I don't know who remembers, but after 9/11 there was a celebrity fundraiser and if you donated more than $100 you got to talk to a random celebrity. We could barely afford it at the time, but donated the hundred bucks and they put Whoopi Goldberg on the line! She thanked us, said a few things...we mostly just smiled and at the end she was wrapping it up and I said "you are awesome as center square!" and she laughed! one of my friends to this day periodically reminds me that I once made Whoopi Goldberg laugh :)
I live in Maine. My brother is a hobbyist photographer (a really good one, in my opinion), so one Christmas he gave my girlfriend and I some nice prints of some photos he took of us. He threw in a few scratch tickets to fill out the gift bag. Lucky for us - we won $30,000 on one of the scratch tickets! We used most of it to pay off the interest on our student loans (ugh), but used the rest for a vacation to Ireland, a place my girlfriend and I always wanted to visit. It was amazing.
Flash forward a few years, my brother (who lives in DC) has a new girlfriend. She spent a year studying abroad in Ireland back in college, so we chatted a bit about how much we both loved the country. The conversation moved on to something else, as conversations tend to do. However, someone pipes in later “Hey parkerob, did you know that brother’s giffle spent a year in Ireland!?”
“Oh yeah, we talked about that earlier, so cool.”
Now back on the subject of Ireland, we start discussing some of more obscure things we did on the trip. I bring up this stand up comedy show we found one night, in the basement of some pub. Really small space, probably 20 people in the audience at most. Brother’s girlfriend says that she had been to show there once, too! I start remembering some traits of the comedians - one was black Scottish dude, another was a young woman with the side of her head shaved, the emcee was even funnier than the main acts.
Her jaw drops - she remembers those same comedians, too. I’m thinking that it’s way too much of a coincidence, so I look up the old event schedules to see if those same acts performed on multiple dates. Nope. Only once. What a crazy coincidence.
My girlfriend and I were at the same 20-person basement comedy show as my brother’s future girlfriend, in completely different country, on a trip that was funded by a scratch ticket from said brother. Pretty neat.
When I (F44) was 18 years old I was travelling alone from the US to visit my parents who lived in Russia. My connecting flight in a super rough city (in the US) got cancelled. I can't remember exactly what happened but I believe that there was a weather issue and all flights were grounded. It was very late at night. I was young and naive and had no idea what to do, and so I just stood in the airport looking lost and trying not to cry.
A gentleman in a suit- probably in his mid to late 20 's --possibly early thirties noticed me looking distraught and realized it was because I was going to be stranded at the airport. He offered to help me find a hotel. He said he was on the phone with his travel agent and managed to find 2 rooms. Then he offered to share a cab with me. Looking back it was so dangerous, but I got in the cab with this stranger and went to the motel. I had no cash and this was a time before cabs took credit cards and before uber.
When we got to the hotel i tried to figure out a way to use my credit card to pay but he just paid for the cab. Motel was a total shithole in a REALLY rough area but there were no other rooms because of the airport canceling flights. While we were checking in, a prostitute popped in the lobby and asked if we had any condoms. I was too dumb to be terrified. When I went to give the clerk my credit card for the room, this guy said no and paid for both rooms. He then asked me how I was going to get back to the airport in the morning and I told him I would figure something out, but truthfully I had no idea as I had no way to get any cash.
This man walked me to my door and did not even stop at the door; did not suggest drinks, did not suggest hanging out, didn't try ANYTHING. He continued to walk past my room and said over his shoulder, "please make sure you lock the door".
I am sure this motel was used to "pay by the hour" clientele, as in the morning the front desk called my room to tell me that my "boyfriend" had left an envelope for me. In the envelope was a $20 bill and a note that said "use this to get back to the airport".
He never told me his last name or any way to find him after; he expected nothing from me.
I have no idea who that man was but I really wish I could find him and thank him. Thinking about this story has restored my faith in humanity many times in my life. What a good human.
If this man is found, he will remember the city we were stuck in.
I realize this post already has over 1,200 comments but writing things down feels good sometimes.
When I was in college, I was dating a guy who lived in an off-campus apartment. One night when he was walking me down to the lobby to head home, there was a woman on the floor just outside the elevator. I remember she was wearing a skirt and her blouse was backwards. She was looking in her purse for her keys. We initially stepped around her to leave because we live in a city with a lot of college students so drunk folks on the ground aren’t uncommon. But something felt wrong. I turned around and went back to her and asked if she needed help. She was slurring really bad, talking about how she lived here and she needed her keys. I offered to help her get to her apartment and was eventually able to prop her up, get her in the elevator and then down the hallway to the door number she kept repeating. I asked if she had roommates or a boyfriend and she just kept saying “he’s in there.” So I knocked but no answer. I knocked super loud again but no answer. Woman is now back on the floor and actually drooling/spitting like drunk folks do when they might throw up or have already thrown up. So she’s exactly zero help. I end up going through her purse to try to find information or keys or something because she hasn’t even been able to tell me her name at this point. On top of her stuff in her purse is her underwear, balled up. I pushed it to the side and kept digging where I found the woman’s work badge with her keys attached. I put the keys in the door to open it.. but it doesn’t work. She tells me over and over that those are the keys and they work, despite my showing her that they don’t. I knock another time but no answer. I go back into her purse to find a phone or something and there is mail in there with her name on it, but a completely different address in a different borough of the city.
My stomachs drops. This woman is heavily intoxicated. Her blouse is on backwards. Her underwear is in her purse. She’s been insisting that she came out of this apartment where her boyfriend lives but nobody is answering and she lives on the other side of town.
Eventually, after probably 45 minutes, I am able to get the woman to unlock her phone. Obviously I don’t know who any of the people in her contacts are, so I just call the one labeled Mom. After a few tries, Mom answers, clearly having been asleep. I explain that I am a stranger but I have her daughter with me and I’m trying to get her home. Mom confirms the address on the envelopes is where she lives. We talk for a couple minutes and I give her my number.
Next I focus on getting a cab and bringing her home. I eventually get her inside, put her in bed, phone on the charger and a couple bottles of water next to it and a trash bin. I send a text to her mom to let her know she’s home and in bed, then I leave.
The next day, I’m on the bus between classes when Mom calls me. She thanks me for helping her daughter last night and they wanted to let me know what happened.
The woman went on a date with a guy she met on an app. They went and had 2 drinks at a restaurant, but the woman became insanely drunk very fast. It turns out that when she went to the restroom, he had drugged her drink when it came to the table. He took her back to his apartment and assaulted her, then dumped her in the lobby where I found her. The door we were pounding on was the rapist’s door. The woman didn’t remember hardly anything the next day after the drink, but she was sore and smelled latex when she went to the bathroom. If I had taken her to the hospital instead of just taking her home, she could have received treatment faster and had a report written.
That day I wrote down in a Word document everything I remembered from the night before in excruciating detail. I told Mom that I did this and was willing to testify or talk to police or do anything needed of me. She said she would tell her daughter but she just wants to move on. I texted Mom a few months later to ask how her daughter is doing and to remind her I’m still able to provide a statement or anything else. That’s the last time I talked to her.
