When I divorced my toxic ex and realized that I wasn't free to have ANY more relationships after that if I also wanted to maintain my relationships with my family and entire social system - friends, acquaintances, everyone I knew. All because that cult masquerading as a religion controlled practically every part of my life. You're not allowed to remarry, date or even flirt. Completely humiliating.

It's the Jehovah's Witnesses, in case you can't tell. The second wake-up came shorty thereafter when Australia revealed that they had a massive pedophile problem that they refuse to address. To this day, they are the only religion in Australia who refuses to apologize, reform or work with the authorities on how they can change anything, when they clearly are the worst of the bunch when it comes to systemic child mistreatement.

It is a horrible, repressive cult. Never join them or even study with them unless you do your google homework first.

Went to a church that had a night where a faith healer came to visit. He "healed" a teenager of very severe asthma. As a sign of his faith, the teenager goes out on the bike trails without his inhaler the next day and almost passes away. The pastor visits the family in the hospital and tells the heartbroken parents it was because they didn't have enough faith. And with that, I exit stage right. I say that because that's when I realized the whole thing was an effing show.

Former Mormon, and when I was about 13 and couldn't get any satisfying explanation as to why women couldn't hold the priesthood- ie. Have any position in the church above a Sunday school teacher. Everything we learned and did revolved around becoming a good housewife.

My sister's story, but my insult!!

While I was over visiting at my sister's house, she ran up to me and asked quickly, "I don't suppose you just ate 10 chocolate cupcakes, did you?"

I said, "Noooooo, but thanks for that."

It turned out she knew their dog must have gotten up on the counter and gotten them all while she had stepped out of the kitchen, but me having some sort of l*****c cake attack was her last-ditch hope.

They took the dog to the vet, and he was fine, but to this day, I'll still randomly say "Hey, I don't suppose you just ate 10 chocolate cupcakes, did you?" just to make her go: "I didn't actually think you did!!! I was just really hoping you'd lost your mind!!!".

Went to bathroom and take my morning meds while my 3yo twins were eating brecky. By the time I got back, they had used an umbrella to knock down a canvass painting from the wall, flipped it upside down at the base of the stairs, filled it up with water from the watering can, and were splashing in it like it was a mini-pool. I told them to leave the paintings alone, but that this was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Then we left and I bought them a kiddie-pool.

I was gone for about an hour for volunteer orientation and my mom got a kitten.

Her name is Charlie.

She's precious.

Went to the bathroom and left my two year old in the living room, with the baby gate closed. Heard thumping and giggling, and came downstairs to find that he had opened the baby gate (a new skill!) and gone into the kitchen, poured a litre of cooking oil all over the floor and was sliding around in it.

My friend had the “I was gone for five minutes” part in this story.

My best friend had just broken up with her boyfriend. Me and my other friend decided to take shifts hanging out with her, making sure she was ok. When I got there, she had a candle lit on her desk. She has a big fluffy cat. I was told to make sure the cat didn’t jump on the desk and catch the candle.

My other friend leaves to go to work, and my best friend starts crying again. I turn around for two seconds and the cat jumps on the desk. Poor thing was perfectly fine and unhurt, but I had to move the candle because his long fur did catch for just a second.

We had to call our other friend and tell her the cat caught on fire. She was still in the driveway.

I had a small house. I walked down a short hallway to put the laundry hamper back in my bedroom.

My barely toddler age son was playing on the floor. He had NEVER climbed a thing before, and in the short minute it took me to walk to my bedroom and back he managed to climb up on my stove. He was sitting got on top of my electric stove and was pressing the buttons, overjoyed to hear them beeping. I didn’t even feel my feet on the floor as I flew across the room to grab him before the burners started heating up.

My blood still runs cold just thinking about it.

Mind you, I did not put the laundry away, I was simply putting the empty hamper back in the bedroom. To this day, I have no idea how he got up there so fast.

This is why I don’t judge when I hear some kid did something crazy. Others will be saying “where were the parents?”’But when your kid does something like this you realize exactly how fast they can move!

Wrote an article about a colleague who was 12.5 years with my client company. We posted it on our intranet and I went to the bathroom. By the time I got back the dude had walked out. Left saying he never realized how long he stayed with that company, and that he hadn't had the courage to get up and leave for years. Those 12.5 years in the hero image probably woke him up.

Went to make a cup of tea, came back and cat had strolled across my keyboard, sent three blank emails, opened 144 tabs, and changed my computer language to chinese.