See, that bothers me less, because if he’s traveling for work (and legitimately needs to be traveling for work) he wasn’t going to be available to help with the baby anyway. As opposed to when he’s home, and COULD be helping.

Okay, so 33-year-old you has the inability to understand that “cannot legally give consent” means that no matter what you wanted to do when you were 14, you COULD NOT LEGALLY GIVE CONSENT. Therefore, that was not, FROM A LEGAL STANDPOINT, consensual sex.

I actually used the phrase “could not legally consent” in my comment. And pointed out that one of the reasons we decide that younger teens cannot legally consent is that they have not fully developed their capacity for judgment. Which you pretty much proved, because 14-year-old you decided to blow a guy you smoked…

No, it wasn’t “super consensual,” because he could not legally consent to having sex with her. Period. It is not different when it’s a girl. Both are vulnerable young people whose capacity for judgment is not yet fully developed. This is 100% wrong, it is rape, and for you to say that it’s different because the victim…

You’re not saying that the kid asked for it, you’re just saying that he totally asked for it. Got it.

You can also create multiple completely separate accounts on Gmail, and then set things up so that you can receive and send mail from all of them while logged into only one of them. Then there’s nothing to detect—they really are separate email accounts, not multiple addresses that point to the same account.

There are some restaurants that do, indeed, bring a card reader with the delivery. It certainly isn’t the smartest way to go about things, but they do.

There are a couple of restaurants here that bring a card reader to the door. (And I do live in a city at the moment.) One of them is a good-sized local chain, too (about 100 restaurants in this part of the country), not just a tiny mom-and-pop diner.

In the town where I grew up, it was just... assumed... that kids played sports. I mean, like, we moved into our house when I was about 7, and the neighbors immediately started pulling strings to get me on a softball team mid-season. And then I thought it was kind of fun, so I kept playing for the next few years.

Yeah, by the time I hit 7th grade or so, even the rec league teams required that you try out and be accepted by the teams. So that was the end of sports for Maggie.

I have moved cross-country with multiple animals, and spent 4-5 days eating drive-through (or takeout in my room at the Motel 6), because I wasn’t leaving the animals alone for longer than it took to pay for gas and use the bathroom. I can’t imagine leaving them in a car for an hour, especially not in the summer.

And, well, even if your restaurant is in general really, really good about following guidelines, occasional fuck-ups happen. I worked in a chain restaurant (years ago) under management that was incredibly diligent about following all the health department guidelines for food service/food safety. And one day, when I…

Maximum. On the other hand, if they hadn’t accepted the plea deal, there would be a chance that he’d be acquitted and wouldn’t serve any time at all. I mean, I’d like to believe that it isn’t super-likely, but there’s that possibility.

People actually preparing food SHOULD be wearing gloves. And depending on the local rules (and what degree the cashier job involves food preparation), the cashiers might not be allowed to wear press-on nails.

I don’t think we’re actually in disagreement. I think that the blame still would have been placed on the victim (you TEMPTED your brother to sin), but I also think that they would have handled the molester differently.

I find it hilarious now, yes. (And I have seen enough pictures of me that I can TOTALLY see why a horse thought my hair was hay or straw. It looked like a haystack, FFS.) I never developed a phobia of horses, but I have zero interest in them.

Making a supplemental income, then? Not full-on following them everywhere, but I could see someone who already had photography equipment making sure they showed up when they heard Josh and his family were in town, for example.

But the victim still probably would have been the one blamed for it, and made to forgive his molester.

I know exactly why I never got the horse bug. As a preschooler I had very blond, straight, flyaway hair that did, in fact, resemble hay. We went to a petting zoo where there were ponies. Every time I got close to one it tried to eat my hair, and it was hard to avoid them. I think my parents said we were there maybe 20…

That’s me and broccoli soup. I actually really love broccoli soup, but I make it the way Gordon Ramsey did on one of the UK Kitchen Nightmares episodes: broccoli, water, a little salt. Not because it’s healthier, or anything, but because I love the taste of broccoli, and this soup tastes like broccoli.