GFdves iTunes: http://apple.co/1DQQwgC B&N: http://bit.ly/1FwJC0z kobo: http://bit.ly/1LQ7Fvk

Gemini Amazon: http://amzn.to/1vgk1SE iTunes: http://apple.co/1QTaONj B&N: http://bit.ly/1KfmLHD kobo: http://bit.ly/1BGJ2wu Disclosure: This information was provided by InkSlinger PR, Vi Keeland, and Penelope Ward. This is NOT a compensated post.

The post MISTER MONEYBAGS by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward appeared first on Life Books & Loves.

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[tabby5712]

Excerpt Reveal: Mr. Moneybags by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward

MISTER MONEYBAGS

 (A standalone novel)

Release date 4/10/2017

A Contemporary Romance Novel

New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Authors

Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward

I met Bianca in an elevator. 

She was on her way to interview me when we got stuck.

The beautiful, raven-haired reporter assumed I was a delivery guy because of the way I was dressed.

She had no clue I was really Dex Truitt, the wealthy, successful businessman she’d dubbed “Mister Moneybags”—her afternoon appointment.

Bianca told me how much she hated Dex’s type—snobby, over educated, silver- spooned men who didn't appreciate the simple things in life.

So, after the elevator finally started moving again, I cancelled the interview and let her believe I was someone I wasn’t—a bike messenger named Jay. I loved the way she looked at the fake me and didn't want it to end.

I began dating her as “Jay”—all the while letting her interview the real me over email.

I didn’t expect that our chemistry online would be just as hot.

I didn’t expect the mess I’d gotten myself into.

I didn’t expect that Jay and Dex would fall in love with her. 

And she was falling for two men.

Only, both men were me.

And when she found out, we were both going to lose her.

Nothing could have prepared me for that day. And I certainly wasn't prepared for what came after.

All good things must come to an end, right? Except our ending was one I didn't see coming.

Click here to read 

B&N | iBooks | Kobo | Google Play | Audio | Amazon Paperback 

**No Amazon ebook preorder. Will go live on Amazon on release day.

Sign up for Penelope & Vi’s mailing list now and be the first one notified when it goes live! http://eepurl.com/brAPo9

MEET BIANCA

I sighed audibly.  Are we even moving?  It was seriously the slowest elevator I’d ever taken.  Frustrated, and maybe a bit anxious to get the interview over with, I took another shot at the elevator panel.  Again, pressing the button repeatedly, I groaned, “Come on.  I’m already freakin’ late.”

I breathed a sigh of relief when the car seemed to finally pick up speed.  But then, it jolted to an abrupt stop, and the elevator went pitch black.

 “Well now you’ve gone and broken the damn thing,” a deep voice said from behind me.  Startled, I jumped and bobbled my cell phone in the dark, which resulted in it falling.  From the sound of it smashing against the floor, I knew it had broken. 

“Shit!  Look what you made me do.” I bent over and patted the floor, but I couldn’t find it.  “Can you at least give me some light so I can find my phone?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

“Thank you,” I huffed.

“If I had a cell phone on me.”

“Are you kidding?  You don’t have a cell phone on you?  Who walks around without their cell phone?”

“Maybe you should try it. If you weren’t so obsessed with yours, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

I stood, and my hands went to my hips. “How so?”

“Well, you were so busy typing away on your phone, you didn’t even notice another passenger was in the car with you.”

“And?”

“Had you seen me, you wouldn’t have jumped hearing my voice and broken your phone.  Then we would have had light, and you would be able to see that elevator panel well enough to push that button another twenty or thirty times. I’m sure that would’ve helped.”

I felt the man moving around behind me. 

“What are you doing?”

When he answered, his voice came from a different place.  It was to my left and beneath me.  “I’m on the floor looking for your cell phone.”

It really was pitch dark.  I couldn’t see a thing, but I felt the air move, and I knew he must have stood back up. 

“Put your hand out.”

“You’re going to put my phone in it, right?” 

“No, I’ve taken down my pants and I’m going to stick my dick in it.  Christ, you’re really a bitch, aren’t you?”

Thinking he couldn’t see me, I smiled at his sarcasm and put out my hand.  “Just give me my phone.”

MEET DEX

Wow. My little ball player was quite the fox.

I’d only seen her from the back before the lights went out. Now, I was staring into her beautiful, big brown eyes, feeling like this elevator mishap wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

She cleared her throat. “The lights came back, but we’re still stuck.”

I clicked on some of the buttons. “Seems that way. But this is a step in the right direction. I bet this thing will be moving in no time.”

And by this thing moving, I do not mean my dick, although I could have sworn I felt it twitch when she just licked her beautiful full lips.

