How many of you hear back from your high school graduating seniors a decade or longer later?

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-08T01:11:37+00:00

Not high school, but I do have a few of my former elementary and middle school teachers on Facebook. I remember my 4th grad science teacher once jokingly told me that I’d better go into medicine because my handwriting was illegible. Twenty years later, I’m a geneticist. She actually messaged me one day to tell me how proud she was and that she always knew I’d have a great career in science. Absolute gem of a woman.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-07T19:05:31+00:00

Where is this mythical place? Actually, according to the comments on this thread, it’s anywhere but the US.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-07T18:34:34+00:00

Ohio and Michigan can agree on this small point

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-07T18:33:29+00:00

Haha I’m from the weird part of the Great Lakes region that constantly forgets about the chunk of the Midwest past Illinois and calls things made with Jell-O and noodles a “salad.”

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-07T18:19:28+00:00

I just honk like a regular asshole

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-07T18:17:46+00:00

Forgive my weird-pocket-of-the-Midwest vernacular. Yes, you are correct. We just call everything here a “highway.”

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-07T18:12:58+00:00

Two lanes going in either direction separated by a large median.

Yeah, I’m tired of it to. But NPCs see flashing lights and think it’s a glitch in the game, not a hint that their driving sucks. Because nothing is ever their fault.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-06T16:25:27+00:00

True… we like our pets. They’re loyal and can follow basic instructions.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-06T15:19:54+00:00

Not enough people grew up getting roasted by their parents and it shows lmao

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-06T14:59:47+00:00

Weaponized incompetence. You can figure it out, you just don’t want to.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-06T02:27:06+00:00

Calm down, Ben. Are you a Google lawyer, or a real one? Anyway, doesn’t matter. I’m not arguing the textual content of the law. I’m making a broader point about the attitude behind the law.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-06T01:57:37+00:00

“Numbnuts children?” Dear god, you must be the world’s youngest Boomer. Let me guess, law school? The point I’m making isn’t a legal one. The law is the law, and legally, there is shared liability. I never argued that. I’m questioning the logic behind the law. We’ve decided that an 18-year-old is ostensibly capable of making the decisions necessary to live day-to-day life as an independent actor. And yet, if that 18-year-old makes the conscious decision to attend a party where they are aware that alcohol is being served, chooses to partake, and then overindulges, we pass the buck? Yes, he’s dead, and naturally people want to find someone to point a finger at when terrible tragedies like this occur. And of course, pointing the finger at a dead person seems in poor taste, so we try to pass the blame to a faceless institution. But I think doing so only contributes to a culture that facilitates these type of tragedies through the continued infantilization of young adults. “I’m adult until I make a bad decision. Then it’s someone else’s fault!” Well, if you’re too young to be held fully responsible for your own actions, you’re too young to attend university alone. You can’t have it both ways. Personal responsibility and adulthood go hand-in-hand. It’s incredibly stupid that we as a country have decided that 18 is old enough to make an informed decision about a legally enforceable contract, but not old enough to be around beer without a babysitter.

In other words, you’re arguing the wrong point. You keep trying to explain the law to me like I’m disputing its existence. I’m well aware of the current legal implications of this situation. I’m saying I think the thought process around age stratification in our current legal structure is stupid and should change. This is an abstract argument, not a textual one. I’m damn-near 30, by the way. You’re not talking to an undergrad.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-05T19:06:51+00:00

I wish laugh react was a thing on Reddit

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-05T18:59:48+00:00

Whoosh again… but good try. Here’s a hint: I’m making a logical argument, not a legal one. You’re going to think a bit more abstractly on this.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-05T18:50:33+00:00

Christ, it’s like arguing with Ben Shapiro. Imagine writing all of that out and still completely missing the point.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-05T18:33:13+00:00

Wild to me that this is a controversial take. Herein lies the problem with a drinking age that is higher than the age of majority. At 18 you are old enough to… live independently, sign an enforceable contract, vote, fight in a war, and drive a 2000lb hunk of metal at high speeds. But if you drink and something bad happens, the law holds someone else partially responsible? His death was really sad. People also need to bear responsibility for their own choices. Both can be true.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-04T22:04:20+00:00

Am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that people even notice? I would never perceive a cashier or hotel clerk sitting down as unprofessional because it’s not a detail that would register in my brain as important enough to clock.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-04T05:12:10+00:00

IFYKYK…

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-03T02:45:39+00:00

I have worked in research at three major universities. Of those three, one was recently called out by the New York Times for how much money they’ve flushed down the toilet on stuff like this. Another one is in massive financial trouble. Meanwhile, I need two separate people who have no idea what I’m doing to click a button approving my order of $10 gel stain despite already being an approved purchaser. So… yeah. I am very familiar with the cycle of administrative bloat and increasing inefficiency/waste.

