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Family

Dad writes heartbreaking message after the death of his son

"Hug your kids. Don’t work too late. "

Young family takes a photo outside
J.R. Storment/LinkedIn

J.R. Storment and his family.

A dad from Portland, Oregon, has taken to LinkedIn to write an emotional plea to parents after he learned that his son had died during a conference call at work. J.R. Storment encouraged parents to spend less time at work and more time with their kids after his son's death.

In his open letter posted on September 3, 2019, Storment explains that his son, Wiley, passed away during his sleep as a result of complications from his mild epilepsy. He then goes on to blast himself for not spending enough time with his son, and encourages other parents to take more time off work.

Young family takes photo in the snow

J.R. Storment and his family

via Facebook

Storment starts by explaining that the day his son passed away started like any other:

"Eight years ago, during the same month, I had twin boys and co-founded Cloudability. About three months ago Cloudability was acquired. About three weeks ago we lost one of our boys."

"When I got the call I was sitting in a conference room with 12 people at our Portland office talking about PTO policies. Minutes earlier, I had admitted to the group that in the last 8 years I'd not taken more than a contiguous week off."

That's when Storment received a call from his distraught wife.

"My wife and I have an agreement that when one of us calls, the other answers. So when the phone rang I stood up and walked to the conference room door immediately."

"I was still walking through the door when I answered with 'Hey, what's up?'"

"Her reply was icy and immediate: 'J.R., Wiley is dead.'"

"'What?' I responded incredulously."

"'Wiley has died.' she reiterated."

"'What?! No.' I yelled out, 'No!'"

"'I'm so sorry, I have to call 911.'"

Storment goes on to explain the chaos that happened next.

"That was the entire conversation. The next thing I know I'm sprinting out the front door of the office with my car keys in hand, running ferociously across the street and muttering 'oh F**k. oh F**k. oh F**k.' Half way down the block I realize I don't have the opener to my parking garage. Running back into the lobby, I all but shout "Someone drive me! Somebody drive me!" Thankfully, a helpful colleague did."

Storment made it home, but not yet knowing the cause of death, police were treating the house as a possible crime scene. The heartbroken father was unable to see his son for two and a half hours.

"When the medical examiner finally finished his work, we were allowed in the room. An eerie calm came over me. I laid down next to him in the bed that he loved, held his hand and kept repeating, 'What happened, buddy? What happened?'"

"We stayed next to him for maybe 30 minutes and stroked his hair before they returned with a gurney to take him away. I walked him out, holding his hand and his forehead through the body bag as he was wheeled down our driveway. Then all the cars drove away. The last one to leave was the black minivan with Wiley in it."

Young family takes photo outside.

J.R. Storment with his wife and sons.

via LinkedIn

Storment goes on to explain his son's dreams and aspirations, and the difficulty he had signing his son's death certificate.

"Wiley was obsessed with starting a business. One day it was a smoothie stand, the next it would be a gallery, then a VR headset company, then a 'coder', then a spaceship building company. In each of these scenarios he was the boss. His brother (and sometimes us) were invited to work for—not with— him and were each assigned jobs. In the gallery scenario, Wiley informed Oliver that he would be manning the cash register."

"Around 5 years old, Wiley decided he was going to get married as an adult. By 6 he had identified the girl, holding her hand at recess on the first day of kindergarten. Over the next two years as we moved from Portland to London to Hawaii, he kept in touch with her by handwritten letter. Not long before we moved back to Portland, the two agreed (by letter) to marry. She beat him to the punch and asked him. He accepted. Happily, he got to see her twice after we moved back to Portland in June."

"One of the countless difficult moments of this month was signing his death certificate. Seeing his name written on the top of it was hard. However, two fields further down the form crushed me. The first said: 'Occupation: Never worked' and the next: 'Marital Status: Never married.' He wanted so badly to do both of those things. I feel both fortunate and guilty to have had success in each."

A handwritten diary entry

Wiley wrote his plans down in his diary.

via LinkedIn

Storment then criticises himself for spending too much time at work. And while it sounds that Wiley got to live an amazing life, Storment only wishes he could have done more with him.

"Over the last three weeks I have come up with an endless stream of things I regret. They tend to fall into two categories: things I wish I had done differently and things I'm sad not to see him do. My wife is constantly reminding me of all the things he did do: Wiley went to 10 countries, drove a car on a farm road in Hawaii, hiked in Greece, snorkeled in Fiji, wore a suit to a fantastic British prep school every day for two years, got rescued from a shark on a jet ski, kissed multiple girls, got good enough at chess to beat me twice in a row, wrote short stories and drew comics obsessively."

