• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    423·
    6 days ago

    I have the suicide disease. The worse, TN2 version. That is not a sly term for mental illness, it’s a nerve disorder that has pain so great that people kill themselves rather than face yet another day of it. I am rarely below 3 on the 1-10 pain scale (at 4 right now) and I’ve reached 10 more times than I can count. This is with medication keeping it at the level where I can function.

    I am such a bad judge of pain that the trauma from my not realizing for half a week that I had kidney stones and not taking any painkillers and then being stuck first in a clinic and then the ER for 14 hours writing in agony until they finally decided I did, in fact, have kidney stones and gave me some fentanyl, caused severe trauma and gave me an eating disorder called ARFID, unrelated to body image issues, and I have not eaten solid food in a year and a half.

    Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

    https://arizonapain.com/trigeminal-neuralgia-suicide-disease/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoidant/restrictive_food_intake_disorder

    Hey, you asked.

    P.S. If you try to give me medical advice over the internet, I may just block you. I am so fucking sick of that. And no, “I know you said you didn’t want medical advice, but…” does not count as a way around that. And I am fucking sick of having to say that and having people ignore it too.

    • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.eeEnglish
      21·
      5 days ago

      Damn. You know flying squid, I’ve always looked up to you around here. I see you in a lot of posts and comments around and didn’t realize you are in agony for most of the time.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      12·
      6 days ago

      I wondered how things were for you. I’m so sorry. I do know of a new treatment for trigeminal nerve stuff simply because I work in neuro I can tell you about if you want but I most certainly won’t give you advice. I just know someone who is using it and it’s new.

    • Gork@lemm.eeEnglish
      7·
      5 days ago

      Damn, so sorry you’re having to go through this. May the days be kind to you, friend.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        5 days ago

        I actually did make a video about it once which has helped others, so I’m glad of that. But I don’t want to doxx myself and link to it.

    • volvoxvsmarla @lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      Sorry to read that. But in some way I am almost relieved that you seem to finally know what caused your insanely severe case of ARFID. I remember when you were posting about your time at the Mayo clinic and the awful mismanagement there and was very sad and disappointed (not by you) that you were bombarded with enough armchair diagnostics to stop updating about your case.

      When did you get diagnosed with TN2? And how long was the gap between the kidney stones and your last bite, if I may ask?

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        Thanks. I don’t really feel relieved by it, mainly because it’s kind of irrelevant to the future, but it is what makes the most sense and it’s better than having no idea.

        When did you get diagnosed with TN2?

        I think about 10 years ago. Maybe 11 now. It might be genetic because my dad had TN1. But he got it in his 70s. It usually manifests itself at that age. I was in my late 30s.

        And how long was the gap between the kidney stones and your last bite, if I may ask?

        That’s kind of complicated. A few weeks after it happened (January 2023) I started dry heaving every morning. That has been almost daily for me. Occasionally more than once. Then that March, I had this issue for about six weeks and then I was fine again until August. And other than at the Mayo Clinic when they totally numbed my mouth with a lidocaine-based compound, when I was able to manage a couple of bites of egg salad, that was the last time I had truly solid food. I’m also the smelling equivalent of a supertaster. I can smell cleaning fluid inside stores from when the custodians mopped the day before.

        Working with a psychiatrist and doing RO DBT therapy, I am at a place where I can eat pretty much anything if I don’t have to chew or use any utensils and I have conditioned myself to just deal with the smells even if they are awful. I’m even able to cook for my kid now.

        So I am in a much better place than I was even six months ago.

    • Scott_of_the_Arctic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      That’s a raw deal. I always thought a 1-10 pain scale was a dumb Idea. Pain is pretty subjective and someone who hasn’t experienced severe pain doesn’t really have a way to understand what constitutes a 10. (I would answer differently before and after my cycling accident for example) Personally I think that setting the scale as 1-10 where breaking a leg is a 6 (or something) would be more diagnostically relevant. I trust your judgement, although what you call a 4 would probably be most people’s 8.

    • BlueBeard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      That must be the toughest condition I read about in a long while. It’s amazing that you kept going. It’s also amazing that you decided to share this!

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        Thanks. I have definitely had my very, very low points, but you just try to keep going when you can until you have no reason to do it anymore…

  • Victor Gnarly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    5 days ago

    My eye doctor murdered his boss’s wife and waited on the couch beside her corpse for him to get home. He got beaten the shit out of before he could kill his boss and the cops arrested him shortly after the beating.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      5 days ago

      My orthodontist had been high school band buddies with my parents, so when I needed braces 6 used him.