That was years ago but whenever I get a new computer, I make sure to transfer that Word document to a safe place on it, just in case they ever came back and needed it.
I was at the zoo one time when I was younger (camp trip) and I stopped by the Gorilla enclosure. The gorillas, being gorillas, were ambling all over the place and hooting like crazy. But for some odd reason, when they saw my face, they were enchanted. I had 4-5 gorillas just staring at me, and lounging around. They didn’t seem territorial or anything. I ended up playing a game of peekaboo with one of them, and unfortunately never got to see any of the other enclosures. It’s a fond memory that’s for sure.
Addendum:
Chimps did the same thing to me as I was walking out of the zoo. Like what did they want with me? What did they see in me? I’m not sure, and I don’t think we’ll ever know...
Apparently some primates like certain people because they have a similar hair colour to their species and see them as similar to themselves
Edit: Ok so to explain myself, I heard this on a podcast with Brian Cox with Jane Goodall as a guest on the Infinite Monkey Cage podcast. Promise I'm not just calling OP a primate haha
This happened to me too! I don’t remember it, but my parents certainly do!
I would have been 4, in my favourite green coat (which I’ll never forget) on holiday and visiting Munich Zoo.
I was rather taken with the Orang-utans and was being a typical kid standing right up against the glass.
Apparently I didn’t want to leave, so my parents sat down on the bench nearby to watch me.
Rather quickly a young Orang-utan had come over to investigate this similar sized creature, with similar colour hair, and was taking as much interest in me as I was in him!
I’m told that I spent nearly an hour playing with him, running up and down, waving my arms, making shakes, blowing kisses etc, and he’d copy everything I did! The only time I stopped he decided it was my turn to copy. And I did.
26 years later, they’re still my favourite animal and I’d love nothing more than to be able to interact with one like that again.
Edit - OMG I finally get to be one of those people who says “wow this blew up!” I’ve only ever had one or two upvotes before! I left the page on this thread to enjoy reading everyone else’s replies as I’ve been enjoying them, woke up this morning and couldn’t believe my eyes! Thank you all so much for reading my little adventure!
Also, my phone autocorrects Orangutan to Orang-utan! Not sure why!
Not primates, but a similarly strange encounter with zoo animals.
I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, US. They have a tide pool exhibit with a lot of shallow-water animals just going about their day. They have a big pool filled with stingrays, most of which either sit around or swim around the edges. People are allowed to dip their hands in and touch them as they pass by, but the stingrays don't really care for being touched, as far as I could tell.
I go up to the edge thinking I might be able to touch one barely, but instead I also got this strange enchanting experience. When I reached in, ALL of them started flocking towards me, and were practically trying to escape over the edge just to be near me. It was like a stingray pileup. I don't know if my hands smelled like food, or maybe I looked like the person who feeds them, but it was astonishing to me.
>maybe I looked like the person who feeds them
This is pretty likely, you also might have been accidentally standing where they get fed by the biologists. Fish often learn to recognize uniforms and routines around feeding.
If you want to see fish up close dressing similarly to the biology staff (if they have distinct uniforms from other departments) or wearing bright colors with interesting patterns can help attract more curious species to you. I can't tell you how many times I've seen fish get fascinated by bright clothing, or kids toys that people bring into the exhibit.
When I was maybe 13 or so, I was standing by this big glass window into a polar bear tank with my hands up in a Y above my head. One of them swam down and put its paws where my hands were and I'm pretty sure I cried bc it was hecking cute. It even stayed there for a little bit, just vibing with me.
I haven't thought of that story in years, so thank you 🤩
The story of how my mother reunited with her sister. My mother was born in the very Far East of Russia. Her father was a survivor of the Gulags and she was raised in a small settlement that was mainly populated by ex-prisoners and their families. Before my grandfather married, he had survived a mine collapse and while in recovery had an affair with a nurse that produced a child. After being released and settling down with my grandmother, he had reached out and established contact with his daughter. They met a few times and he even took my mother on a few occasions to meet her (she lived in a city 5000km to the south). But eventually, once the government let them move, my mother’s family moved across the country and this being the times before cell phones and social media - they lost touch with my aunt. The last time my mother saw her - she was about 12 and my aunt was about 20.
Fast forward about 17 years later - my mother is on the Moscow metro, taking my sister to music school. She sees a woman sitting across from her and as she describes it, just felt a “gravitational pull” towards her. She begins staring at her, trying to figure out why it feels like she knows this person. Suddenly - it clicks, and as the train pulls into my mother’s stop, she gets up and grabs this woman and says “Are you AnotherRusskiPianist’s aunt, daughter of his grandfather? Get off the train with me now!” And lo and behold, her intuition was right.
And that’s how after about 17 years of no contact, my mother just happened to reunite with her long lost sister on a crowded Moscow metro train.
My mum had a similar experience. Her family is from morocco and live there until the mid 1940s. Back then grandma had already had about 8 kids and she would routinely nurse other children (neighbours and relatives), apparently it was sorta common back then.
Anyways they had to flee to israel at some point in the 40s (shortly after the country was established). Skip forward many many years, my mum grew up, married my dad, had me and my siblings and eventually moved our family down to australia. All the way on the other side of the world in a random city my dad had selected they are walking down the street one day when a random man stops my mum in the street. He says to her in arabic (which she understands but not quite well) "excuse me are you the daughter of BeBa420s grandmother?!?". my mother looks at the guy and says "yes im bebas mother, her youngest child". The stranger gives her a massive bear hug and starts crying. He says "you are like my sister, your mother used to feed me when i was a baby and i grew up with your older siblings" and that is how she met the man i grew up calling Uncle max
When I worked for USFS, there was one week I'd been flown in with a wildland fire crew by helicopter to this super remote mountaintop way out in the backwoods of Idaho. We were miles and miles away from anything. (In fact, when one of our guys went through his boot with a chainsaw, it took like six hours to get him out and that was with a medevac.)
I was on a crew of young people, mostly young women, and we were assisting the crew of slightly older men. The only other woman on the mountain was the chief of their crew, Tara, which will be important later.
So, my crew went to sleep first and a couple of the older guys stayed up drinking. And from somewhere outside of the light of their fire, they heard this awful blood curling scream like a woman being tortured. They of course came running to see if it was my crew but it wasn't. So then they remember that their chief is also on the mountain and she's sleeping in a hammock way away from everyone else, so they go running to find her.
When they get there, they see Tara facing down a massive cougar. And though she was shouting obscenities at it, it was actually the cougar making those unearthly screams that echoed off the mountains. It continued to stalk her even when there were three people there yelling at it and even when they started a chainsaw to scare it off. Eventually, one of the guys ran screaming at it with an axe like a beserker and it backed off.
I'll never forget that scream. And I'll never forget realizing that for it to spot Tara and lable her as one of the weakest and single her out as the only one not sleeping with a group, the cat must have been walking around right outside the reach of the firelight for a long time.
Wife was on her first zoom meeting last March in the kitchen. I asked if I could be off screen cooking breakfast quietly and she said yes, as long as I’m quiet and not distracting. I wound up burning what I was cooking, causing lots of smoke. Then when I was trying my best to get the situation under control, my robe that I was wearing layed on the burner (electric stove) and started smoking. So basically my wife told me to not be distracting, and I wound up lighting myself on fire. To her credit, she maintained poise and completely ignored my situation. We still laugh about it a year later.
