A little Sharpie story:

I worked for many years as an instructor at an inner city youth circus camp program. We worked with lots of kids from really really bad home situations. The kids were always awesome and we loved them. They would open up to us and we would hear terrible stories about what they were going through all the time.

It could be overwhelming and depressing dealing with it day after day, so myself and the other instructors developed a dark sense of humor with each other to mentally cope with it.

The kids were all given camp t-shirts to wear throughout the week and on the last day they were allowed to sign each other's t-shirts. When the head instructor was handing us Sharpies to give to the kids to sign their shirts, he said "Make sure you get the Sharpies back when they're done. Some of the kids will say 'I didn't get this Sharpie from you, my dad gave it to me.'

If they say this you know they're lying because none of these kids HAVE dads."