My USMC recruiting officer didn’t want me to go home and confer with family, but sign the papers right away before I walked out of the office. That’s when I decided he seemed a bit too desperate.

Dozens of stories from vets later (many with TBIs who couldn’t get proper treatment) I engage in counter-recruitment now.

One time like 10 years ago I was at a party and my crush was there. It was a bunch of musicians and basically everyone was smoking weed, but she was one of maybe 3 drunk people there. She was slurring her words, falling down drunk and no one was helping her.

She slurred out “I need to go to the b***room…” So I thought she either needs to go to the “bathroom” because she’s gonna be sick, or the “bedroom” because she’s gonna pass out and it’s her friend’s house. I help her back to the hallway - bedroom’s one side, bathroom is the other - and she pulls me toward the bedroom.

Now this girl was blasted… There’s no way I’m gonna try anything. I just wanna get her to a place where she won’t fall and break her face or drown in her own vomit.

I helped her to the bed and turn to leave and she grabs my leg…

Her: “Come on…” Me: “come on, what?” Her: “do your thing… Do your stuff” Me: “What stuff?”

(She sits up)

Her: “you… And me…” (Wildly smashes hands together) Me: “yeah… That doesn’t seem like a good idea” Her (still slurring her words): “come ooonnnn, I’m not that drunk” Me: “Tell you what. If you give me three coherent sentences so I know the lights are on, and I will fuck you into next weekend.” Her (eyes rolling in opposite directions): “buh… Gahnt… Ack…lep” Me: “ok. Good night. I’ll let Friend know you’re back here”

I go to walk away and she grabs me again.

Her (suddenly lucid and making eye contact with perfect speech): It’s now or never dude. Me: “Well in that case it’s never.”

So I walked away, because I don’t need that kinda mindfuck.

I’m happily married to someone with the same first name.

Drunk girl died of cancer.

When I had to move out (long, unpleasant story) I had the opportunity to get a nice, cozy appartement with low rent almost immediatly, but during the interview it turned out that they didn’t allow pets and wouldn’t budge, so it wasn’t an option for me and I politely declined.

They still tried to pressure me into signing the rental contract - calling me multiple times a day to ask whether I wanted to rethink my former decision again, eventually giving me a 24 hour deadline and demanding that I sign ASAP or they would pick someone else. That was the point I told them to go F- themselves as I was NOT going to leave my 13 year old tomcat behind or surrender him to a shelter. They didn’t take it well. (…and suddenly they claimed that noone else wanted the appartement and that they desperately needed someone to move in very soon yadda yadda … so much for “we’re going to pick someone else if you don’t sign today”.)

Best decision I’ve made that year. The landlord I have now is a super chill dude and I still have my spoiled furry little bastard with me. I’d rather have lived on the street than leaving a four-legged family member behind.

No idea what became of the other appartement but I pity the people who will have to put up with that passive-aggressive nonsense for lack of alternatives.

Why should I go big when I can go home.

Good good, thanks for asking!

But I also think FOMO is a terrible reason to do anything.

whenever someone’s putting pressure on you to make a difficult important life altering decision, with the stipulation that the decision must be made immediately, RUN AWAY.

I didn’t have sex with a girl I had a crush on for the longest time.

It didn’t matter a bit in the long run, but it would have been nice.

“Now or never” is almost never a good deal. Avoid it like the plague