AskReaders: What illegal thing have you done for the right reasons?

21-25 Illegal things done for right reasons

21. My niece suffers from MS. Years ago she was on a mix of medicines that barely helped. They made her nauseous all of the time, unable to really eat anything without making the nausea worse. And she spent a good 80% of her time in pain.

I watched this go on for about two months. I would carry her to her home most nights because she was either too weak to walk or in too much pain to try. She lost a good 15lbs in those two months and was, understandably, miserable. It was heart wrenching to see.

I talked to a guy at work who fit the stereotypical image of a pothead and asked him if he knew where I could buy some weed. He did (shocker) and a few days later I brought it to her house (she lived next door). I taught her how to inhale properly and she smoked about1/3 of a very small joint.

One of the side effects that she had from MS is that she would, on occasion, go cross-eyed at random. You’d be in the middle of a conversation with her and see it start to happen. That’s when you knew that one of her “episodes” was starting. This happened every hour or so on the regular.

That night was the first time in a very long while that I’d seen her smile, heard her laughing out loud, watched her eating one thing after another. She didn’t go cross-eyed a single time that evening. Her nausea was completely absent. Her pain was no longer an issue and she was happy. Genuinely happy.

I asked her how she was feeling at about 4 hours in and that’s when all of it dawned on her. She’d been getting up and moving around her house, grabbing snacks from the kitchen, laughing and even dancing at times. And when she realized that she broke down crying. We all did (4 of us). But it was a good cry. The best cry.

So I started buying weed for her whenever she needed it. I would bring it to her house and sit on her back porch smoking with her. I kept that up until I moved out of state.

Phoebe was my niece because of a particular set of circumstances and my choosing to take on the responsibility of looking out for her wellbeing. Those circumstances dissolved a short time after I moved and I, sadly, lost contact with her. Last I heard she is now married with children and is confined to a wheelchair. But she continues to supplement her prescribed medicines with weed when she can because it very literally saved her life.

22. About 15 years ago I was working at a manufacturing plant. One of the guys on my station had been working there for 4 years as a temp already, while I was hired from temp to full time in just 6 months. I asked him why he hadn’t been moved to full time by now and he tells me it’s because he doesn’t have a diploma or GED. He has two kids at the time, and a third child on the way.

So after work one night I brought him to my house, I scanned my own GED, and then photo shopped his name in place of mine and printed him out about 40 or 50 copies of it in color, not black and white. The whole process took about 2 hours to make sure it looked as perfect as a real GED, and in the end it did.

He took a copy to HR the next morning and told them his mom had finally found his GED and he made a copy of it for them. He was hired on as a full time employee within two weeks.

Not sure if it was illegal, unethical probably, but working 4 years as a temp while everyone else around you keeps getting hired on full time (which gave a 3 dollar per hour raise, insurance, paid time off, sick days, paid holidays, etc.) is messed up. I had to do something to help him, especially since he had two (soon to be three) children to provide for. So I’d say it was for the right reason.

23. When I was at school our Computing teacher one day surprised us by being stood outside the classroom waiting with a big smile on his face. This useless idiot normally didn’t bother to turn up on time, if at all and never taught us a damn thing, so this was odd.

“Congratulations guys! Today we get to do some MANUAL LABOUR!” We were apparently tasked with taking all the computing room pcs, about 2 years old, and taking them to skip at the bottom of the playing field, about a 20 minute walk away. We asked if we could have some or donate them to charity instead. He said no and that he’d be checking the skip was actually full.

My friends and I quickly ran to the floor below and found the young, friendly physics teacher and asked to borrow some screwdrivers. He asked why. We said we didn’t want to get him in trouble. He just shrugged and gave us the screwdrivers.

An orderly line appeared at the skip as each pc was stripped of ram, sound cards, network cards, primitive graphics cards and anything else that would be too obvious. These were then redistributed amongst the student population to improve their old pcs where needed. My friend did end up stuck with about 90 percent of the ram sticks though as they were only a few mb each (this was about 2001).

On relating this story to some work colleagues a few years ago, one who had previously worked in IT procurement said they weren’t just throwing out perfectly good pcs to be assholes, they were almost certainly contractually required to do so by their pc providers.

24. I conspired with fellow officers and senior enlisted to give one of my sailors 2 months off after the birth of his son. His boy was born extremely sick and we thought he might be gone at any moment. My sailor had no leave left on the books, but I didn’t want him to miss what time he has with his son. So he phone mustered (checked in so we knew he was alive) for almost two months. All of us made sure that if anyone senior was looking for him they “just missed him.” The story ends on a high note as the baby survived and now, 13 years later I still see his pic from time to time on Facebook. As it happens, his wife talked to me last night and said thanks. I’d do it all over again.

25. When I was 18 and I had just moved away to college. My best friend was 16-years-old and still in high school. Let’s call him Jake. He is a gay guy and we’re from a small town and he was having a rough time back home with being accepted and had just broken up with his bf. Jake called me very distressed in the middle of the night one day and told me to come get him that he was running away from home cause he had fought with his parents again.

It’s 2am. It’s a 3 hour drive one way and I’ve got school tomorrow sorry buddy no can do. We hang up. He calls back an hour later. He tells me that he’s met a guy on the Internet that will come pick him up and drive him to the city. 5 hours away from home. The guy is 31 and on his way. Now wait a minute wtf? No Jake you wait right there. I got up got dressed and was in my car in about 3 minutes time.

I drove home in 2.5 hours, picked my friend up and drove right back home. We got there around 6 am. His parents were already blowing up my phone. I told them 300 times I hadn’t seen Jake and they are crying and the school principal calls me and the police is on their way.

So I pack Jake in my car and we went to the mall while the police searched my entire house (my roommate was at home). One day and lawsuits threats later we finally call Jake’s parents and tell them he’s with me and all and he goes home. He wasn’t allowed to contact me for a year or I’d get sued for kidnapping (I was 18 so an adult).

A year later we moved in together and he’s still my friend. I wouldn’t change anything I did because God forbid he had left with that man that night and something had happened to him I would’ve never forgiven myself. I did what I thought was right.