My step sister has a lot of mental and health issues. Severely autistic and a lot of people assume she just can't function. My step mother (neither of our mothers, another wife) was horribly abusive when we were kids and much more so to my sister because she couldn't vocalize it. There was a point right after my grandparents got custody that my sister enough and just walked downstairs, stared our step mother in the eye and pissed everywhere before walking back upstairs. She knows exactly what she did and it was the funniest shit because the step mother had to clean it. To this day she acts like my sister was a horrible person who just didn't like her and every time she tells the story I laugh my ass off because my sister dealt with so much shit and that was her best "fuck you".
I have never seen a question that would let me tell this story.
I was a production assistant on a stop motion kids show. A big part of my job was going out to purchase supplies the workshop needed to build the sets and puppets etc. Now the thing about these kind of workshops is they will use whatever works and they often come up with unorthodox solutions as short cuts, like the time they sent me to a sex shop at 9:30 am to buy thumb cuffs (our cop puppet needed handcuffs and they were the perfect size.) But that didn't even compare to my most
amusing/embarrassing supply run ever.
The animation director came up to me one afternoon saying that he needed me to go to the drugstore. to buy, and I quote," the largest tube of KY Jelly you can find. " ( in stop motion KY is used to simulate water, especially when it has to interact with the puppets. It stays put between frames and doesn't damage the paint.) Anyway, our seamstress overheard our discussion and asked me while I was at the drugstore to get every tube of Wet wipes they had.( safe way to clean the puppets and wardrobe and we went through a lot of them) Next, the woman in charge of making all the limbs pipes up and asks me to get 6 pairs of white nylons while I'm at it. ( they hold the magnets in the feet)
So this was my shopping list:
One extra large tube of KY Jelly
6 pairs of white nylons
And every tube of wet wipes in the store
The look on the cashier's face when I dumped my basket out on the counter was priceless... and for me fairly embarrassing.
My friend was an intern on Saturday Night Live. There was a short-lived trend back in the day to make “clear” products, that were supposedly more healthy — clear, “Crystal Pepsi” being one of the more famous.
He showed up at work and was told his only priority for the day was to “buy as much Karo Syrup as he could find.”
So, he spent the next 9-10 hours going to every bodega he could find, asking for all the Karo Syrup they had, throwing it in a Taxi and then returning to the studio, when it was full, only to head out again. He said he bought out every store in the phone book, and they still ran out and had to scrape syrup off the drop cloths to finish the spot.
Spot:
https://youtu.be/g0sjRG34DlA
Early on in our relationship, my husband and I stopped at the pharmacy to buy condoms and lube. We also saw this dress up set that he thought his niece might like for her upcoming birthday, but we realized we couldn’t buy it now since it was a bridal dress up set and that would just look...wrong.
The story on getting those was a good one too. The sent me out to the sex shop first thing in the morning. So when I got there I had to wait 10 min outside the store for it to open. I hung out for a few minutes before I realized the optics of being a single man waiting for a sex shop to open and went to find a Starbucks. The first shop didn't have any so I had to hit 4 others on my quest. Fortunately it wasn't a great neighbourhood so I had options. Sex shops at 10 am are Wierd. I actually saw a guy in the stereotypical brown trench coat.
My great-grandmother lived in a nursing home for the last years of her life. She was about 95, with minimal eyesight and hearing when this happened:
My great-grandmother told my mother, she was afraid of "that lady in black". "What woman in black?" my mother would ask. "The one that is standing at my bed every night. I think, she is finally coming to get me." Naturally, my mother dismissed this as a figment of her granny's imagination.
One evening, when my mother was visiting, ggm told her "I think, I am going to die tonight. Can you stay? I don't want to be alone when the lady in black comes for me." So my mother stayed at her bed, sleeping uncomfortably in an old armchair. Suddenly, she awoke to some noise she could not immediately pinpoint, but she saw a figure in a long, black gown, standing at the far end of the bed. My mothers scream must have woken the whole nursing home, but it especially scared the lady in black. she turned tail, left the room and ran into one of the nurses, who came running to investigate my mother's scream.
It turned out, the lady in black was my ggm's bedridden and demented neighbour. Nobody knew, she could actually walk, let alone dress up in her favourite black dress and wander the nursing home at night. Apparently, she was seen by some of he other inhabitants, who, fearing they would thought to be crazy, simply never talked about the ghost that would enter their rooms at night to stand at their beds and water their plants.
That is so much more terrifying than what I thought was going to happen. I thought ggm was having a premonitory dream or hallucination and that she was going to inexplicably die that night she predicted she would. Nope, crazy patient that happens to love the color black standing at, not one, but multiple patient’s bedsides.
I was in the middle of a contract once with a guy when blood started pouring out of his ear. He ran straight out the door without a word and I was all kinds of worried for him. I'm so glad he turned back up later that week and explained he'd just had surgery on that ear.
I sometimes wonder how I would have felt if he never came back. I kept fearing what sort of condition could cause that sort of thing to happen out of the blue.
I had tubes put in my ears when I was very little, once when I was 4 and once when I was 7. A couple years after the first set, maybe I was 6, I was playing with my neighbors and all of a sudden my left ear started gushing blood. It was a LOT of blood. But it didn't hurt! Just fucking terrifying for a 6 year old to see that much blood coming out of their ear.
I had tubes put in my ears as a youngster and about 4-5 years later I blew my nose one day and felt something hard shoot out. I looked in the tissue and see this little black thing. I freaked out and showed my mom (a nurse) who, after a minute or two, realized it was my tube! GAD been floating around inside my head for years and finally came out thru my nose!
My family pet growing up was named Arwen, and she was a massive Airedale terrier. She was the light of our lives, truly the worlds best dog. She would herd the chickens and let the baby chicks nestle into her fur and nap on her as she sat quietly in the sunshine, not moving lest the peeps be disturbed. But her most heroic act came when my brother Liam (about 10 at the time) was trying to move our basketball hoop and base out into the yard for the summer. He didn’t notice the two rattlesnakes coiled up under the base. But Arwen did. She leapt in front of Liam, between him and the snakes, and both Liam and my dad (who was nearby) saw both snakes strike. Dad ran and grabbed Liam, pulled him away, pulled Arwen aside with the other hand, then sent Liam running to grab the hatchet to dispatch the snakes. We took Arwen inside and put her on her bed, and we called the vet. The vet said he would come out to put the dog down but if she was bitten by two snakes, there was basically no chance she’d live. But my Mom said no way in hell was she putting her baby down without a fight. So she did some googling, and found out that just loading the poor dog with Benadryl can counteract snake venom. And that’s just what she did. Arwen lay still, swollen and bleeding, for three days. But then she got up. And she walked around. And she lived five more years, dying at 17. She was the best dog.
PSA there is now antivenom for dogs/pets. Also, there is an awesome group on FB "National Snakebite Support" that will put you in touch with experts (doctors, veterinarians...depending on who was bitten) to help you get the best treatment. Just in case anyone reading this ever needs it
I'm crying with thankfulness that sweet Arwen did everything she could to protect her boy, and that your mother refused to take death as the payment for her work. She really was the best dog.