Storment hadn't checked on the boys the morning of the tragedy because he had to get up early for meetings, a decision he seems to regret.

"Around 5:40am, the next morning I woke up for a series of back to back meetings. I did a Peloton ride, took an analyst call from my home office, one with a colleague on the drive to work, then the rest at the office. None seem that important now. I left that morning without saying goodbye or checking on the boys."

A couple smile for a photo

J.R. Storment and his wife.

Via Facebook

Storment has a simple message for parents:

"Many have asked what they can do to help. Hug your kids. Don't work too late. A lot of the things you are likely spending your time on you'll regret once you no longer have the time. I'm guessing you have 1:1 meetings on the books with a lot of people you work with. Do you have them regularly scheduled with your kids? If there's any lesson to take away from this, it's to remind others (and myself) not to miss out on the things that matter."

"The big question is how to return to work in a way that won't leave me again with the regrets I have now. To be honest, I've considered not going back. But I believe in the words of Kahlil Gibran who said, 'Work is love made visible.' To me, that line is a testament to how much we gain, grow and offer through the work we do. But that work needs to have a balance that I have rarely lived. It's a balance that lets us offer our gifts to the world but not at the cost of self and family."

"While I sat writing this post, my living son, Oliver, came in to ask for screen time. Instead of saying the usual 'no', I stopped writing and asked if I could play with him. He was happily surprised by my answer and we connected in a way I would have formerly missed out on. Small things matter. One silver lining from this tragedy is the improving relationship I have with him."

"Our family has gone from having two units of two (the parents and the twins) to now being a triangle of three. That's a big adjustment for a family that has always been four. Oliver's brilliant reply when we discussed the shape of our new family: 'But Papa, the triangle is the strongest shape.' By some sad and beautiful irony, Oliver has met three sets of 8-year-old twins in our new neighborhood since Wiley passed."

"I've learned to stop waiting to do the things the kids ask for. When we sold the business I gave each of the boys a $100 dollar bill. They decided to pool their money to buy a tent for camping. But we didn't make it happen before Wiley died. Another regret. So, after the first round of family visits after his death, I took Jessica and Oliver to REI to get gear and we left town quickly to camp near Mt. St. Helens."

"Somehow, we got to the wilderness without enough cash to cover the campground fee and had a slight panic. Jessica then realized that Wiley's $100 bill was still in his seat pocket. He got to spend his money on camping after all. Collectively, the family said a big, 'Thanks, buddy' out-loud to him. It was one of many bittersweet moments we will experience for the rest of our lives. Each happy time brings with it the sadness that he doesn't get to experience it."

"One of Wiley's happy times was listening to music and dancing. Damn, could that kid dance. He loved the Oregon Country Fair and the year before we left for London, we listened to a band there play a version of 'Enjoy yourself (It's later than you think)'. The words stuck with me that day three years ago and painfully so now:"


"You work and work for years and years, you're always on the go

You never take a minute off, too busy makin' dough

Someday, you say, you'll have your fun, when you're a millionaire

Imagine all the fun you'll have in your old rockin' chair

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink

The years go by, as quickly as a wink

Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think"


This article originally appeared four years ago.

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Humor

13 everyday idioms that make zero sense until you know where they come from

Sweating like a pig? Pigs don't sweat!

Unsplash

I've always really liked cliches, idioms, proverbs, and common phrases that we like to use over and over. They can get repetitive at times, but they're crucial tools in communication. They allow us to convey so much meaning in so few words — a commonly understood shorthand that can get complex points across quickly.

The only problem is that many of the most popular idioms in common use date back hundreds of years. In that time, they've either become outdated, or seen their words adopt new meanings. In some cases the idioms have been shortened or reversed, losing important context. So when someone tells you to "bite the bullet," you may inherently know what they mean — but if you really stop and think about it, you have no idea why it means what it means.

If you're a word nerd like me, you'll be absolutely fascinated by the origin and evolution of some of these common idioms, and how they came to mean what they mean today.

1. Sick as a dog / Working like a dog

dog typing on laptopGiphy

Ever have a cold and tell someone you're "sicker than a dog?" Kind of rude to dogs, in my opinion, and a little strange. I've had dogs my whole life and can't remember any of them coming down with the flu.