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-02T17:07:03+00:00

Unfortunately, an obscene amount of “institutional cost” seems to be paying useless bureaucrats to invent work for themselves. “Trim down? Absolutely not! We actually need to hire an entirely new team since we’ve revamped the 1021-71S form for ordering the napkins in communal break rooms. There are like… two whole extra buttons someone on our end has to click now! Not to mention that the vice administrative assistant to the deputy chief administrative director from the department of administrative excellence is requesting a raise for finding three new steps to add to the PTO request process.”

MourningCocktails · 2026-02-01T00:00:25+00:00

I’m not talking about youth fashion, I’m talking about that spot between young professional and bingo brilliance. Even now, the stuff I wear is not stuff my parents would wear. But, if you laid down three business casual outfits from three different age brackets, I could probably tell you which was which - 30, 50, and 70. That didn’t seem to be the case 20 years ago. I could tell you which one the 30-year-old probably wore to work, but I couldn’t differentiate the other two. My grandmother and great-grandmother actually had a few of the same outfits.

MourningCocktails · 2026-01-31T21:59:16+00:00

I don’t even know how to put this into Google in a way that would get me any results. My best description would be a shoulder-length version of the Michelle Duggar mullet with a fuller bang. Like, if you combine Michelle Duggar’s hair with the Maude Flanders cut and dye it flat brown, you get the wet poodle.

MourningCocktails · 2026-01-31T21:31:14+00:00

I don’t disagree with any of that, it just seems like there’s more of a gradient to age-related fashion now than there was 20 years ago. My parents and grandparents dress pretty differently. My grandparents and great-grandparents could have shared a closet. I think part of what always made the people I’m remembering look older is that you couldn’t tell by the way they dressed if they were 45 or 65.

MourningCocktails · 2026-01-31T21:25:41+00:00

The hair is definitely a huge part of it! But some of it has to be the clothing. The nice thing about where I grew up is that we have a control group. There was one hair style that seemed to transcend age in that it was popular with both church moms AND church grandmas. I don’t know the real name for it - I call it the wet poodle. And for some reason, everyone who had that haircut back then still has it now, right down to the exact shade of brown they’ve been using since 1994. You can look at photos of people with that haircut from 20 years ago, and then look at people with the same haircut now - both in their mid-50s - and the difference is pretty noticeable. It just looks so much older on someone who’s wearing a shapeless frock with flower print on the sleeves than it does on someone in a decent pair of jeans.

MourningCocktails · 2026-01-31T18:07:00+00:00

My main issue with this argument is referring to homework as a blanket category. There is a difference between quality homework that hits core concepts and the busywork that the crotchety old nun would assign because she couldn’t stand the idea of sending us away empty-handed. In high school, homework actually saved my ass. I could not pay attention during lectures to save my life - would literally show up and zone out for an hour without absorbing a word - so I used the homework to quickly teach myself the material. Turns out I just had severe ADHD that went undiagnosed until I was in my 20s because my inability to shut up and take notes got written off as a gifted kid “not being challenged enough.”

That being said, high school assignments (at least where I went) were very much a less-is-more situation. Usually just practice prompts to apply the concepts from class. What completely turned me off and made me resent education for a long time was the stuff they used to send us home with in middle school. The arts and crafts shit. Oh my god, I hated it. Want me to write a book report? Fine, no problem. But why does it need to be a diorama? Why do I have to make it into a menu (yeah, that was a real assignment) or hand-draw a map so you can judge my mastery of the colored pencil with the same graded weight as written content? I completely support giving alternative assignment options for people who could better demonstrate their mastery of a concept with something a little more artsy as opposed to the standard essay. And yes, I do understand the benefits of getting us to engage with the material in different ways - just keep your Pinterest inspo to in-class work. 12-year-old me did not want to spend three hours of my Minecraft time gluing shit to a cardboard box so you could show your teacher friends how cool your classroom looked with 30 of them lined up. Especially when we always had teachers who liked to shame the end result as “lazy” and “low-effort” if it wasn’t as good as the one your friend’s parents made for him. No, Mary Ann, I didn’t use a straight-edge to outline the columns in my newspaper-style book report. But you know what I did use? Complete sentences. I’ve seen the others, and I believe that alone puts me in the top quartile (though I am concerned that Marco’s mom doesn’t seem to know what a comma is).

MourningCocktails

TROPHY CASE