Do that again.

Fuck.

She is beautiful.

My eyes travelled down the length of her body then back up again, loving how the small buttons on her conservative blouse formed a path up to her delicate neck. I wouldn’t have minded sucking on that skin.

Maybe I could entice her to play hooky with me.

“Where are you headed once we get out of here?” I asked.

“The thirty-fourth floor,” she said.

What?

What is she doing going up to my floor?

I know she doesn’t work for me. I would have remembered that face, those eyes.

“What kind of business you have going on up there?”

“I actually have the pleasure of interviewing Mister Moneybags himself.”

My stomach sank.

Ohhhh.

This didn’t bode well for me.

I swallowed then cocked my head to the side and played dumb. “Who?”

“The elusive Dexter Truitt. He’s the CEO of Montague Enterprises. They occupy the entire top floor.”

Trying to seem like I was not seriously about to lose my shit, I asked, “Why do you call him Mister Moneybags?”

“I just picture him to be this crabby, money-hungry asshole, I guess. Sounds like a fitting name. Of course, I don’t actually know him.”

“Why do you think that way about him, then?”

“I have my reasons.”

Vi Keeland is a #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestselling author. With more than a million books sold, her titles have appeared in over fifty Bestseller lists and are currently translated in fourteen languages. She lives in New York with her husband and their three children where she is living out her own happily ever after with the boy she met at age six.

Facebook | Facebook Fan Group | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

Penelope Ward is a New York Times, USA Today, and #1 Wall Street Journal Bestselling author of thirteen novels. With over a million books sold, her titles have placed on the New York Times Bestseller list fifteen times. She is the proud mother of a beautiful 12-year-old girl with autism (the inspiration for the character Callie in Gemini) and a 10-year-old boy. Penelope, her husband, and kids reside in Rhode Island.

Facebook | Facebook Fan Group | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

[prorevenge]

Teacher tells me I am lying about my mother having cancer.

This is a long one with TLDR at bottom

This was in my grade 11 year of high school, My computer class had a year long substitute teacher because our amazing teacher was out for a year working on a government contract. Our previous teacher was outstanding. He had six different classes in our classroom all happening at the same time which were: computer repair, programming lvl1, programming lvl2, networking lvl1, networking lvl2a and lvl2b. He would give a lecture for each of the classes on a specific day of the week, programming on Monday, repair on Tuesday and so on, we would all work in our own groups and everything went quite well.

The next year came around and I found out that we had a sub for the year I had two back to back blocks in this class cause I was doing two courses, I wandered up to the class to see what kind of teacher we were dealing with, mainly interested because i was almost certain whoever they found did not have the credentials to teach at least half of those classes. The new teacher was a foreign woman that none of us have ever heard of before, for the purpose of the story we will call her Mrs. S.

I went and found my friends to tell them what I had seen. We were all optimistic cause from a very short conversation she seemed quite informed and had a good background.

It didn't last long, on the first day of class Mrs. S introduced herself as a programming teacher who had been in school for four years. She went on to tell us about her programming experience in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access. She then told us that the programming students would not be doing the Java and C++ course we had signed up for and would instead be doing database and Excel because those are what she learned and she said and i quote 'they will be more useful than C and The Java'. She also went on to suspend all at lunch clubs because she didn't think high school students could be trusted with computers alone.

Understandably some of us were quite upset about that considering that we came there to program. She also did not give the repair people or the networking people any kind of support and completely stopped their lectures as well, preferring to let them figure it out themselves and 'self teach' without giving any of the resources to do so and occasionally throwing out a test pre-written by the last teacher for her.

This continued for about two weeks till one day she came in and said quite irritated that we would actually be doing 'The Java' now unless we wanted to keep doing database, so we switched to Java and she basically left us out to dry from there. because she wasn't teaching Database anymore she came to harass people in computer repair. First she told us the shop room was too messy and made us throw out 90% of our training workstations and equipment because they were not important in her eyes. Equipment that did not belong to the school but actually belonged to the other teacher. We took home what we could steal for safe keeping but she did end up throwing out a few thousand in equipment.

Then she started imposing stupid rules on us such as;

"You can't have the computer on while you are troubleshooting inside cause you could electrocute yourself"

Or

"You don't need the case open to troubleshoot motherboard lights"

Or my personal favorite and the most scary

"maybe you should change the power supply to 240v if you aren't getting enough power"

We followed most of her stupid requests as much as we could because she threatened to lock us out of the lab room and give us only textbook work if we didn't. Needless to say it was a challenging time. One of the students in the networking area got fed up and started doing up his own course work and lecturing to us so that we could at least get some kind of use out of the courses. To his credit it was all very good but Mrs. S had the balls to force him into doing it from there on out and then turn around and give him low grades for not getting his own work done on time.

