Sometimes, Darwin needs to be more effective.

The title of this post might be confusing to some. Especially if you don't know what the Darwin awards are. Because I’m feeling nice, here's a link to whom Darwin was, and what the Darwin Awards are. Go ahead and read them. I'll wait.

Oh good. You're back. Interesting/entertaining read, eh? Who knew so many people needed to be weeded out of the gene pool?
I work customer service, so I see a lot of these evolution champions. People always tell me it's because I’m not giving them a chance, or that I’m being too hard on them. That's not quite it. It’s just all the good stories I have all involve the dumb ones. They're entertaining. Like this one.

I once got a call from a woman who wanted to have the phone number for the Federal Laboratory where she can have her drugs tested.

After I finished choking on my coffee, I asked her if she could elaborate, maybe just a little.

She had been ordering drugs from an 'on-line chemist' and had developed heavy metal poisoning. She had gone to her family doctor, and he apparently didn't really know what to test for, so this lady figured if the government could just analyze what was in the drugs she was (still) taking, then she could report back to her doctor, and he could run those tests on her.

When I suggested she go to the emergency room, she questioned my sanity. 'But I’ve been to a doctor. He’s useless, and doesn’t know what tests to run to check to see what poisons are in these drugs I’m taking.' I suggested perhaps she speak to a local pharmacist, mayhaps they would have a line on a private lab that she could get her drugs tested at. She could not understand why a pharmacist would know of a lab, and shot down that idea.

She'd had been on the phone all day and no one could help her out. I explained to her that it's usually a bad idea to take internet-scored drugs because the government usually tests supplements for poisons before they’re allowed to be sold in Canada, hence her difficulty in finding a suitable lab through government channels. She though that idea was ridiculous, and then proceeded to tell me how it should be run, and she was going to try her luck with the provincial government.

I really hope she finds what she's looking for. That, and that the next bunch of weird internet pills have the antidote to whatever poisons she had ingested from the last batch.

forgiveness is the key to getting your money back. i think.

I told my mother that my ex-roomie got in touch to give me my money back, and he was going to email me the money so I gave him just the name of the bank I deal with and my email address, and my mom FREAKS out saying how he’s going to scam me and take all my money and I never should have sent him this info and tells me about this one time her friend’s second husband once got a virus and he sent out this email saying he was in England and how he had to delete his whole email account. Meanwhile, I’m all like, WTF mom? It’s the name of a bank and my email. IF this indeed just a random scam, these people have been following me for 12 years, because there’s no WAY somebody could have gotten all that info from the internet. Like, we lived together PRE-social media, so it’s not even like we’re friends on Facebook.

Maybe a little back story would help. Back when I was in college (for the third time. That time it was for journalism. Yea, I know, it totally doesn't show, right?) I rescued a lot of strays, first the animal kind, and then the human kind. The boyfriend I had at the time had let one of his co-workers stay on our couch for a while. Shortly after, I broke up with the boyfriend and moved out. Unfortunately, a few months later, the couch monster followed me to the new place, where he, and eventually his girlfriend, lived on my couch for all of first year. Anyhow, after much bad blood, he left without paying last month's rent, and he's been known as The Roommate Who Shall Not Be Named ever since. (And that was before the whole Voldemort thing. I’m a fucking psychic.)

Needless to say, (but I’m going to say it anyway) my mom has been bringing this up periodically. 'Remember that roommate who screwed you out of millions of dollars? Yea, he was a dick.' My mom has a real knack for making whole mountain ranges out of the tiniest pile of dust. I totally don't take after her at all. Ok, maybe a little. But in a completely different way.

Before he left however, we had both signed a note saying how much he owed me. I held on to this piece of paper for years, and every time I would stumble across this note, I would fly into a rage and stomp around and feel all grumpy. So, to save some sanity, I threw it out maybe six months ago, and tried really hard to move pass the frustration and irritation that his memory evoked. Even started referring to him by his name, anything to try to crumble the grudge I’ve been carrying for 12 years. Finally after all this time, I’d had come to peace with this guy, and more importantly I had come to peace with the fact I’d never see that $300 ever again.

Imagine my surprise when I got a Facebook message from him asking how he could pay me back.

So, the moral of the story is if you forgive your ex-roommate, you'll get your money back that he's owed you since the turn of the century. Just don't tell your mother, because she will think the internet is trying to steal your money.