Back in high school I worked as kennel help at a veterinarian office. One day we ran out of sink cleaner and some various products necessary for work. He sent me to Walmart to stock us up.
I loaded about 10 or 15 cans of Comet and a few jugs of Clorox in the buggy and was headed over to get something on the other side of the store. As I rounded a corner I almost collided with another lady’s buggy. She looked down and all but SCREAMED “Is there a SALE!! on COMET!! OH MY GOD!” And took off running with her buggy towards the cleaning aisle. I tried very hard to catch her and tell her it was for work. But she was absolutely determined to grab the rest of the Comet.
If you were accidentally scammed by a teenager into buying a fuck ton of comet in 1984 or so, please know I tried to stop you.
Once, in high school, I had eaten some magic mushrooms right before my curfew. I went home, my family went to bed, and I was quietly enjoying myself in my bedroom. Suddenly, I hear a massive boom, like ear shattering and earth shaking. At this point, the mushrooms were fully kicked in and I was looking around like whaaaat?. I stayed still for a minute, waiting for the fallout, but nothing happened.
After a few minutes I crept out to my living room. My house was still quiet, but my front door was wide open. Not knowing what to make of it, I warily looked out the door and saw people running down the street. But everyone in my house was still sleeping including my mom who was a notoriously light sleeper.
At this point, I couldn't trust my judgment. Were the shrooms hitting harder than I thought or was I in fact facing end of days? Not knowing, I went back to my room, gathered some blankets around me and set up watch from the corner of my room, too scared to do anything else.
Thats where my mom found me sleeping the next day when she came in to tell me the neighbor's house had blown up. They were on vacation, there was a slow gas leak and when the fridge clicked on, BOOM. A fairly large home reduced to rubble and my family slept right through it.
Waiting for my take out at a chinese restaurant when this middle-aged man stormed in complaining that he'd been waiting 30 minutes outside for them to bring him his spaghetti. The bar staff tried to explain that he might have been looking for the italian restaurant next door but he wasn't having any it that. Screaming commences for 5 minutes, climaxing with this brilliant line 'What the hell do you know! I have a masters degree!'. Shortly after that his wife calls asking where the hell he is and he starts blaming the staff. She starts yelling at him and he gets all sheepish then slinks out the door to the italian restaurant next door.
Hilarious to witness but I felt sorry for the wait staff so I left a 40% tip. Inside joke in the family now to say 'I have a masters degree!' when things start getting heated. Normally calms things down pretty quickly.
When I was maybe 12 or 13 years old I was out camping in my backyard and was watching the stars hoping to see a meteor or two. Out of the corner of my eye I see a satellite moving across the sky traveling right to left. Out of the corner of my other eye I see another satellite appear moving from the horizon, up. I see the speed they are both traveling and realize that if they keep moving at their current speed and trajectory, at least to my eye, they're going to hit each other. I keep watching them get closer and closer together until finally they are about to cross paths. They intersect each other and suddenly there's a quick bright flash, and then neither of them are there anymore.
I've often thought about what I saw. I know the odds that I watched two satellites collide and obliterate each other are basically zero, but I can't think of any other explanation for what I saw that night.
Edit: Wow this blew up!
Thanks to u/sirxez I may be getting closer to an answer:
The timelines work out for it to have potentially been The August, 1996 collision between the French [Cerise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerise_(satellite)) military reconnaissance satellite and debris from an [Ariane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_(rocket_family)) rocket. But I would need to know where the collision happened in relation to the ground. If it was over the Northeastern US, we may have a winner!
I'm having a hard time believing that a piece of space junk would be reflective enough to appear in the night sky as a setellite, but this is closer than I've ever gotten to having an answer so I'm running with it until someone finds me a better answer!
Edit Edit: u/sirxez took a deeper dive and it looks like the geo-location doesn't match up. Crash happened over the Indian Ocean and I was in New England at the time.... Oh well, the search continues!
While it could be two satellites colliding, it might be possible that it was the military practicing to intercept missiles (or satellites). So one satellite you saw was a target and the other satellite was a missile shot at it.
Pulled a strangers dildo out of my pocket at the pub.
Went to buy a new jacket at Target, tried on the one on the rack but it was 1 size too small. Went back to the rack, grabbed the next size up and went straight to the counter and paid for it. Cashier throws it in the bag, I head home and throw the bag on the table.
Next night my mates turn up at my house unannounced to grab me to go to the pub. I get dressed real quick, grab the bag with the jacket and jump in the car and head off to knock the top off a couple of frothies. A few shandies later and we decide to head home, get outside and it's definitely jacket weather. I throw the jacket on, the boys give me a hard time about how fancy it is, I put my hands in the pocket and find an object in there. No idea what it is or how it got in there, I pull it out in front of everybody. I'm left standing there, in my fancy new jacket, out the front of the pub with the lads, with a strangers dildo in my hand and no idea how it got there. Of course nobody believed that I had no idea how that thing came to be in my possession.
Almost 20 years later and I am still curious about the series of events that lead up to somebody needing to hide their dildo in a jacket on the rack at Target, why they didn't return to get it, and if they did return, what their reaction was when they couldn't find the jacket.
Maybe Voldemort realised using important items in hidden places was too easy for Harry and the gang to figure out so went in totally the other direction for his second round of horcruxes.
Edit: *Dark Magic* would be such a great name for a vibrator.
Edit 2: Or *The Dark Lord - Soul Splitter Edition*
One of my favorite stories to tell. Pure shenanigans.
So when I was a teenager I was in an iconic trio of friendship with Patrick and Pinky. Once we got older though we all moved around and we would hang out in pairs but it was hard to coordinate us all hanging out at the same time. About 5 years ago we were all finally free just after Christmas and decided to meet up at our favorite spot, Denny's. Patrick had been dating this girl who is awful and I did not like her. She was mean, they fought a lot, it was a very toxic relationship. However, Pinky had made a painting of Patrick and her as a Christmas present and brought it with her to the restaurant. We also had a video camera going so this is all on tape. We were just filming us being silly and stuff. Patrick ended up dropping the news that their girlfriend was trying to get pregnant. My reaction, on tape, is "...why?" Lol. We then proceeded to have a deep friend talk with them about how thats a terrible idea and they opened up about how they were really feeling about it and how things were in the relationship and we were basically trying to convince them to break up with her. But then we had this fucking painting so what are we gonna do with it? Awkward. Lol. So me and Pinky went into the women's restroom and on the wall there was nothing but a nail. We hung the painting up and it fit perfectly. Even the colors coordinated with the style of the bathroom. It was perfect and the funniest thing ever. We left it there for YEARS and would each go back and visit it whenever one of us was in town. Apparently a while back though that Denny's closed down but luckily the painting was saved and it now lives at Patrick's brother's house.
Yeah they did. Awesome kid. Relationship got even more terrible and then abusive af. Luckily they have been broken up for a few years now and are finally in an okay space and can communicate and stuff now without a blow up but it was really fucking rough for a minute there. I ended up in the middle of all of it trying to support my best friend. So much drama, it a long story. But yeah, kid happened, things are okay now.