Sick as a dog actually originates hundreds of years ago, if not longer. Some explanations say that in the 1700s, stray dogs were responsible for the spread of many diseases, along with rats and other gutter critters. There are also references as far back as the Bible to dogs eating their own vomit — sounds pretty sick to me.

What about working like a dog? Dogs are the laziest creatures around! For this one you have to remember that dogs as "pleasure pets" is a relatively recent phenomenon, and before that they had to earn their keep by working tirelessly on the farm to herd and protect the animals.

2. Sweating like a pig

This is an extremely common idiom that we all use and accept. There's just one problem with it. Pigs don't sweat!

So... what gives? You might be surprised to hear that 'sweating like a pig' actually has nothing to do with farm animals.

According to McGill University: "The term is actually derived from the iron smelting process in which hot iron poured on sand cools and solidifies with the pieces resembling a sow and piglets. Hence 'pig iron'. As the iron cools, the surrounding air reaches its dew point, and beads of moisture form on the surface of the 'pigs'. 'Sweating like a pig' indicates that the "pig" (ie iron) has cooled enough to be safely handled. And that's a "pig" you wouldn't want to eat."

3. Bite the bullet

Biting the bullet refers to sucking it up and doing something hard, something you don't want to do but is necessary, and accepting the difficult consequences and/or pain that comes with it. But what does that have to do with biting a bullet?

There are different theories on this. One common explanation is that in the olden days it was common for soldiers on the battlefield receiving surgery to bite down on a lead bullet. You've probably seen people in moving biting down on a piece of wood or leather strap. Since lead is a softer metal, it would give just a little bit between their teeth and not damage them. So the idiom 'biting the bullet' means, okay, this is going to suck, just bite down and get through it.

4. Healthy as a horse

This one has always confused me. As a layman, it seems like horses are prone to injury and have trouble recovering when they hurt themselves. More research shows that horses can not vomit, which means they are highly at risk for deadly colic episodes. Doesn't sound super healthy!

The best explanation I can find for healthy as a horse is that, again, in the olden days, horses were symbols of health and strength and vitality. Which checks out — they're really powerful, majestic creatures.

5. Slept like a baby

To many parents, this common idiom is rage-inducing. If babies sleep so well, why am I so exhausted all the time?!

Yes, babies are notorious for waking up every few hours or at the first sign of hunger or a dirty diaper. It puts their parents through the wringer (another strange idiom!). But to the outside observer, a sleeping baby is pure bliss. They are so innocent and blissfully unaware of anything going on around them — after all, if they're not sitting in a dirty diaper they really don't have too many other things to worry about. Also, despite all their shenanigans, babies do sleep a lot — around 17 hours a day or so. When you put it that way, the idiom starts to make a little sense.

6. Happy as a clam

Clams are a lot of things. Some people find them delicious, others disgusting. One thing I think we can all agree on is that clams don't seem particularly happy, which makes this idiom a bit of a conundrum.

The truth is that this phrase is actually derived from the full version: "Happy as a clam at high water."

At low water, or low tide, clams are exposed to predators. At high tide, they're safe in deeper water. That's about as happy as mollusk can get!

7. The proof is in the pudding

Hey, we all love pudding. But what the heck does this mean? If you're not familiar, it refers to judging something based on the results it generates — but what that has to do with pudding is a bit of a mystery to most people.

This is another example of a shortened idiom that makes more sense when you read the full, original line: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

According to Dictionary.com it "originated as a reference to the fact that it was difficult to judge if the pudding was properly cooked until it was actually being eaten. In other words, the test of whether it’s done is taking a bite."

8. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth

smiling horseGiphy

I've always been a big fan of this idiom, which basically means that it's rude to over-analyze or criticize something you got for free, especially when it was a nice gesture from a friend or loved one.

But here we go with horses again! This phrase likely originated from the fact that you can determine a horse's age and health by looking at its teeth. So if someone were to give you a horse as a gift, it would be rude to immediately try to see how "good" it was by looking in its mouth.

9. Clean as a whistle

Whistles are objectively disgusting. They collect spit and germs every time they're used. I certainly wouldn't hold them up as a beacon of cleanliness.

So what gives with this idiom? There are several possible explanations that have been proposed.