A few months of this very uneasy balance go by and my mother comes down with Colon cancer. I have already had a handful of other family members suddenly taken from me by cancer so understandably this is a very stressful time. I was joking with my friends and trying to not break down over the whole thing. I had a very unstable laptop running Linux that would crash if looked at funny and had a horrible habit of corrupting the OS when the battery died because the reserve shutdown sensor didn't work anymore (battery always read 0% but would go for an hour or two). while I was working on the school desktop computer I had a few pages open that I was taking notes in and a facebook tab so I could keep in contact with my mother cause she was in surgery and I was waiting for her to come out. I look over and the teacher is snooping through my laptop opening folders and closing windows and eventually pushes the power button in till it shuts down (which also usually corrupts anything I was doing). The following happened.

M: What the hell do you think you are doing?

S: You shouldn't be on facebook or writing notes on a personal computer during class time, especially when your grades are slipping.

Thanks for bringing that up in front of everyone...

M: That gives you no right to touch my stuff! You better hope you didn't just corrupt everything! this laptop breaks easy.

S: Then you shouldn't have it out during class, keep that tone up and I'll see you get a detention.

At this point I am trying just to keep calm because if I get too emotional I have a tendency to explode. This is often made worse because of my mild autism. I took a second replied in a calmer tone.

M: I'm sorry, I'm just having a hard time at home right now... My mother was diagnosed with Colon Cancer and I am waiting to hear back.

And this is the part which REALLY set me off.

S: You don't look like a kid who's mother has cancer, quit making sob story excuses.

are you FUCKING kidding me‽

It took every fiber of my body not to stand up and slap the bitch right there. I gave her the dirtiest thousand yard stare I think I have ever done while also trying to not burst out crying. I spoke to nobody for the rest of the day till I got home, people kept asking if I was okay and I ignored everyone. My mother was out of the hospital and home by the time I got there. I broke down crying and told her about my day, her face was comforting but you could see the fire of an angry woman behind her brown eyes. She told me not to worry and that it'd be okay.

A few weeks passed and I was called into the office for a one on one parent teacher conference someone forgot to tell me about. There were all the teachers I had that year, good and bad, my Learning assistance teacher the VP and the principal herself. They told me that we were there to discuss my grade slippage as soon as my mother came. My mother was about 10 minutes late, leaving me to awkwardly sit with all these people. She comes in and is all smiles,

M: Sorry I am Late! I got held late at the hospital.

Someone but i'm not sure who asked her why she was at the hospital and if everything is okay. My mother answered in her happy way.

M: I was just getting my C̭̟̦̤̕A̰̣̰̼Ń͕̝̬C̵͕E̯R̥̫͇̹̳͝ checked on, Because I have cancer.

The room went cold and her voice seemingly dripped with blood when she said it, my computers teacher went pale and everyone in the room was giving a confused 'what on earth did you do' look

My mother proceeded to relay me coming crying home about how I was treated to everyone present while Mrs: S tried to become one with the wall of the small meeting room. She kept it short but to paraphrase added the following.

M: How dare you say something so careless to my son, I hope you are ashamed and I hope you don't get invited back for another year.

She then returned back to her normal happy self and discussed my grades like nothing happened whilst half the teachers were still trying to figure out what just happened and told them that now she was out of the hospital my grades should improve again. I just sat quiet the whole time and tried to suppress bursting out laughing.

After that day she never directly spoke to me again, had instructions relayed through other people or gave them to the class as a whole, she did her damnedest to be nowhere near me and say nothing to me. My grades improved quite a bit and the year ended with me passing.

Mrs. S was previously offered a job at the school as a secondary computer teacher but after all the trouble the job was pulled back. The next year when our first computer teacher returned he was furious to learn most of his equipment and personal books had been thrown out, we returned the things that we snagged during the purge but he still lost a few thousand in personal teaching stuff. The school payed him back with 10,000 but he says he lost so much more than that in time and pre-set hand made equipment. We told him all about the horror show and he gave us all an extensive test normally given at the end of the year which the vast majority of us failed, we ended up redoing all the computer courses from the previous year because in his words she didn't even teach us the basics. that sub can no longer teach in this or the neighboring districts

TLDR:

Shitty year long sub fucks us all over, tells me i am faking my mother's cancer and destroys another teachers personal property. Gets ripped into by mother with all my teachers and VP and P present. looses opportunity to work in my district or any surrounding for being unprofessional and not knowing her subject forcing everyone in her class to retake the next year.

(source) (story by flanigomik)