Everyone thinks I went backpacking in Europe for most of 2004 and I don't have pictures because my camera was stolen. In reality I was working as a mercenary for a defense contractor in the Middle East. Even My wife of 18 years has no idea. No one has any idea the violence I have experienced. My wife has no idea that this is essentially what paid for our house. She just thinks I made some smart investments right out of high school which is partially true. I put all the money I made doing this into some smart investments and it was enough to pay for our house and property.

I am way WAY more depressed than I let on.

My father chose to stop dialysis, he knew that gave him literal weeks left. We had so many conversations over those two weeks.

The day before my dad passed he told me his only regret was what he turned my mother into. She was a timid, sweet girl when they met and married young (right out of high school). He loved her unconditionally and taught her how to stand up for herself, but didn't teach her temperance - she's now an overbearing, opinionated conversation hog who is easily offended and drove all their friends away. The absolute picture of a boomer. His proudest achievement is that my sister and I didn't turn out like her.

I love my mother, she currently lives with me. I can never tell anyone in the family what he said.

Woke up one morning to my mom crying in my brother's bed next to me and apologizing to him.

I pretended to stay asleep as she confessed to him he may not be my dad's son and is likely the son of a man that he looks more like.

They cried and promised eachother to keep it between them as my brother didn't want to find out with a DNA test and said my father will always be his dad anyway.

They don't know I heard the entire conversation to this day nor does my dad have any idea.

When my daughters rabbit was suffering from a stomach issue he was passing away and I could see it coming. I made my daughter leave the room and I held him as he made the worst sounds and then ultimately passed in my arms. I told my daughter he went peacefully and never spoke of it again.

A few days later something in the fridge broke and it made sounds just like he did and I lost it and nobody knows why.

My mom passed when I was 17. Everyone else in the family thought it would be too hard to be there when she was taken off life support but she was an amazing mother and I felt I owed it to her to be there.

My dad (now passed away) and my two brothers know I was there and turned off the machines keeping her alive but I never told them that despite being her brain being gone her body fought desperately to stay alive and she thrashed and gasped for the last few minutes of her life.

They think she just slipped away peacefully and I think I'll keep it that way.

A couple of decades ago, my mom had the family computer fixed. She secretly told me they'd found heaps of gay adult content under my younger brother's account.

I didn't tell her it was actually my doing.

Ultimately, turned out it was both of us.

I had an eating disorder for several years. No matter what I did, I couldn't kick it and I had kinda gotten to the point that I just accepted that I was probably going to have it until I pass away. 


This was until I got diagnosed with a brain tumor (frontal lobe) and had a successful brain surgery. The second I woke up from surgery it was like the impulse to purge was just completely gone. The voice in the back of my head constantly telling me to throw up every single thing I ate just never came back. I just know that the brain tumor must have caused the eating disorder but I'm way too unwilling to confess that I had in the first place to ever actually ask about it.

When I started managing, I just went with what felt right and it worked extraordinarily well. My employees love me and do good work because they want to make me happy (the latter part being the goal, the first part is just how I got there).

A few years in, I realized that the theoretical basis for my management style was a For Dummies book on dogs that I'd read as a teenager. It wasn't a bad thing; the basic ideas proposed were that praise and rewards are good while punishment tends to provoke anxiety without improving behaviour. These match modern management beliefs precisely.

But I can not tell anyone that.

Emulsifing a vinegar and an oil together does in fact make them one lmao

Potatoes are tomato plants that crosbred with another plant, causing it to focus on tubers instead of fruits. Also you can graft tomato stems onto potato root stock and get a plant that will produce hoth tubers and fruits, but both will be terrible from the split nutrients.

Also carrots do not seed until their second year.

that banana, the gros michel isn't even extinct. it's just easier to ship the Cavendish banana, which is what we have today. many of the old crops were wiped out by fungus but there are still some trees left here on earth.