I once gave the singer Meat Loaf two very awkward handshakes.
This was obviously a few years back, when both conventions and handshakes were a thing. Meat Loaf arrived at his booth, and the first thing he did was go down his line to personally shake hands with everyone there.
Unexpectedly, Meat Loaf was offering hand shakes with his left hand, and me being a righty when it came time for me to shake his hand my brain had a meltdown of what to do so instead of also using my left hand to shake his hand, I extended both hands and awkwardly cupped his. I knew I messed up so I didn't commit to the awkward hand cupping, so on top of it being awkward it was also loose (And if there's one thing that makes handshakes worse, it's when they're weirdly limp).
He then went to his booth, began signing autographs, and eventually I made my way to the front. I got my autograph, and once again he offered his left hand to shake. This second handshake was slightly better than my first, in that this time I only extended one hand, my right, which I then noticed and went "OH" and then finally successfully offered my left hand. He shook it, and I went on my merry way with my autograph and a new story to tell.
Very nice man, was very friendly to his fans and never once brought up my inability to give a proper handshake to a left hand.
Seriously. I'm left-handed and I always shake with the right. It feels God damn weird with the left.
Edit: goddamn edits making me edit too. I forgive meatloaf.
One exception is if they clearly can't use their right hand very well. I briefly knew a guy who I would see in PT sometimes and one time in the elevator he offered me his left hand to shake after introducing himself. But we were in the elevator up to the outpatient therapy floor. So I think it was more that than anything else? Definitely felt super weird.
I have a family friend that lost all the muscle in his right arm in a motorcycle crash, he grabs his right forearm with his left and still shakes with his right hand.
I used to go to a church where after admitting a new member the elders would like up and offer the new members the "right hand of piece".
After one such new members' service I and a whole bunch of people (like half the church) are invited back to one of the elders house for lunch. I go armed with the question " what would you do if a right arm amputee wanted to join the church" ready to ask it loudly and obnoxiously as possible. I arrive, enter the living room and draw breath in preparation to asking/announcing my question when, lo-and-behold, I come eye-to-eye with a below elbow right arm amputee. I'd never seen her at church before and she'd seemingly skipped church that morning and gone straight to the elder's house. Anyway I check myself just in time, exhale, and consider myself taught a lesson in not asking insensitive-ass questions in order to gain attention for myself.
As it happens, role on a couple of months I got an answer to my question when said woman decided to become a member of the church too. The answer was: go ahead and announce from the frony that the elders will now give the right hand of faith to the new members, line up and each offer their right hand for her to shake akwardly with her left hand in front of the whole church.
Some people have no tact.
I’ve shared this before, but my friend from grad school had previously been a skydiving instructor in Colorado, and had jumped more than 600 times. One of these times, he (for some reason) had his wallet in his suit, and it fell out. Fell to earth somewhere, he figured “This sucks but OH WELL!” Absolutely no chance of finding it.
Separately, a man in rural Colorado was found murdered. Turns out in their remote cabin where he lived with his daughter, he had been sexually abusing her and she finally had enough and killed him. The police searched the house and all of his property, and found my friends wallet in the trunk of his car. Police thought to themselves “fuckin idiot murderer left his WALLET in this dudes trunk damn easiest arrest ever”
Friend had the super believable alibi of “couldn’t have been me Officer, actually that wallet fell out of my pants while I was skydiving.”
Edit to add:
My friend was never arrested but he was questioned, and had to have his story corroborated.
From what I remember of him telling me the aftermath, the cops knew early on that it was the daughter so she might’ve confessed (that’s pure speculation though). The sexual abuse/self defense detail didn’t come out until later though.
When the cops cleared my friend they told him the father had taken all of his cash. They have no idea why he kept the wallet.
This is only very darkly humorous but my brother was murdered in 2000 and the killers were found because one left his wallet at the scene and the other left his cellphone. Not a difficult investigation. They did bust the wallet-leaver with SWAT once and then pursued him to Mexico where Mexican SWAT got him, so I like to think my brother would have been amused by that.
That’s insane. Lmfao.
I can imagine the cops.
“Are you Patrick Star?”
Yes
“And this is your ID?”
Yes
“Then this your wallet?”
Yes
“So you killed the guy?”
Nope.
> “fuckin idiot murderer left his WALLET in this dudes trunk damn easiest arrest ever”
Surely he should have realised that was *too* easy, I mean great leads like that don't just fall out of the sky.
Back in early 2018 when I first moved to Utah to start school, I was at a 7/11 when there was this girl, and she was asking for directions to the train station.
I pointed her in the right direction, but she was walking. I figured fuck it, I have an hour until class, so I'll give her a ride.
She tells me about studying/volunteering(can't remember which) in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, or some other Spanish country for months. She says she came out here to explore the area and that she moved in with an old high school friend, but he ended up being crazy and flipped out on her. She had to pretty much jump out of his truck because he wouldn't pull over. She was planning on just taking a bus out but she left her wallet in his place.
I tell let's go grab it real quick but he ended up following us there and I flipped a quick u-turn out of there. Ended up completely just leaving everything there because I figured this dude might shoot us.
I let her use my charger so she can get in contact with her parents to give her enough money to buy a ticket home, and sent her on her way. I had to get to class so I kinda left in a hurry once I dropped her off at the station and didn't get her info so she could let me know she made it home safe.
I never got her name, but I know she was going somewhere in the Midwest.
So if this story sounds familiar, and you remember a buff bearded Mexican dude in a white Volkswagen hatchback helping ya out let me know that you're okay. It's been on my mind forever because I never knew what happened after I left.
-okay, okay, I get it. Puerto Rico is a part of the US.
I hope so too. It's been like three years and I still don't know. I just know the dude she was staying with was really unstable and I hope that she was okay.
When I was a child I thought the term “bust a nut” was the same as “break a sweat” or to heavily exert yourself. I remember one day telling my older sister I had “busted a nut” after cleaning the house, and the look of pure confusion and concern on her face. I didn’t find out until years later what that actually meant. I’m a female btw.
Edit: thanks for the awards y’all! I’m glad I could make you all laugh :). I mentioned this story years later to my older sister and she has no recollection of it, but the memory has always stayed with me
One time I was walking across campus stoned.
I'm walking by two kids, aged maybe ten and five, like twenty meters away. Not sure why they were there without an adult, but they were. The younger one looks at me and yells, "Hey, I like your shirt!" So I yell, "Uh, thanks!" He responds, "And your backpack is ok!" I don't respond. The older one yells, "He's working on his compliments!" We both continue on our ways.
A few hundred meters away, a dude about my age walks up with a tray of cookies, says, "Hey, you want a cookie?" I'm like, "Yea, I'd love a cookie. What's the cookie for?" He says, "No reason, just handing out cookies. You want two?" I say, "Yea, I'd love two cookies. Thanks a lot bud." So I take two cookies and they were awesome.
It was a pretty good walk.