      A few years later, his wife suspected him of cheating, so she hired a PI firm to follow him. They made the very stupid decision of telling her her was cheating on her in real time and where.

      With her stepdaughter (his child) in the car, she drove to the hotel, confronted him, then ran over him 3 times. It was national news, and she got out of prison a few years ago.

  • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nlEnglish
    23·
    6 days ago

    This is probanly way too boring and mundane for this thread, but I can’t feel hunger or fullness. (Never had a doctor look at it because it doesn’t make my life worse)

    My mom when I was a baby asked the doctor how much baby food I should be given after breastfeeding time was over. The doctor said “just give him enough, he will stop”. After many jars of food, my mom had to stop because I wouldn’t stop.

    To this day I can feel my stomach expanding before I will stop. At my university all-you-can-eat cafeteria (back when I was super fit and tracked every calorie) I ate about 10kcal and didn’t feel full so I stopped. I also did a 21 day water (and salt+vitamins) fast without that much trouble (but my mouth would still water and I would still have taste cravings)

    Fucks up my relationship with food though because I eat when I am bored, just eat whatever is in front of me without realizing it, or if I am busy I will just forget to eat.

    As I said, probably not really unsettling or scary, but not a fun fact lol.

    • tetris11@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      I think I have this to some degree. I never feel hungry/hangry if I haven’t eaten by specific times. I just eat because I’m bored and it kinda heats me up. I can go days without, I just don’t because of habit and because sugar and caffeine have effects that help me concentrate

  • Fourth@mander.xyzEnglish
    117·
    7 days ago

    When I was a kid (18?), one night a friend of my friend called us to come give this drunken girl a ride. They said they were at a party and the guy took some time to babysit her and take her home but he couldn’t handle her anymore.

    We went and picked her up and were going to take her wherever in the area she wanted to go as a solid for this guy. She got in the car and started berating us and trying to turn up the volume and complaining about the music. She said she had sucked dick and whatever other mess and wasn’t going to put up with our shit this evening. She was much more intoxicated than I thought she would be. She requested to be taken to her car and she started giving us directions. She said she was going to sleep it off in the car so her parents wouldn’t know. We planned to take her keys and come back later or something. We were honestly blindsided by how ridiculous everything got so quickly.

    Turns out her car was parked at a local recycling center or something and when we pulled in there, there was a brand new Cadillac, lights came on car started. She said it was probably her grandpa. We let her out and started driving away so that they could figure it out, we wanted to be done. Grandpa didn’t even stop to let her in the car or get her in her own car or anything. He immediately started following us. He tailgated us all the way down the highway back to my friend’s house with his brights on. We drove normally but tried to concoct a plan. We pulled up the driveway at my friend’s place about 15 minutes later and he stops short a few car lengths into the driveway.

    I kind of lost it at that point and walked down the driveway to ask him what the hell he was thinking and he steps out of the car standing behind the driver side door. As I come up to him to give him a piece of my mind he raises his hands and he has a pistol pointed right at me. I guess being young and full of adrenaline I absolutely went off on him yelling what the hell did he think he was doing pulling a gun on this we were just trying to give his granddaughter a ride we didn’t even really know her. I mean I got right up in his face. I can’t believe I did that in retrospect, I would never do that now. After I yelled at him he dropped his hands and looked confused. Said “What was I supposed to do?” I’ll never forget those words.He quickly got in his car and started to turn around. I tried to block his car so I could call the police but as I started to get on the phone he punched it and ran over my foot. Thankfully I moved to just enough to the side that it didn’t really do anything. Cops showed up later and the officer stood around for a while talking to us and getting statements. He said that we have to go down to the magistrate downtown to do anything about this.

    We went there and the magistrate asked us a bunch of the same questions. He did some paperwork stuff and essentially concluded that the guy who pulled a gun on me had already come by and filed a report that we were threatening him and that the two conflicting statements would cancel each other out - nothing would happen to either of us. Come to find out later on that the man who pulled a gun on me was a retired police chief from the area, very well known, who owned a local car wash. He had a sketchy past and I guess this was just another day in the life of a police officer abusing power.

    I look back and think what the hell was that girl doing? Was she actually being taking advantage of? Did the friend of a friend know that would happen so he set us up to take the fall for it? Was he the abuser? Was she just being sloppy and shitty and he didn’t want to get in trouble? How in the world did those things cancel each other out especially with no investigation into it. They couldn’t have. I’ll never forget that. I never talked to that idiot friend of a friend again and I never saw police officers the same either.