First, a whistle won't work, or won't work very well, if it has debris blocking up its inside. So you can think of "clean" in this case as being "empty or free of clutter." Another possibility is that, in this idiom, clean refers to sharpness — as in the sharp sound a whistle makes — and that inference has been lost over time.

10. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps

This phrase is commonly use to describe someone who was "self-made" and built themselves up into a success from nothing. Imagine lying on the floor and hoisting yourself to your feet using only the straps on your boots.

The only problem is... that's impossible! And that's exactly the point. This idiom is actually meant to be sarcastic and to imply that "socioeconomic advancement... was an impossible accomplishment," according to Useless Etymology.

11. Have your cake and eat it too

cartoon cake sliceGiphy

Why bother having a cake if you can't eat it? That's the mystery of this extremely common idiom or proverb (sometimes worded "you can't have your cake and eat it, too")

The explanation is actually really simple. "Have" in this case really means "keep" or "hold onto." So, in that case, it makes perfect sense that you can't eat your cake and also still have it. "You can't have it both ways," would be another way of saying it.

12. Head over heels

Very rarely do people describe being deeply in love without using this phrase. But it's a confusing one, because isn't your head always over your heels? That doesn't seem to be an extraordinary state of being.

The idiom here has actually been flipped over time for unknown reasons. Originally, it went "heels over head", implying upside down. Some say it may also reference certain sexual positions...

13. Pushing the envelope

When I think of radical, risky, or pushing the limits of what's possible, sliding an envelope across a table just somehow doesn't quite capture it for me. But an envelope doesn't have to be just a paper container that you put other paper in. It can actually refer to different parts and practices of an aircraft.

"Push the envelope comes from aeronautics, where it refers to a set of performance limits that may not be safely exceeded," according to Merriam Webster. Now that's more like it!

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Modern Families

Fed up parents explain why they 'never want to bring the kids over' to visit

Can't you guys come to us for once?

Photo by Johnny Cohen on Unsplash

It's a good news/bad news situation for parents of young kids. The good news? Everyone wants to spend time with the kids! Grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends. They all want a relationship and lots of special moments with the little ones.

The bad news? One phrase: "When are you bringing them over?" Parents have been frustrated by the expectations of orchestrating stressful visits for generations — loading the kids in a car or on an airplane only to spend hours chasing them around in an un-baby-proofed environment and watching routines go to hell.

Now they're sounding off on social media and airing their grievances.

Why visiting grandparents and other relatives is so challenging for parents

A mom recently took to Reddit to vent about everyone in her life wanting her to "bring the kids to them."

"My parents live 30 mins away and always bug me about not coming to visit them," she writes. They constantly ask, "Why don't you bring our granddaughter to come see us?"

The fascinating discussion highlights a few things that make arranging visits with young kids a potential nightmare for parents.

Grandparents' houses are rarely childproofed

Grandparents love their breakable decor! Ceramic doo-dads, glass vases everywhere. They can't get enough. And while they should be able to decorate their house however they see fit (they've earned the right!) that doesn't make it a good environment for toddlers and babies.

Ceramic bowlsThe breakable decor found in every grandparents' houseozalee.fr/Flickr

"Last week was the last straw, I took my daughter to my parents and of course she went EVERYWHERE! flooded their toilet, broke a vase, and tried multiple times to climb their furniture," the Reddit mom writes.

Parents in a foreign environment are on constant safety duty and can rarely sit down

Let's be honest. Sometimes these "visits" are hardly worth the effort. After all, it's hard to get much catch up time when you're dutifully chasing your kid around.

"They don’t understand that my 3 yo ... is absolutely wild," writes another user in the thread. "She has no self preservation and nothing we do works. She doesn’t listen, she throws, she bites, she refuses to use the potty. It’s exhausting and then ... they expect us to entertain them, when I’m trying to just keep my kid from jumping off the stairs and into an ER visit."

Even just putting the kids in the car for a 20-minute drive is more work than it seems

Taking the kids out of the house requires packing a bag, bringing extra clothes, loading up on snacks, etc.

It seems easy to "pop over" but it actually absorbs the majority of the day between prep, visit, and aftermath.

Naps and routines go to hell

Parents with babies and toddlers know all too well — there is a price to pay for taking the kids out of the house for too long.

Chances are, the baby won't nap in a strange environment and then you're stuck with a cranky kid the rest of the night.

