r/PointlessStories

I bought this tiny succulent about three years ago during a random grocery trip because it looked lonely on the shelf. I named him Gennady immediately and put him on the corner of my desk where he has lived ever since. He doesn't really grow much but he is green and sturdy so I consider our relationship a success.

Yesterday I was reaching for my charger cable and managed to catch the edge of his terracotta pot with my elbow. I watched in slow motion as Gennady did a full 360 flip off the desk and landed squarely on the carpet. For a second I just sat there frozen because I was sure he was a goner. I leaned over and whispered "I am so sorry Gennady" before picking him up. He didn't lose a single needle and only a tiny bit of dirt spilled out. I patted the soil back down and put him back in his spot. He just sat there looking exactly the same as he did five minutes before. I spent the next hour feeling like I had betrayed a silent roommate who has seen me at my absolute worst during late night work sessions. He hasn't held a grudge though which is nice.

I noticed my old therapist from 2016 is on Facebook. I wonder if I should send him a friend request. He was the first therapist I ever saw. I’d plucked him off the Internet without researching him because he was the closest therapist to my house.

Turns out, he practiced what’s called “positive psychotherapy.” I didn’t know what the hell that entailed, and I didn’t think anything of it. But I would learn pretty quickly.

I was probably saying something along the lines of “Dr. X, I’m exhausted all the time and have this fatigue and symptoms. I keep going from doctor to doctor to find out what’s wrong with me. I don’t know what to do.”

And he would turn everything I said into a question of what I could do to make it a more positive experience. Perhaps I could spend the afternoon making and playing with a sock puppet. Or color in an adult coloring book he recommended. Maybe I could view my going from doctor to doctor as an experience in local travel. Or I could write a poem about what I’d do if I weren’t exhausted and feeling sick.

I felt like I was talking to Mr. Rogers. This guy wasn’t helping, he was making me nuts. Once, while I was talking, his eyes closed for a good minute or two. Another time, he kept staring at the clock and yawning while I was talking to him.

Anyway, I think I might send him a friend request. Tell him I wrote a rap song about my wife.

So one day, I decided to switch things up and eat some egg sandwiches. I hardboiled a few eggs, took out four slices of bread and prepared to start buttering them up... then I started talking with my mom.

After I was done talking, I was ready to slice up the eggs and place them on the bread... but the bread was all gone. After a moment, I realized all four slices are now inside the sandwich toaster, getting toasted with cheese inbetween. I've done absent-minded things before, but I don't think anything ever topped that.

I spent about twenty minutes today watching a fly try to exit my kitchen through the window above the sink. The window was actually wide open on the left side but for some reason this specific fly was absolutely convinced that the right side the one with the solid glass pane was the only way out. It just kept buzzing and thumping against the glass with this rhythmic little sound that started to get kind of hypnotic after a while.

I was sitting at the table drinking my coffee and I honestly didnt have anything better to do so I just watched it. It would fly in a small circle then zoom straight into the glass and fall down onto the sill for a second before trying again. It did this maybe fifty times in a row. I started to wonder if it could even see the open part just ten inches to the left or if its fly brain was just hardwired to go toward the brightest spot regardless of the obstacle. Eventually I felt bad for the little guy because it looked like it was getting tired.

I grabbed a piece of junk mail from the counter and slowly nudged it toward the fly. I thought it would just zip away into the living room but it actually crawled right onto the paper. I carefully moved the mail toward the open section and as soon as we crossed the threshold into the outside air the fly just took off without even a second thought. I stood there holding a piece of paper out the window for a second too long and then I just went back to finishing my coffee.

They were growing by my mailbox and they’re the first I’ve seen this season. They are my favorite wildflower. Once as a kid at church they had a children’s story where all the kids sit on the stairs up front and someone told a story. I don’t remember the story but the story teller brought bleeding hearts as a prop and asked us if anyone knew what flower it was. I piped right up and said bleeding hearts. After church, my grandma said she was so proud that her granddaughter knew the flower (big time flower lover) and I felt so happy. I was so proud! She was always taking me on walks and telling me all the different flowers.