    • Serinus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      55·
      7 days ago

      I’m aware your questions are rhetorical, but I’m going to answer them anyway. Your questions are just so spot on.

      Was she actually being taking advantage of?

      80/20

      Did the friend of a friend know that would happen so he set us up to take the fall for it?

      Maybe. It doesn’t have to be that Machiavellian. Maybe he didn’t know what to do and was just looking for an out. Not an excuse. Could be similar feelings whether he’s the abuser or relatively innocent.

      How in the world did those things cancel each other out especially with no investigation into it.

      Cops don’t like paperwork. Paperwork can mean accountability. If nothing’s written, they can’t get lectured for doing it wrong.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      Not ever having closure for shit like this is ridiculously frustrating. This drunk lady came to my door once and lied that she was a friend of a friend but she was really upset and may possibly have been hit by her boyfriend because she had a big red mark on her cheek and started crying about him. So I had her call her mother to pick her up. Then my wife came home and we hid in the bedroom with the door closed while she and her mom had a huge yelling match about the boyfriend. Eventually they left and we never saw or heard from them again.

      You’d think they would have at least left a thank you note.

    • Rob Bos@lemmy.caEnglish
      141·
      7 days ago

      I half expected this to end with jumper cables. Quite a ride, though.

  • grysbok@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    88·
    7 days ago

    I (aurally) witnessed a kindergartener get run over by her school bus. I was on a different bus and our bus drivers were talking over the radio, then there was this ungodly wailing from the other bus. The other bus driver just kept screaming “I killed her, I killed her”.

    Turns out the little girl barely missed the bus, ran alongside it to catch up, tripped, and fell under the wheels of the bus.

    Once we got to high school, students on the killing bus were offered counseling. I, not being on the killing bus, didn’t talk to anyone about it until I went to therapy decades later.

    Yellow school buses freak me out still, for that and abuse reasons.

      • grysbok@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        13·
        6 days ago

        Yeah, there’s also the confusion of not having literally seen or felt the kid being crushed, so chastising myself that it shouldn’t have been that traumatic. It took me years to accept that just hearing something can also be witnessing it.

  • intensely_human@lemm.eeEnglish
    572·
    6 days ago

    I’ve been sick at home for a few days. I blew my nose into some toilet paper, checked, then tossed it in the toilet. Saw myself in the bathroom mirror and had snot all over my mustache.

    Then it hit me. This isn’t the first time I’ve blown my nose with a mustache — it’s just the first time I’ve immediately looked in a mirror afterward.

    Oh my god

    • Aggravationstation@feddit.ukEnglish
      10·
      6 days ago

      Yea it happens if you have facial hair unfortunately. Went for a meal with my family last night and drinks after. Got home and realised there was quite a bit of dried soup in my beard. I do normally check myself after eating in my phone camera but totally forgot. Made me glad I’ve already made an appointment with the barber to get it trimmed.

    • zeca@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      i notice that when im sick, it takes longer for me to get better if i have a mustache. Not that i walk around with snot hanging to it, i hope not. But i guess something sits there, and i breath it all day and stay sick.

  • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    53·
    6 days ago

    I had half of my face ripped off by a dog when I was a kid. Skin and flesh was just hanging off of my face and I almost lost my right eye.

    Doctors did a great job patching me up and you can’t even tell that anything happened unless you know where the super subtle scars are.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      18·
      6 days ago

      Oh wow. They did great work then. My niece has her face attacked by a pit bull, has had several surgeries and some laser work, and you can still tell unfortunately. She kind of developed some transient anorexia about it unfortunately, which my asshole MIL went out of her way to aggravate. Glad you did well though.

  • Stalinwolf@lemmy.caEnglish
    53·
    6 days ago

    After taking a car door to the head during heavy winds, I experienced immediate and recurring night terrors/sleep paralysis for two years. They started out pretty extreme, with me waking up on my stomach with some kind of creature pinning me to the bed. I’d struggle enough to lift my head a few inches, only to find my pillow was filled with distorted, open-mouthed faces stretching out at me from the material.

    As time went in the hallucinations gradually waned in extremity, though never becoming anything comfortable. I would open my eyes to see a phosphorescent grid encompassing my walls, or millions of flies on my bedroom ceiling. Once my cat was staring up at them too, and I believed what was happening was real, only to wake up a moment later facing a different direction, and my cat fast asleep at my feet.

