corresponding to 'document', by throwaway42113697:
Title: i faked getting emancipated to get a piercing
Flair: N/A
when i was 15 i made a fake emancipation document, forged the signatures of my foster parents, a lawyer and a judge to get a piercing and a tattoo. the people at the piercing and tattoo place believed it and i got them done. at the time i was moving out of foster care so i my foster parents at the time (who wouldnt let me get it done) never noticed
Bureaucratic language, like "document," "forged," and "signatures", become means to a minor personal end -- that of getting a tattoo. This act of fraud is framed more administratively rather than emotionally. The tone is dry and matter-of-fact, at times even almost appearing wry especially with the blatant disregard of basic capitalization rules, mirroring the anti-institutional nature of this OP's act of forgery. This falls neatly in line with what we expect to see with a typical weekday post, where confessions are expected to be for institutional transgressions.
corresponding to 'appointment', by tinkerbel123:
Title: My selfishness made an elderly man miss his wife's passing
Flair: N/A
Ok this happened 7 years ago and I still think about it and have had sleepless nights over it
When I was in dental school, we had quotas on how many fillings, crowns and extractions etc we had to do before we could graduate. We worked on patients who were eligible for free dental care in the public system
I had a lovely old man as a patient and he always turned up on time to his appointments. Near the end of the year I planned a crown on one of his teeth. He didnt attend 2 appointments and I called him and he apologised profusely and said his wife has been unwell. Because I was short on crowns. I told him that if he didnt turn up I would have to blacklist him and he wont be able to access the public dental clinic again (this was obviously a lie). So he once again turned up promptly to his appointment and I prepped his tooth for a crown.
He rescheduled his crown fitting appointment for several weeks which frustrated me because the deadline was coming up. Finally I squeezed him in the day before our deadline. I was so happy and relieved. When the appointment was over, he sat up and told me that his wife had passed away while he was at his last dental appointment. She had being DYING of advancsd breast cancer and he had been by her side the whole time, but he missed her last breath while he was here with me.
I was devastated! My selfishness made a man lose the last moments with his wife!! They were married for 53 years! I will never forget that. I never forgave myself and ever since then I have been more empathetic towards people. You never know what someone else is going through, always be kind and understanding
The plot is dominated by institutional systems like quotas, appointments, and deadlines up until the major, and saddening, revelation of how such systems caused a man to miss spending the last moments with his wife of 53 years. While the lexical (and to a certain extent, grammatical) trends of this confession may be consistent with our idea of institutional, weekday language, the emotional content feels somewhat out of place for it is an instance of someone being remorseful not for breaking rules, but instead following them too rigorously.