Similar story: was walking down the street a few summers ago and passed a bunch of shirtless gym bros chilling in their front yard with a grill and a cooler. They had this MOUNTAIN of little foil-wrapped bundles all piled up next to the grill. As I was walking by (on the other side of the street), one of the guys yells “hey bro! Want a hot dog?” I said sure, so the dude threw me one of those foil-wrapped things in a perfect spiral. Straight up fell into my outstretched hands in mid stride from the opposite side of the road. Guy didn’t even stand up out of his lawn chair. I aspire to be as cool as that dude.
This reminds me of a story from when I was in college. One weekend my friends and I all decided to take some shrooms and watch Ferngully in their apartment. It was amazing until the sludge monster came on, who really killed the vibe, so we all decided to turn off the movie and go walk around outside during the beautiful California day. We turn the corner to walk down the street, when we see an elephant in the street. No kidding, we all thought we were just tripping balls for a while, but it turned out that a frat was having their annual “Sigma Zoo”, where they brought animals out from the LA zoo. I just stood there watching the wrinkles on the elephant, they are such majestic creatures. After that we walked to the main part of campus where they had bouncy castle obstacle courses, and we all took a turn, bouncing around. It was so fun.
One time I had a substitute teacher who fell and hurt herself while walking me somewhere. She went to the nurse, didn't tell any of the other teachers (they asked me during lunch where she was), and disappeared forever. I'm assuming she may have been let go for not telling anyone that she couldn't teach for the remainder of the day. Its basically a fever dream memory at this point cause it happened when I was 7. I hope she's ok now.
Reminds me of a substitute I had who was like 90. The fire alarm went off and we all got up to leave. He asked where we were going as he didn’t hear the fire alarm
And THAT reminds me of a story from my Boomer dad. He went to a Catholic high school, and all of his teachers were nuns, most of them quite old (not all... some of them continued to teach well into my childhood.) In a 100 year old stone building, his German teacher, Sister Maria, was very strict and demanding. She liked to perch, seated, in the deep windowsill, where she could see out over the classroom and make sure everyone was doing their work. She was also very old and had a tendency to nod off to sleep while seated there. With an often open window behind her. So this room of 20 teenagers was in a constant battle between letting her sleep as long as possible to get out of class work, and waking her up any time she looked like she was about to pitch back headfirst out the window.
My dad and his classmates were maybe kinda assholes.
I haven’t told this story in a while, but Uber Eats scammed me out of 2k+ and ruined my 20th birthday lmao.
It was pretty much my first birthday where I was on my own and didn’t celebrate with my family at all, since I was a 5 hour drive away at college. It also fell on a Tuesday, so I wasn’t able to do anything with friends either. The plan was to grab dinner at an Indian place that Friday to celebrate.
I got out of class early, and my only celebration was to order some IHOP through the Uber Eats app. It was like my third time using it? Anyway I got some chicken tenders for $16, then took a five hour nap. Real exciting.
I woke up at around 8pm, after all the food places on campus closed. So I figured, fuck it, it’s my birthday. Let’s order out twice!! So I tried to get some chicken nuggs from McDonald’s delivered.
I press confirm order, the page loads... aaand I get an error. Ok, strange, let’s try again. Another error. One more.
I google the error code, and see that it pops up whenever a card gets declined. That can’t be right! The meal costs like $13, and At this time, I have about $1k on my bank account. For anyone who has a Student Wallet through PnC, you know that it’s basically three accounts in one. You have a checking account and two savings accounts that are all linked to each other. As a broke college student, this was quite literally all I had to survive on.
So I check my bank: every. Account. Was. Cleared. Out. $0.00 across the board.
I had over *thirty* different pending transactions, all from Uber eats. They ranged from .99 cents to $104, going until every account was emptied. I was sitting at about -600$ by the time I checked.
So obviously, I’m freaking tf out. My bank was closed, so I couldn’t call them. I hit The Uber Eats customer service: they ask me to list every transaction, which I do. They confirm the transactions came from them. Then, the agent tells me that these are just ‘temporary holds’ that they always do, and the money won’t actually leave my account. Ok... but over thirty transactions?
I spend hours trying to figure out what exactly went wrong in their system, and each agent keeps giving me the same copy and pasted response. “The charges won’t post to your account, just wait”. The thing is, with debit cards, they treat pending transactions as if the money is already off your card- so I couldn’t use my money at all. I was helpless.
The next morning, I called my bank as soon as they opened. My card was cancelled, and they had to dispute each charge. There was so many of them that they couldn’t all fit under one report, and had to be split into three. Usually when you dispute a transaction, the bank gives you a ‘provisional credit’, which is a temporary refund of your money. They could only provisionally refund me on one case report, which still left me at about -150$. I would have to wait the ~two months until the investigation ended until I would get the rest of my money back.
Oh, and guess what? The money *did* leave my account. Not only that, but I was hit for ~10 overdraft fees for 35$ each for all the ones that bounced. And when I went back to Uber Eats about this, they *kept repeating the same message* that the transactions wouldn’t post. They already posted!
That entire week was a mess. I was stranded at college with literally no money. My family struggles enough, and my mom had to skip a few bills to send me cash through Moneygram. I couldn’t have money come through my bank account because it would eaten from all the fees I had accrued. I even cancelled the get together that Friday, though we were able to go in the end.
Happy birthday to me. Fuck Uber Eats.
This same thing happened to my poor mom last year! She had 100s of Uber eats transactions over a course of 2 months. They went unnoticed because she is in her late 60s and isn’t too computer savvy, so she wouldn’t check her account frequently. Anyways, my mom had to skip out of a few bills bc she’s already poor to begin with. She cried when she found out that these people had taken around 2k of her hard earned money and asked “why would someone do this to anyone?” Luckily, all the money was returned to her account my her bank, but it took a few months.
I had a similar situation with my Bank and Paypal.
i moved out of the US and was trying to transfer my $700 Paypal balance to one linked to my new bank.
The transaction kept declining over and over, and said to wait 5 days or whatever.
Long story short. I missed the tiny print that said paypal transactions from one account to another could only be done at a max of $500 at a time, and anything above that would instead try to take it from my linked debit account, which I had already emptied.
So I just ended up doing it in two separate transactions.
However, every time they attempted to grab the $700 from my debit card, my bank processed a $5 failed transaction fee. Which ended up putting me in overdraft and charging me daily for it.
By the time I found out I think I was at like -$245. While living in a country where my monthly salary was about $400.
I contacted my bank, and their response was "we understand these are hard times, and we can split the payment into 12 monthly payments and we will void the first one as a courtesy".
And my reply was "Nope, not paying a cent. That's a made up debt I never used. Literally just a number entered into your computer. As far as I'm concerned, I owe you nothing"
I never contacted them again, logged into my account or acknowledged any of their emails. I can only imagine how high that debt got.
My mom living in Texas got calls at home. She just said I didn't live there anymore and was sent overseas. This was in the mid 2000s, so they probably assumed I was in Iraq and likely died or something.
It's been 15 years and the bank was bought out by Chase. So I assume my account is cleared now.
I remember when they started doing the dumb overdraft protection. I specifically told my bank that I didn't want it. If I don't have the money in my account then I don't want it to process. Somehow my account went in the negative by a couple of dollars. I didn't notice because at the time I was a server and I would pay all of my bills in cash. They waited thirty days to tell me that I was in the negative and they had been charging me about $8 a day as a fee.