    Eventually it’s as though my soul became heavy or something. I slept on the top floor of a two-story home, with a very old colonial-era basement below it. I would constantly find myself one or two floors directly beneath my bed, all but glued to the ground and trying with all my might to crawl out of the damp, dark cellar toward the stairs, but too sluggish and/or paralyzed to do it. I felt terrified down there in the darkness. Eventually the adrenaline would wake me up safely in my bed.

    Throughout the entire ordeal I would somewhat frequently open my eyes to see some sort of ghostly or transparent entity looming over my bed, leaning over or staring down at me. The last night I ever experienced an episode, I woke up to see that very entity, but I realized suddenly that the entity was me. It was me standing there, looking down at myself. I became angry. I felt like these episodes had ruined my life, and made sleeping something I no longer looked forward to. The rage came to a head. I activated every nerve in my body to try to break free of the paralysis. I gritted my teeth as I succeeded, groaning the words “FFFFRUUUUCKK YYRRROOOOUU!!!” as I bolted up from my bed and lunged through my own ghost. Then I never saw it again. In fact, I never had another night terror since. It’s been years now. A decade at least.

    • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.worldEnglish
      24·
      6 days ago

      I love your story. I overcome attempted nightmares in a very similar way.

      I rarely get anything close to a nightmare nowadays, but I used to get dreams where someone/something would chase me. Then one night, I felt it was about to happen, and thought, “I’m so tired of this. You know what? I’m done.” And… the thing disappeared.

      Ever since then, if any scary shit starts happening in a dream, I just tell it to fuck off. Sometimes that moment leads to a small bit of lucidity, and I go, “Oh hey, I can fly away.” Run, jump, take off, and it’s pleasant dreams from then on out.

      The power of the mind is incredible.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        6 days ago

        I actually just had a moment like that (sudden lucidity during a dream) in my last sleep. Probably would have lost that memory entirely if this comment hadn’t reminded me. Even still, I can’t remember the context, just that something was happening that was mildly annoying and I realized I was dreaming.

        I just said, “wait a minute, this is my dream, I’m in control here” and then I think the dream shifted into something else or something because the memory fragment ends there.

    • Olhonestjim@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      5 days ago

      I grew up deeply religious. Mom used to cast demons out of the house when I was little, and that ain’t the half of it. Needless to say, I entered puberty with some fucked up perspectives. I started getting night terrors soon after I started masturbating, which was an accidental discovery of mine. The fact that I couldn’t stop freaked me out. I thought it was demonic and no way was I gonna talk to my parents about any of it.

      Fortunately for me, I was always fascinated by science and sci-fi. I loved sharks, astronomy, history, and Star Trek. For middle school I attended private Christian school or home school, but for 9th grade I demanded to return to public school. My parents relented. The demonic night terrors still tormented me nearly every night, but one day I read an article about sleep paralysis in a science magazine in the school library. It explained everything I’d been going through for several awful years.

      That same night I experienced another episode. I felt lucid enough to remember the article and realize what was happening. Instead of impotently begging Jesus again for help, this time I simply thought, “fascinating.” Then immediately woke up.

      It has never happened to me since.

      The people who fuck with libraries can all burn in hell. Libraries save lives, from exactly those same people.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 days ago

        That reminds me of the first time I did shrooms. I looked in the mirror and my head turned into a demon head. It made me laugh because I don’t believe in such things and I was aware I was on shrooms, but I bet it would have freaked a religious person out. I can definitely see why some religious people use psychedelics because they think it gets them in touch with the spirit world or whatever.

      • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.netEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        I still experienced it after I knew what it was, but not nearly as often. The last time I remember it happening, I dreamed I was at work. Laid down in a hallway to nap. Woke up from the dream nap with one of the execs standing next to me, looking down his nose. Couldn’t move. “Hell of a time for sleep paralysis,” dream-me thought.

        Then real me woke up with sleep paralysis. At work, with my head down on a conference table at 3am.

        I do not miss those sensations.

    • OceanSoap@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      6 days ago

      Sleep paralysis is so terrifying. I get episodes when I’m under incredibly severe stress, so I’ve only had about 4 episodes. When it first happened, my heart was thumping so quick and fast that I thought I’d for sure have a heart attack.

