Yes. A lot of farm equipment has spinning bits involved. Rather than a separate engine on each piece of equipment, you steal some of the power from the tractor to make the harvester/baler/etc go.
Safety says disengage the PTO before working on it, but after the 10th in an hour time you figure you’re fast enough to snatch out the clog. And 99 times out of 100, you are. After that one time, people start calling you Lefty.
I was in Kyoto in 1995 and a street festival spontaneously started outside where we were staying. We began to notice that everybody staffing the food stalls had tattoos showing below their sleeves. We then saw that many were missing fingers.
Both tattoos and missing fingers are associated with the yakuza (Japanese organized crime). Yakuza must cut off their little finger to atone for making a mistake. One thing we observed was that those who had given cause to miss one finger were usually missing more than one.
We subsequently learned that we were staying less than a block from the headquarters of Aizukotetsu (Kyoto yakuza). The night before, members of Yamaguchi-gumi (Kobe yakuza) had mistakenly killed a Kyoto police officer, thinking he was a member of Aizukotetsu. This festival had been thrown together to get as many civilians in front of the Aizukotetsu headquarters as possible to try to defuse things. As foreigners, we were made to feel quite welcome (although it was not explained why at the time).
I grew up in a farming community in Iowa in the 70’s. There was a kid a few years older than me that lost an arm and another a couple years younger that lost some fingers and most of the skin on his forearm.
That whole situation is so ridiculous. Take your kids into whatever restroom is available and convenient. Nobody cares except the busy bodies.
A few weeks ago I walked into a public restroom and the first thing I saw was a little girl in the middle of the room. I thought I’d wandered into the wrong facility. Then I noticed her father there with her and I just went into the stall and did my thing. It’s a ten-second anecdote, not a federal case. Not exactly an earth shattering occurrence.
When my brother’s younger child was about six years old, I took her to a movie. After the movie was over, she wanted to use the bathroom. I tried to get her to hold it until we got to her parents’ house (ten minutes away) but she didn’t want to wait. So I sent her into the ladies’ room by herself and stood at the door looking in (though I could see nothing really). I had this nightmare idea that someone would grab her and sneak her out the back and had no idea how I’d explain that to my brother.
So yes, lots of parents and other caregivers have to accompany opposite-sex children into public restrooms. (Although today, I am seeing more restrooms designed for such situations or for the use of disabled people and their caregivers.)
I’m a dad of two daughters. I’ve had to escort them into bathrooms many times. It’s absolutely normal behavior. I see other dads do it all the time. There’s nothing weird, new, or wrong about it.
The gas station employee in the video in the article seemed just tired of it all, like, what the fuck is this yelling idiot on about? I love the way she held the door closed, to keep him out. Like an adult needed to get involved. It’s good when a sane third party can be involved in an insane situation.
The cops handled it well by declaring that it wasn’t a police matter and making the guy leave to stop bothering people.
The dad also handled it well, not responding to the idiot and doing his best to keep his daughters from getting more upset.
And the employer handled it well by firing that moron. I kind of wonder what that guy’s motivations were. Overzealous believer in “pure bathrooms” led by MAGA-style transphobia? Mentally ill? He was a “contractor” for the property owner, whatever that means, and maybe he is one of those people that gets a tiny bit of responsibility and wants to try to inflate it to something it isn’t in order to make himself feel important. (Think Arnold J. Rimmer of Red Dwarf.)
Whatever the reason, I’m sure that buffoon has caused problems before and will do it again.
The natural history museum where I volunteer has three pairs of large restrooms, one on each level. In addition, on the main level’s opposite side there was a pair of small restrooms, two stall’s on the women’s, a single stall and urinal on the men’s.
During the Covid hiatus they were changed into ‘family’ restrooms by changing the signage and installing locks on the doors, the kind that show Vacant/Occupied on the outside. The former women’s room even still has a tampon dispenser in it.
When someone asks where the restrooms are – the most common question – if they have a tyke or even look like they might need to do a procedure on themselves I point them out.
I live on the edge of rural Indiana, but most of the Dreadful Accidents I’ve heard about around here have involved woodchippers and downed trees in the more suburban areas.
I can’t handle watching people use woodchippers. They scare the hell out of me, even at a distance.