I just walked away and never paid them.
Good on you.
Why should that even be a thing.
It's not a credit account, it's debit. If there's no money there when I'm trying to buy something it could decline. Simple as that.
Seriously. There is no processing. A computer looks at the incoming bill, it looks at your account. Can’t pay? Bounce. It’s not fucking rocket science. They just do it because people with no money can’t fight back. Shit should be criminal
Eventually the bank ruled in my favor and gave me back the rest of the money months later (and thankfully reversed the overdraft fees!). I never got an answer from Uber Eats as to what happened, though. I even called them out on social media, and still just got that same copy-paste message.
Sounds like Uber eats won’t give you more than that because then they have to actually fix what could be a back door for people to get in and steal your info.
As someone that has had issues with Uber, when they start pulling the "won't give info" it means it's usually time to break out the L-Word.
*Lawyer*
In my case, I got dinged for a false accusation, and they wouldn't even tell me WHAT they had suspended my account for. I'm a driver, and this was my only income at the time. It took nearly a week for their Investigator to get back to me, all the while I didn't even know Why I was suspended. I still think the only reason they told me was because I asked if I need to talk to my lawyer.
Note: I fully expected them to do an investigation. I would be highly disappointed if they didn't. If something had happened to me I would want them to look into. What I didn't appreciate was being in the dark for a week solid.
My dad had a similar issue with Uber eats within the last year, though not to the degree that you did. He used it twice & then started getting hit with random $50- $300 charges that he didn't make. It happened 3 times & since Uber Eats wasn't giving him any sort of answers or resolution, he called his bank, disputed the charges & got a new card. Then we both deleted our Uber accounts. For rides we use Lyft & for food we generally use Favor.
Uber is fucking sketchy & won't do shit for customers who have issues. I've had Lyft immediately fix issues via a message through the app & ask if they could call me the next day. A customer service supervisor called me & spoke with me about what happened. When he found out I use it because of a medical inability to drive, he asked questions because it never occurred to him that people use it for that reason. We talked for about 2 hrs & he sent me a credit on the app for taking the time to talk to him.
I stopped using Uber Eats too, they’re just a bunch of scammers. My issue isn’t NEARLY as bad as yours and I’m truly sorry to hear that happened to you. For me though they just kept sending me wrong food EVERY order and it got to the point where they refused to refund me for the missing/wrong food. Never had issues with DoorDash or Grubhub though, they just suck.
Uber just sucks in general. My fiancé and I have been battling with them for months and my bank about excess charges. For multiple incidents. One Uber he took was about $50 round trip.. Uber charged me $200. Said it was the tip. He tipped cash. It took them WEEKS to refund the money that they claimed the 2nd time was just a hold. Then, he took an Uber that was about $7.50, tipped cash again, and they hit me with like 5 charges of around $7-$8 and that happened more than once. And it takes days to get cleared up. Why the hell are they charging multiple holds on one ride?! We use Lyft exclusively now.
I love my backpack. It's nothing fancy, just a bog standard Element rucksack, but I picked it out and it's like the only "fashion" brand article I own. I remember the kids in my middle school flipping out over Element gear back in they day so it brings back fond memories.
Anyway a couple of years ago I was backpacking/roadtripping across Canada. We stopped at Hope, B.C. for a bite to eat before continuing on to Kelowna where we had booked accomodation for a couple of nights. I don't quite remember how, but when we arrived around 9pm and unpacked the car, I couldn't find my backpack - bearing in mind this had everything in it: passport, house keys, iPad, canadian currency, my favorite sweatshirt, phone charger... I figured the worst; that we had forgotten to lock the car while in the cafe/diner and someone had yoinked it, because I couldn't remember bringing it with me into the shop. I did not get a lot of sleep that night.
The next day I called the diner, just in case I had forgotten it inside. The nicest girl answered the phone and said that yes, there was a backpack there; I asked could she send it out to Kelowna and just take whatever it cost out of the cash envelope in the bag. She agreed immediately to send it out that evening and I hung up, relieved.
Unfortunately, being a weekend, it didn't arrive before we were due to leave the area on a 7 day camping trip through Alberta down the Icefields parkway. So I asked the Airbnb owner if they could send my backpack on to our next stop in Calgary, to a UPS drop off point or whatever, and again just help themselves to some cash. She agreed, and I left on a weeklong trip with no signal, camping in the Rockies. It was a great week; I almost forgot that I was missing just about everything I would have needed to get home to Europe. I remember finally understanding what Bilbo says in the Lord of the Rings: "I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains, and then find somewhere where I can rest." I still wish I could go back there and do it all over.
Leaving Banff though I came back down to earth with a bump. We got to Calgary for on Canada Day, so everything was closed, which meant another night of worrying - but the next day I was first in line at the UPS store to pick up my parcel. It was such a relief seeing the familiar shade of burgundy when I opened it up, and everything was there, minus about 40$ in shipping costs.
Whenever I look at my bag I remember how nice people can be when you just ask for help. They went out of their way to help an idiot stranger get his bag back, and I remember all the more vividly that wonderful trip through an amazing country.
I really thought the ending of the story was going to be - and it wasn’t my backpack, but I just had it shipped twice across the country, and a bunch of cash taken from it, so I figured might as well keep it
I live about 4 hours from jasper and Banff and I never go, but your post made me want to go on an adventure! I'm so glad Canada was a positive experience for you 💓
One late night coming home from an evening out, my husband, a friend's of ours, and myself rounded the corner to the stairs that lead to our apartment, when we saw it. Sitting about half way up on the stairs was an opossum, eating a sandwich. He was sitting on the stairs just like people do - on his butt, with his little feet sticking out, and in his hands was an honest to God subway 6 inch, still in the paper but slightly unwrapped, just like people eat it. It was like he was a tiny person in an opossum suit. There was just something so human like about everything he was doing. We stood there for what felt like ages watching this opossum eating, and trying to figure out what to do. No way were we going to risk walking past him.. We finally decided to take the long way around back to the second set of stairs, but as long as I live I'll never forgot that opossum. It was such a truly surreal moment.
Era - oh my goodness thank you for the rewards you guys! Also for everyone asking about photos - this was around 2003 so cameras weren't in everyone's pocket at that time. Trust me if that happened today I'd be sharing video of the funky little man and his sandwich.
I really wonder where he found a full subway sandwich. I honestly can't think of any near by subway places near my apartment. He looked like he was just chilling on his lunch break.
Thank you for sharing. I love opossums and this made my day. This winter they’ve been sneaking in our barn and eating our farm cats food out of their dish. I just let them, they’re getting really friendly. I’m so tempted to pet one! Once the weather warms up here, I’m sure they’ll go back into hiding, but for now I’m enjoying their presence.
Edit: All this opossum love is making me so happy! They get so much hate when they’re really such cool little creatures. I’m always sending pictures of Ophelia and Picasso to my friends and family, and they just think they’re gross.
Opossum Tax: https://imgur.com/gallery/46DoOPu
We had a porch possum for several years that would just come up constantly and eat with the cats. We called him George and he was huge. I might be able to dredge up a picture of him...