    • psud@aussie.zoneEnglish
      5·
      6 days ago

      I have always had hypnagogic dreams but no paralysis. The scary hallucinations only happened when I was stressed

      Normally the hallucinations were benign

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    13·
    5 days ago

    I knew someone whose death was ruled a suicide. I also know their roommate wasn’t where they said they were the night it allegedly happened.

    And that’s all I know.

  • 2ugly2live@lemmy.worldEnglish
    67·
    7 days ago

    Probably not as interesting, but I was woken up as a kid (teen?) by my mom screaming and running into my room/in my bed. Woke up to see my dad standing in the doorway with a steak knife. She had asked him to go to rehab. That was it. We’re good though 🤙🏾

  • Taewyth@jlai.luEnglish
    11·
    5 days ago

    Just a few

    • a childhood friend and neighbour got killed by his mother, his sister managed to flee the scene and call the cops
    • my elementary school’s director got arrested for paedophilia, he killed himself in his cell before getting judged
    • my sister in law died in her sleep less than a meter away from me (a wall was between us still) and my partner and I were the ones to find her, I’ve had to call and tell her parents
  • jawa21@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    71·
    7 days ago

    I witnessed a fatal lathe accident. The kind that would have easily been featured in rotten.com back in the day. They shut the whole shop down and noone worked for a month. It was awful.

    • Zannsolo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      321·
      7 days ago

      Yikes, remember kids no loose items near the violently spinning things.

      I used to be a plumber and spent a lot of time running a pipe threader all I ever thought about while using it was if I mess up this thing will force my body through a 5 in gap.

    • sik0fewl@lemmy.caEnglish
      12·
      7 days ago

      I’ve never worked with a lathe, but PTOs on the farm were terrifying. I was taught to be afraid, and I was.

      • Kitathalla@lemy.lolEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        PTO? Is that the spinny thing on the back of the tractor I would attach the mower/seed spreader to? If so, thinking back we never had much concern with it. Now I’m rethinking the wisdom of the adults in letting us preteens use it.

      • jawa21@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        6·
        7 days ago

        Basically the same ideas for safety, but those PTOs tend to have way more horsepower behind them. I don’t care how cold you might be, loose clothing is bad.

        • PraiseTheSoup@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          6 days ago

          My cousin got his arm ripped off by a tractor PTO when he was a kid. Some quick thinking by his dad got him a tourniquet and his detached arm on ice in a cooler, drove him to the hospital and they were able to reattach it. He doesn’t quite have full function with it but you’d never know. This would have been around 1990 so pretty impressive medically.

    • CrowAirbrush@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      7 days ago

      Not “Russian lathe incident”? Sounds like it might potentially be identical if it’s not that one.

      • jawa21@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        20·
        7 days ago

        Nah, I’m in the US. And, honestly (this is painful to recall) it wasn’t an arm stretched around the lathe chuck. It was mostly red mist that left some organs around. This was on a large machine that had a 30 foot long bed, and around 90 HP to drive it. The guy was trying to turn down a cam shaft for a ship at about 100 rpm. The forces involved are insane. He kind of… disappeared.

        • conditional_soup@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Sounds like he didn’t even have time to realize he fucked up. Jesus, it’s hard to believe anyone would knowingly do a job like that.

    • Jumi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      We were shown videos during my apprenticeship and that was already horrible. I don’t want to imagine what it’s like to see it live.

  • Danitos@reddthat.comEnglish
    671·
    7 days ago

    I was very close to either dying or having permanent brain damage due to a stun grenade in a protest in my country. While being a completely unarmed, non-violent and basically running away/hiding protestor.

    I was with a friend and a bunch of people outside our campus. Everything was peaceful and then, out of nowhere things got bad, with stun grenades and tear gas everywhere. We were used to it, but that time the tear gas was so bad that the neutralizer we brought was doing nothing. We took cover with a wall (bad idea, but we were panicking badly), and I wasn’t able to breath, so I wanted us to run away from there. I told my friend to let’s just run certain way, and I was so full of adrenaline and ready to run, but he stopped me. 1 second later, a stun grenade fell from the sky just 1 m away of us, in the direction I wanted us to run; no doubt it would have hit me in the head.

    After that I just took his hand and we ran away, not able to see nor breath. Me holding his hand was a huge saver for both of us, as we could, more or less, guide each other. We ran some 20-30 m and just fell to the ground, but in a somewhat safe place. We crawled some 10 m more and just rest there. It took us some solid 15 minutes to catch our breath. Never said a word to my family about the whole incident.

    Fun times.