There were a bunch of people my parents knew from the neighborhood—mostly old folks. Church friends of my grandparents, neighbors, people who needed help. My parents were always doing odd jobs for them: hanging wallpaper, building things, taking older women grocery shopping to Alpha Beta or Lucky’s.

My sister and I were usually dragged along, which felt like a punishment. Sometimes we’d just sit in the car while my mom and our 300-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Hupp, shopped. We’d sit in the backseat of her olive green Chevy Nova for hours, windows rolled down, just looking around. We got very good at doing absolutely nothing. None of my kids seem to have inherited that skill.

One of these people was a man named Forrest Langley. I have no idea what he did before he retired. He was a nice enough guy—not as warm as Grandpa Tutty, who lived across from Dick and Mary Lou, but decent. He was quiet, soft-spoken, wore cardigans, didn’t smoke. That alone was enough for my dad to decide he didn’t quite fit the mold of every other man in his orbit.

At some point, Forrest decided to raise the roof of his garage. For help, he enlisted my dad—an unemployed man built like he could carry half the house on his back. The arrangement was simple: my dad did the work, and Forrest supervised.

They worked on that garage for about a month. Every day my dad came home complaining—not about the labor, but about the rules. Forrest wouldn’t let him drink beer while he worked. That, more than anything, seemed to bother him.

Forrest, meanwhile, took the role of foreman seriously. He liked having someone to direct, and he used the opportunity fully. Eventually, the constant oversight wore thin. There was an argument—no one remembers exactly what started it—but my dad walked away, declaring he wasn’t going to keep working under those conditions.

Even so, he had been thinking ahead. There was a ridge board running along the peak of the garage roof—the spine where all the rafters met. My dad had convinced Forrest to leave it long so that, someday, he could mount a hoist to it and use the garage to swap out car engines. We had a garage at home, but it was packed so full of junk that nothing useful ever happened in it.

Forrest, for reasons of his own, decided to cut that extra length off.

He set up a ladder, climbed up, and sat on the ridge board to trim it down.

This part of the story has never changed in 45 years. No embellishments, no shifting details. That’s the only reason I believe it’s true.

Apparently, Forrest was sitting on the wrong side of the cut.

He sawed through the board and fell about fifteen feet onto his asphalt driveway.

A neighbor heard him screaming in agony and called an ambulance. Forrest went to the hospital and stayed there for a few weeks before he died.

Everyone in this story is gone now.

It was day 2 of the festival. People were waking up, crawling out of their tents, and shuffling toward the public showers. Little kiosks had already sprung to life, offering coffee, pastries, and — you guessed it — cheese. This was France, after all. Aurillac, for those who know.

Everything felt right. The sun was shining, people were chatting, and the mood was easy and happy.

Then, out of nowhere, two guys and a girl — mid-20s, dressed like everyone else in casual summer clothes — walked up to the cheese kiosk. They told the vendors that due to the summer heat, selling cheese was a health risk, permit or not. They weren't there to discuss it. They were aggressive, dismissive of any pushback, and proceeded to confiscate every last piece of cheese into their big cooler box.

The crowd booed. Nobody budged.

I watched them walk away with hundreds of dollars worth of delicious cheese while dozens of festival-goers had their morning ruined by what I can only call the cheese police.

at exactly 8:47pm last night

several guys named jeff won gold.

that’s our volleyball team name btw:

“several guys named jeff”

and ps. this post has no important life lesson.

just sweaty armpits, loaded nachos, and

a bunch of smiling jeffs.

actually, i lied.

maybe there is a lesson…

guess there’s a lesson in here somewhere

• victories are better with jeffs?
• the more jeffs the better?
• two jeffs one stone?