Alex and his wife, Kathy, have an 18-month-old son who, among other his hobbies, enjoys pulling off his socks and shoes at any opportunity. (Perhaps he’s a future marathon-running superathlete. Or, you know, a normal 18-month-old.)

Recently, Kathy took her son with her on a trip to the store in their hometown of Las Vegas (temperature: a bone-chilling 64 degrees). When she came back to the car, she found this helpful bit of parenting advice waiting on her windshield.

related: Oh, the Rancher and the McMansioner should be friends

“My wife and I have been busy lately,” writes Sean in Vancouver, “and we forgot to get the newly-lost baby tooth from under my daughter’s pillow. We finally remembered a few days later. When my wife went in to slip some money under the pillow, I could hear her trying hard not to crack up.” When she came out (red-faced and laughing), to show me the note, I understood why.”

related: Passive-Aggressive Easter Bunny

“During the past few weeks, our  preschool-aged son has been trying to play games that are too violent for his classmates,” Juli says. “We’ve been trying to work on the problem with the teacher, but each morning’s drop-off has become a guilt and angst-filled time for me, in part because I can tell the teacher is trying to be nice but is so obviously annoyed by my child that I can’t control!”

(No need for siding with “team preschool teacher” or “team mom,” here — this kind of relationship is just emotionally fraught no matter how you slice it.)

And of course, the guilt doesn’t stop there. Jennifer in St. Cloud, Minnesota, found this note in her son’s lunchbox (along with most of a ham sandwich).

related: This is all about the childern.

Claire and her mom found this relic of childhood while going through a filing cabinet over Christmas. “Neither of us know what prompted it,” Claire says, “though apparently I was mad enough about something to write her this note, but not mad enough to go to bed without her telling me goodnight. Boy, was I one passive-aggressive 11-year-old!”

related: I’ll have you know

Katie in Scotland says she found this note “stuck to a wall at about knee-height, right above a very sad-looking deflated palm tree and a bunch of deflated inflatable bananas.” Unfortunately, Katie says, “i have no idea what the back story is…but I would love to, especially as the note writer seems to be a fair bit older than 8 or 11.”

related: Desperately seeking closure

Dee Dee in Virginia says her five-year-old daughter, Lilly, presented her with this card after Kindergarten last week.

“At first it seems like the usual ‘I love mommy’ card,” Dee Dee says, “but the back clearly addresses her irritation with the neighboring copycat whose use of hearts, stars, and flowers were infringing on my daughter’s copyrighted design. (Coming soon to a overpriced handbag near you!)

related: startin’ young

First up: Ami in London spots the fallout over what we can only assume was an onslaught of hungry breakfast bandits.

Yup, we’ve got those in the States, too…as Molly noticed at a grocery store in Ohio.

Adds Molly: “Why anyone would want to take a single slice of bacon out of a box I can’t really say, but if they needed to post three notes it must have been a pressing issue.” (Um, maybe she needed a replacement underwire?) But perhaps she should have checked the lost & found first…

Meanwhile, this Post-it (from a Mom in Florida) and its subsequent responses (from her punctuation-conscious, pork-loving children) bring to mind the oh-so-creepy phenomenon that is thoroughly documented on the stellar blog Suicide food.

This note appears to have been written by an actual pig (at least the Orwellian kind), but it appears instead to have been penned by the young son of submitter Irsh, of the aptly named blog Daily Piglet. Irsh says she found this note taped to the laundry room door when she got home later after her son had already gone to bed. “I’m not sure why he thought I was going to eat the bacon,” she says, “but I have to admit the idea of him not talking to me was briefly appealing.”

Happy Rosh Hashanah, everyone!

related: p.s. bacon is life
extra credit: “bacon bandit arrested”; suicidefood

As previously discussed, this hamfisted attempt at wit remains the scourge of retail establishments the world over.

As it turns out, the umpteen-million variations are even more hilariously clever!

For example, while the original version merely confuses a lot of people, this one just seems like a bizarre incentive for child abandonment.

Quickly, however, things start to get very un-p.c. (And also…very creepy.)

This version, in fact, is almost as popular as the original. (Other examples here and here and here and here and here and…is that a machete?)

Child slavery? Now that’s comedy gold. But really, why stop there? Why not “unattended children will be trafficked into child prostitution”? “Unattended children will be sold to pedophiles”? Or anally probed? or…

Hilarious, right?

related: the “your mother doesn’t work here” of the hospitality industry