  • PassingDuchy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    621·
    7 days ago

    Once put one of those plastic wrapped potatoes in my uniform apron to put back in produce at my first retail job (got abandoned in the mac and cheese section). I then completely forgot and took it home. Took it out of my apron and put it on my desk next to my car keys because “I’ll remember to take it back”. I did not. Lived with me for a week or something when I finally put it in my apron again because I wasn’t remembering. I took it to work. I completely forgot about it and never returned it. It made this trip several times. I put it back on my desk because this wasn’t working out, surely I’ll remember if I see it.

    Then I forgot about it for like three months. One day I look over at my desk and it’s a shriveled potato with a new potato growing from its own husk…

    In essence, potatoes are amazing and horrifying. Just like my short term memory lol.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      6 days ago

      Then you plant the potato, determined to pay it back with interest. Months later, you harvest 5 potatoes that make it back to work but end up forgotten and back at home again. You even remember them at work frequently, but never when you’re in the right section of the store.

      You do remember to plant them the next year though. The first year, you just put them in a pot in your back yard, this year they get a small dedicated place in the ground. The 5 potatoes turn into 34 and no longer all fit in your apron pockets. But you do remember to return the 4 you have on you one day at work, and then forget to grab more before the other 30 are all sprouting the next year.

      So the potato garden gets bigger year 3. You build a small shed to store the couple hundred you harvest. You’re getting good at growing potatoes.

      You eat one, not because you think you deserve it, but to make sure the potatoes you still want to return to the produce section are up to the high standards your employer’s customers expect.

      It’s pretty good.

      No, not just good. Your potato is amazing, the best you’ve ever tried. Wait, no, your work’s potato is the best you’ve ever tried. You vow to repay that potato, hardening your resolve. You bring a whole bag in on your next day.

      It only takes you three days to remember to drop off the bag of potatoes with the others (after a colleague asks about the bulge on your back where you were carrying them under your shirt). But then you realize with horror that the colour of the bag you made doesn’t match the others. They are beige while yours is a bright beige. You return home that day with your bag plus a work bag, just so you can match the colour properly.

      It takes you two more years to finally master the potato bag making craft. It wasn’t just the colour that was off, you also had to match the font and placement of the text and then noticed that your stitching holding the bag closed was pretty different.

      Your potato garden had taken over your entire back yard by then and you knew with dread that you wouldn’t have enough space to plant them all next season. But your neighbour lets you use some of their 50 acres in return for two potatoes a day. You feel a bit guilty because they aren’t your potatoes, but you justify it because it’s an investment.

      You don’t forget about returning potatoes at work anymore. You can’t forget. Potatoes have all but taken over your life at this point. You bring in a bag and fill your pockets with them each day and take each chance you can get to casually pass through the produce section and leave some potatoes without anyone noticing (which is difficult because you’d been promoted to the deli counter).

      You’ve grown strong from getting used to carrying a bag of potatoes while still walking normally, not to mention the slight of hand tricks you use to pull it out of its hiding spot and leave it with the other bags without anyone noticing.

      But you’re still gaining potatoes overall, filling the shed and the storage building that replaced it. You consider high jacking the truck that delivers potato orders to your work, but you know Ed in receiving would notice something was up if there was an extra delivery they didn’t pay for. You had already heard some confusion about potato shrinkage being negative and worried you’d never be able to repay your debt.

      Then a complaint came in and you thought it was all over. A customer bought a bag of potatoes and they were all trash compared to the last one. The store was going to trace the batch number, which you had just been making up and even having a bit of fun with.

      You felt a confused relief when you heard that the trace had led to nothing unusual being discovered. Turns out the trash potatoes were from the usual source and you wondered if that earlier bag was the one from you.

      And then one day your nightmare comes true. You had just stealthfully placed three potatoes with others–that were much smaller and didn’t look nearly as good (you were considering sending some anonymous tips to the producer so yours wouldn’t stand out so much)–and made eye contact with one of your colleagues who was standing by the carrots. She saw. It’s over. My whole potato empire is about to crumble to nothing and I’m going to prison for theft.

      She looked dumbfounded. A little too dumbfounded, actually. You were wondering if this was a bigger deal than you had thought when you notice a bright orange object fall from her sleeve to the ground. It was a carrot. And it looked significantly better than most of the carrots your work had on display.

      • grysbok@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        8·
        6 days ago

        Potato: the traditional ADHD houseplant. (Reminds me, I should see if any of my bag of potatoes have volunteered to be planted/have sprouted yet)