With Halloween upon us, it’s not just uprooted flowers that are breaking the hearts of 4-year-olds around the world. Now entire families (of pumpkins) are being destroyed!

Once again, this compulsive over-sharing seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon. As Archie in Brighton witnessed, the Brits manage to get straight to the bloody point.

related: People suck. (A valuable lesson for any four-year-old)

Cait spotted this artful example of parental passive-aggression “in front of a very, very wealthy residence” in New York’s East Village. “I get that ripping up the flowers was a douchey move,” Cait says, “but this seems a little over the top.”

To which I’d add: Um, yes. (They had me at the first semicolon.)

Meanwhile, across the globe, another 4-year-old was given a similar learning experience. In Australia, however, they don’t bother beating around the bush.*

*Apologies. Bad pun intended.

related: To the person who stole my flower (sniff)

Hey, look — it’s almost the entire 12-step program in one note! I especially like the abridged version: “To the idiot who stole: the world is your oyster.”

related: Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?

The following message is a bit long, yes, but I had to post it because it reads uncannily like what I imagine as the epistolary novel of the future — complete with an unreliable narrator à la the Adrian Mole Diaries (or the sub-par American ripoff, Youth in Revolt).

It comes to us from Helen in Northern Ireland, who gives the following backstory:  ”So, I met a friend of a friend on a night out and he offered to ‘walk me home.’ Seeing right through that clever ruse, I left, only to be bombarded with no fewer than four texts, a Facebook message and a voicemail all saying some inebriated yet romantic things.”

Months later, Helen ran into a mutual friend of this would-be Lothario, and casually said something along the lines of, ‘He tried to walk me home once, but I think he is a bit strange.’ Shortly thereafter, she received this gem of a Facebook message. “Luckily,” Helen says, “he removed and blocked me from Facebook immediately after sending it. Nice chap!”

related: And women like u wonder why u get judged and labeled shallow

Our submitter, an English teacher in Thailand, received this letter from a parent so notorious at the school for notes like this that she has her own nickname among the staff — “SS, as in nuttier than squirrel shit.” The exasperating part, our submitter says, is the mother’s uncanny ability to “correct” non-mistakes in her daughter’s essays. (“As you may guess from reading, the daughter’s English is better than her own,” she says.)

And as tempted as she was to correct the mother’s grammar in her note, “I had to stop, for fear of my head exploding.”

If that note left a bit of a bad taste in your mouth (or you’re one of those short-attention span “TL;DR types,”) not to worry: enjoy this end-of-the-year note written to a first-grade teacher in Atlanta. No, it’s not passive-aggressive…just adorable.

related: Sympathy for the Devil

Our anonymous submitter saw this notice up in Canada’s Yukon territory. “I always knew that dogs were a very important in the life of the Yukoners,” she says, by way of explanation…an explanation that, frustratingly, explains next to nothing about these people or their “visitors.”

Also, re: points #4 & 6 — my dog isn’t very good at coming when called, but he happens to love hanging out with “drug-using people.” (Lots of Cheetos crumbs and whatnot to lick off the floor.)

related: Your are welcome

So, which of these cutesy little rhymes is least likely to make you stab yourself in the eye?

Exhibit a) from an office break room in Atlanta, Georgia?

Exhibit b) from a college dorm suite in Winston-Salem, North Carolina?

Or — smiley-face-free! — exhibit c) from a share house full of frat boys in Los Angeles?

Still there? If so, you probably need a palate-cleanser after all those cringe-worthy couplets, so I’ll leave you with this delicate haiku from an office in Washington, D.C.

related: Scatological Poetry Slam

“This was posted after the author cleaned the house which consisted entirely of her own mess,” says our anonymous submitter in the U.K.

Of course, when you live with multiple roommates, it’s always somebody else’s mess. (Or should I say…I’ts?)

related: May the sanctity of the sink prevail!