Thread by @_cingraham

Okay since this game sucks, I'm gonna share the story of the time my dad left a tupperware full of bladder stones on the kitchen table.

Context: My dad is a veterinarian and mom's a vet tech. When I was a kid they would always bring home cool and weird stuff they pulled out of animals: worms, ticks, unspeakably large maggots, things of that nature.

(my childhood was awesome)

Bladder and kidney stones were the real show stoppers. They came in all sorts of shapes, sizes, colors, textures. Like ocean glass, but from the inside of a dog!

One day dad opened up a giant Schnauzer and was shocked to find dozens of bladder stones shaped like tetraheda -- little interlocking pyramids.

So he took the stones out and sewed the dog back up. The dog made a full recovery iirc. And then dad washed the stones and put them in a tupperware and brought them home to show me. I was like 10 I think?

They were white and smooth, had no smell or anything like that. They were roughly the size of marbles, but pyramid shaped. Rounded corners. Very cool to look at, I showed them to my friends and we all ooh'ed and ahh'ed.

And after a few days the tupperware full of stones just kind of got buried under the general household cruft that would get left on the kitchen table -- mail and gloves and random stuff. And we basically forgot about them for a few weeks.

And then, Grandma came to visit.

That first night of her visit, after dinner, my mom was washing the dishes while grandma was sitting at the kitchen table behind her. Mom had her back toward grandma.

They were just kind of chatting, catching up, when all of a sudden mom hears a "crunch" from behind her. She thinks this is a little weird because she doesn't remember any crunchy food being left on the table.

Alarm bells don't go off until the second "crunch." Mom whips around. There's grandma with the tupperware of bladder stones in front of her. She had somehow idly unearthed it from the pile of stuff on the table. Grandma's hand is moving toward her mouth.

Before mom can say anything Grandma goes, "What kind of mints are these?" and pops another one in her mouth.

Grandma, evidently, had very reasonably concluded that if it was in a tupperware on the kitchen table, it was intended for human consumption. Best we can figure, she thought they were some sort of designer mint/antacid combination, which would have explained their chalky taste.

Anyway that was the last time dad put bladder stones in a tupperware. And that was the last time any of us turned our backs on grandma.

(when you do a good tweet)

Yes of course we told her, my recollection is that there was no real fallout? Like everyone had a good laugh, grandma didn't get sick or anything. It was just calcium or whatever. I think everyone was just relieved it wasn't like, a tapeworm or anything.