Kids with special needs require even more consistency

Kids with autism or ADHD can really struggle outside of their zone of safety. They might become severely dysregulated, have meltdowns, or engage in dangerous behaviors.

Explaining and mediating the generational divide

man in gray sweater sitting beside woman in black and white floral long sleeve shirt Photo by Tim Kilby on Unsplash

Why is this a conflict almost all parents can relate to?

Is this a Boomer vs Millennials thing?

Some experts think that generational values and traditions might play a role.

"Many Boomers were accustomed to more traditional, hierarchical family dynamics, where visiting grandparents was a way for the younger generation to show respect," says Caitlin Slavens, a family psychologist.

But that's not to say this is a new problem. I can remember my own parents driving me and my brothers over an hour to visit my grandparents seemingly every other weekend, but very few occasions where they came to visit us. It must have driven my parents nuts back then!

Plus, it's easy to forget that it's hard for older people to travel, too. They may have their own issues and discomforts when it comes to being away from their home.

"But for today’s parents, balancing careers, kids’ routines, and the demands of modern parenting is a much bigger undertaking. Grandparents might not always see how childproofing their space or making the trip themselves could make a huge difference, especially considering how travel and disruption can impact younger kids' moods and routines," Slavens says.

"So yes, this divide often comes down to different expectations and life experiences, with older generations potentially not seeing the daily demands modern families face."

Is there any hope for parents and grandparents coming to a better understanding, or a compromise?

"First, open conversations help bridge the divide—explain how much of a difference it makes when the kids stay in a familiar space, especially when they’re very young," suggests Slavens.

"Share practical details about the challenges, like childproofing concerns or travel expenses, to help grandparents see it from a parent’s perspective. You might even work together to figure out solutions, like making adjustments to create a more child-friendly space in their home or agreeing on a shared travel plan."

Ultimately, it's a good thing when grandparents, friends, and other relatives want to see the kids.

We all have the same goal.

"It’s helpful to approach the topic with empathy, focusing on everyone’s goal: more quality time together that’s enjoyable and low-stress for everyone involved. For parents, it’s about setting boundaries that work, and for grandparents, it’s about recognizing that flexibility can really show the parents that you are ... willing to make adjustments for their children and grandchildren."

Enjoyable, low-stress quality time — that's something everyone can get behind.

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Modern Families

'SAHMs Listen up!': Texas UPS driver has pointed message about stay-at-home moms and entitlement

“You are so privileged to have a person who is willing to provide such a carefree life for you.”

via J.R. Minton (used with permission)

A Texas UPS driver has a strong opinion on stay-at-home moms.

J.R. Minton, a 33-year-old UPS driver from the Dallas, Texas area, ruffled some feathers recently with a viral TikTok video titled “SAHMs Listen up!” that begins with him asking, “I mean, how entitled could you be?” At first, Minton appears to fail to appreciate the enormous amount of emotional, mental, and physical labor that stay-at-home moms provide.

“I truly cannot imagine the amount of arrogance you must have to sit there and complain when you are so privileged to have a person who is willing to provide such a carefree life for you,” Minton continues. “Let’s get real! What do you do all day? Your spouse is taking care of everything so you can take care of one thing. How complicated could it be: all you do is go to work?”

At this point, legions of stay-at-home mothers and those who love them considered trucking themselves to Dallas to find this unappreciative UPS driver. However, it was soon apparent that Minton was referring to himself.

@minton__jr

Grow tf up—You should be doing more. #sahm #sahmlife #momlife #mom #momsoftiktok #sahmsoftiktok #sahmtok #momtok

“For 10 hours a day, you get to live the life of a single, childless, carefree man because your wife was willing to take the financial risk of allowing you to be successful in your career while she takes care of everything else,” he continues. “She provides childcare services, home cleaning services, medical services, food services, scheduling services, and a list that goes on and on. And you provide... a paycheck? And you have the nerve to call yourself the provider! What is it going to take for you to realize that, bro, everything you have in your life is because of a stay-at-home mom.”

The commenters on the video breathed sighs of relief and then praised Minton, a father of 4, for publicly appreciating his wife’s work.



"My sleeves were rolled up, earrings were off, hair tied up.... I was so ready...." one commenter joked. "I thought I landed in enemy territory for a min..." another added. "You have just made me realize after all these years that *I* am the freaking provider and that feels amazing,” a stay-at-home mother wrote.

People appreciate Minton’spost because he praised stay-at-home mothers and placed his wife’s work above his, which he characterized as merely bringing home a paycheck. Minton has one job, delivering packages, but as he noted, his wife is an expert in over five different professions. In a world where stay-at-home moms are fighting to be seen as equals to their working spouses, Minton places them on a pedestal and owes his “carefree life” to them.

"Married life, with children, is bound to be chaotic," Minton told Upworthy. "It’s bound to have its ups and downs; It’s made me question myself a thousand times. However, the marriage my wife and I share has given me the space to find peace."

Minton may be sharing an opinion we don't hear often enough, but he doesn't think he's the only one who thinks that way. "The last thing I am is rare or unique. There’s nothing special about the way that I feel or the things that I say. I have the same thoughts, feelings, frustrations and problems that any other husband or father might be struggling with," he told Upworthy. "The only difference that might be apparent is how I choose to react to the same situations any other man might encounter."

This post isn’t the first time Minton has pulled the bait and switch on his followers. Last year, he made a video where he appeared to take pride in the fact that he never “helps” his wife with chores.

The twist in this video was that he doesn’t “help” his wife with chores because they are also his responsibility. "Because I do what I am supposed to do as a father and a husband. I cook. I clean. I do the laundry. I take care of the kids. I can't help my wife do those things because they are my job, too,” he reveals.

He then urged men to change their perspectives on how they view stay-at-home moms. “Change the way you speak, change the way you think, and grow the f*** up and be a man," he added.

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Joy

Woman leaves bachelorette trip after trusting her gut about sketchy men partying with friends

Woman's intuition is right again.

via Nathan Rupert/Flickr

Some girls out at a bchelorette party.

A recent story posted on Reddit shows how sometimes trusting your gut can be the best thing you can do, even if following it will seriously impact your friendships. It all started when a 24-year-old woman with the username Yslbabycat went to a bachelorette party with 5 other friends in Italy.

For brevity’s sake, we’ll call our main character YBC. One night, the six girls went bar and club hopping and met some new friends. “We met some young people, and they invited us to a party. We went and danced and met more people. The night kept going on longer, and we were very far from our lodgings. These young men with 2 women in their group told us to stay with them for the night,” she wrote.

That’s when she had the first strong gut feeling.

“I wasn’t feeling this situation. It felt unsafe, but the group voted and I was in the minority,” she continued.”I didn’t trust these men. Something seemed wrong. But I was at a loss as I could not split from my group and didn’t feel safe separating from them in the middle of the night.”

Even though the girls locked their doors that night, the men could enter their rooms. But the girls, besides YBC, all wanted to stay another day because the men promised to show them around Italy.

“I didn’t want to get into a car with them because I found them creepy. There were women in their group but it didn’t matter. They seemed even more suspicious to me, being overly friendly,” She continued. “The whole morning, I found the men staring at me a lot and also making some comments about my ethnicity—I am Korean and they could tell and it seemed that they were interested in me because of my ethnicity, asking me strange questions …including if I’m a virgin or not.. so in my head I could only think of perverted reasons for these questions because I thought these guys were sketchy and sizing us all up for some reason I couldn’t figure out yet.”

YBC's friends tried to tell her that it was just cultural differences and that the men weren’t being creepy, but she decided that she wanted to leave. So, she called her boyfriend in France, a few hours’ drive away, to come get her. She met him at a local store, where YBC called the bride-to-be and informed her she was leaving.

The bride-to-be screamed at her on the phone and chastised her for spoiling the “mood of the trip” and told YBC to essentially “f*** off.”

After YBC left, the other 5 girls went on a boat with the men who all tried to get them “extremely” intoxicated. They then began to aggressively pressure the girls into having sex. At the night's end, the girls got away from the men and found another hotel.

Even though YBC’s suspicions were confirmed, the bride-to-be was still upset with her, and YBC did not attend her friend’s wedding.

In the end, Reddit commenters overwhelmingly thought that YBC did the right thing by trusting her gut.

“So all the other girls but the bachelorette confirmed that you were right and the guys were super creepy and yet the bachelorette is still pissed at you for getting yourself out of there?” YouSayWotNow wrote. “All of them are very lucky nothing really bad happened, and frankly, they should be embarrassed they didn't take you seriously at the time.”

“You may have saved the entire group by leaving early, as the men realized that you knew where they lived and could ID them,” RobinC1967 added. “Please don't ever feel bad for getting yourself out of a sketchy situation. Stay Smart!”

Most would agree that YBC did the right thing by trusting her gut and trying to lead her friends out of a potentially dangerous situation. Psychology Today supports her decision to trust her feelings. In an article entitled, “3 Reasons Why You Have to Trust Your Gut,” Susanna Newsonen says that your intuition is encoded in your brain like “a web of fact and feeling” and is helpful because it’s “shaped by your past experiences and the existing knowledge that you gained from them.”


This article originally appeared last year.

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People born between 1954 and 1965 are thrilled to learn they're not boomers, but 'Gen Jones'

"Whaaat? There's a name for us? I have never felt like a real boomer—or Xer! I feel normal for once!"

Photo credits: Michelle Obama, Montclair Film, Georges Biard

Michelle Obama, Stephen Colbert and Michelle Yeoh are all Gen Jonesers.

The Silent Generation. Baby boomers. Gen X. Millennials. Gen Z. Gen Alpha. Social science and pop culture commentators have spent decades grouping and analyzing the different generations, assigning various qualities, habits and tendencies to each age group. But some people don’t identify with their generation, or at least these particular categories of them. Those on the cusp between two generations often feel like neither aligns with who they are..

That’s where Generation Jones comes in. Like the Xennials that straddle Gen X and millennials, Generation Jones are not quite boomers but not quite Gen X. For most of their lives, those born between 1954 and 1965 have been lumped in with the baby boomers, but culturally they’ve never quite fit.

They were too young to be involved in the major civil rights, women’s liberation and Vietnam war movements of the 60s, instead witnessing those social upheavals through children’s eyes. But they were also too old to identify with the Gen X latchkey kid angst.

Jonathan Pontell is the television producer, director, and writer who named Generation Jones and explained what made them unique. “We fill the space between Woodstock and Lollapalooza, between the Paris student riots and the anti-globalisation protests, and between Dylan going electric and Nirvana going unplugged,” he wrote in Politico in 2009.

He also explained why Gen Jonesers make good leaders:

“What makes us Jonesers also makes us uniquely positioned to bring about a new era in international affairs. Our practical idealism was created by witnessing the often unrealistic idealism of the 1960s. And we weren’t engaged in that era’s ideological battles; we were children playing with toys while Boomers argued over issues. Our non-ideological pragmatism allows us to resolve intra-Boomer skirmishes and to bridge that volatile Boomer-GenXer divide. We can lead.”

Many Generation Jonesers have never felt like they had a generational home and are thrilled to learn they actually do have one. Check out how Upworthy readers responded with glee upon discovering they were a part of Gen Jones:

"Thank you! As a definite Gen Jones, I completely relate to this. To young to be a hippy, therefore was never a yuppy, but too old to be Gen X. Gen Jones works just fine."

"I have said for decades that I must be a transitional person into Gen X, because I don’t relate to boomers! I appreciate them, but I am not one of them. I am glad someone finally named my generation!"

"There are definite differences between people born in the 1940s/1950s and those of us born in the early 1960s. Most of us born in the early 1960s do not remember the JFK assassination and we were much too young to participate in Woodstock. The older Boomers were already established in their careers and as homeowners with families in the 1980s when we were in our 20s just starting out and ready to buy our first home. While the older Boomers experienced reasonable mortgage interest rates, the early 1960s Boomers faced mortgage interest rates averaging 14 percent in the 1980s which made it more difficult for us to buy our first home. We definitely need an additional group between Boomers and Gen X, and Generation Jones fits the bill."

"I was born 6 days before 1960…. I’ve felt out of touch with a lot of the boomer life descriptions, and not Gen X enough to fit in there. I’ll take Generation Jones."

"1957 here, with older siblings born before 1950. I definitely did not have the same experience growing up that they had. I feel I can identify a little with Boomers and a little with the Gen X experience, so there’s some overlap. (BTW, Gen X needs to stop claiming that they’re the first to have experienced all the things we grew up with. Kids, you didn’t invent drinking out of the garden hose or playing outside until the streetlights came on. Sheesh!) Glad to be a Joneser."

"Of course there is a difference between people raised in the 1950’s and people raised and coming of age in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Society changed a lot in those three decades."

"This is my generation but I never knew we had a name! The description fits perfectly."

Congrats on finding your people, Gen Jones. It's your time to shine.


This article originally appeared last year.

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