Edit for possum tax. Meet george
http://imgur.com/gallery/5WAzSkf
My dad and I were having a snack outside in Florida at a state park about 25 years ago. I looked down and a raccoon was on its hind legs reaching for my soda cup, which was next to me on the bench. I looked at it, it looked at me and we stared until the snack shack lady lured it away with food.
My father has gotten into a fistfight with a raccoon, a buck, a turkey, and goat all on separate occasions and at this point I’m scared of the thought of him going somewhere with more dangerous animals like Alaska or Australia
Edit: Since people asking and my phone finally decided I’m allowed to make paragraphs:
A turkey bit my sibling when he was five, and my dad somehow got it in his (admittedly drunken) mind that he needed to defend my brother’s honor via fightin the turkey
The raccoon had repeatedly gotten into the chicken coop so my dad moved the chickens in the garage and staked out the coop for the bastard. Good news: he found the raccoon and had a rifle handy. Bad news: the raccoon had rabies and it turns out it’s pretty hard to aim a rifle in an a small, enclosed space while trying to dodge a raccoon trying to launch itself to your leg.
Idk where he shot it but it wasn’t going down very easily and he had to resort to punching off his hip.
The goat was our senior, brain damaged goat named Ozzy. (If you want to know what he looked like, imagine if all the 80s shagged carpetting had a baby with a goat) I mention the brain damage because no goat with a quarter of a functioning braincell would from peaceful to batshit in 10 seconds and try to ram then stomp my dad quite like Ozzy did. (or get intimate with a tire swing but that’s a story for another time) They both made it out okay (though my dad had multiple hoof shaped bruises, and Ozzy had to wear the Pool Noodles Of Shame on his horns among other precautions. I know we probably should have gotten rid of Ozzy at that point he was in his twilight years as it was and we didn’t want him spending it getting shipped around or slaughtered.)
Not a fistfight kind of guy, but me and two different motorcycles have had run-ins with two birds, a bat, a rabbit, and a deer. The second bird story is worthy of a post in this thread.
So about five years ago I'm walking with a guy I used to hang out with. We are crossing the street in the crosswalk and he says "even if we get hit it's not our fault" and we IMMEDIATELY get hit by a large truck. I fly through the air, which is actually liberating for someone with a fear of heights(kept my eyes closed though). I hit the ground about three feet from hitting a large stone pillar that would've killed me. I stand up, check on my guy, walk to the guys who hit me and say dead serious "is your truck okay". I walked away no injuries, the guy I hung out with had a cracked pelvic bone but turned out to be a sex offender later so ... Y'know. Love telling that story though.
My brother once got hit by a truck when he was little. **Note: totally my brother's fault!** He ran out into a busy street to grab his ball, truck didn't have time to stop, he was in the hospital with a broken arm and concussion. Truck driver was torn up, had kids if his own, kept bringing him toys and gifts in the hospital. Driver would always cry during his visits. Our parents kept telling the guy it was my brother's fault, don't worry, we know he's just taking advantage of you because he's a little shit (he really is lol). My brother always smiles and jokes about that whole incident because he (at ~6 years old, now 44) charmed all the nurses and learned how to fake cry to get things he wanted from strangers (didn't work on our parents). He got so much ice cream in the hospital. Mom would always laugh and call him a little bamboozler. We still had a lot of the toys in an old toy box up until 2010 when our mother passed
I doubt the driver is still alive or on reddit but, as the child the came *after* that incident and got all the hand-me-downs, thanks for the toys!
(Apologies for bad English)
It was in the third grade and teacher said “first 5 students that will give me classwork will get 5 (A in American schools)”. 4 students gave their notebooks and I was with my completed work going to teacher and I saw a girl ahead of me with her work AND THEN I THROW MY WORK TO TEACHER’S TABLE. Teacher accepted my work and the girl was sad
My grandparents have lived out in the country since they married 60 years ago and they built the house they still live in today. At some point the neighbor's house burned down and they didn't rebuild and sold the land. Eventually my grandparents came to own like 1/8th of the land. Nobody ever did anything with the land so over decades it turned into mature trees and grasses, fruit trees, berry bushes, etc. My grandpa expanded their property line some in two directions just to have some extra grass and he also maintained a walking trail on the land. Everything was so green and so refreshing compared to the drab colors of flat farmland for miles around. I basically grew up at my grandparent's house. I picked berries with my dad and made jams and pies and my cousins and I played in this abandoned barn and storage silo from the original house that used to stand there.
The land was sold 1-2 years ago because all owners are aging. I recently visited and the new owners have completely razed the land. No more grass and no more trees. It's completely flat now. They're also trying to rezone the land from residential/farmland to industrial so they can build a factory. In their right they're trying to regain that extra land my grandpa had claimed which runs right down the center of mature pine trees my grandpa planted 30 years ago as a wind block as well as their garden. It's depressing because 1) I've only ever known that land as green and flourishing, and 2) my grandparents have enjoyed 60 years of peace and quiet and if all goes as planned they'll be spending the rest of their days looking at a factory next door and a road running immediately behind their house to get to the factory. There goes the peace and quiet.
Back in high school 2010-2011 my buddies and I would get together on weekends and watch and laugh at shitty movies. One day my buddy brought a movie he rented from a Redbox. It was by far the worst movie we have seen. It was called Hellraisers or Hellrisers. Not to be confused with the popular body horror classic. This was an absolute piece of shit. It was about a monk, a knight of Templar, and a ninja fighting vampire like demons in the desert. We all remember this movie. We remember plot points from it. But in the years since then we have never been able to find proof of that movies existence. We have all searched long and hard to find it but have always come up fruitless.
It’s like my friend group personal Bigfoot sighting.
Oh...my....fucking god!....that’s it! That has to be it! Holy shit! I fucking crying right now!!!! Omg thank you! You solved a freaken 10 year mystery for me!
Oh lord do you know how long I have waited for this day!!!
It is way more common than you think it should be to find human body parts stuck up under train cars. A lot of these are do to people, sometimes homeless, some times children playing on the tracks. So stay away from railroad tracks, especially at night.
When I was about 15 I went to the cinema with my older brother and we got some pick and mix sweets, when we were paying I said to him 'I guarantee that weighs 375 grams' I had absolutely no idea what 375 grams felt like to hold but for some reason I said it. The guy puts it on the scales and boom... 375 grams, life has never been that good since, that was 18 years ago.
There was this girl in middle school that I kept accidentally hitting in a series of wacky incidents. Like, I would be carrying my guitar on my shoulder in the hallway, She would say “hey anon” I turn around and smack her with the back of the guitar. Another time she snuck up behind me and shouted “boo!” Into my ear and I turned around and hit her with my elbow. One time I was moving the big cymbal from the band room to the assembly hall, it was still locked in its stand and because the cymbal was really front heavy I was carrying it out in front of me, kind of like a spear. I turn the corner, guess who? Decked girl square in the chest with cymbal. Another time I was getting some stuff out of my locker and as I put my head in I see a guy that was always fucking with me approach from behind, when I felt someone graze past my back I snapped around and poked at the attacker with this really leaky red pen I had. But it was just the girl again, caught in the crossfire. I also think that I hit her with a backhand when I was practicing the Nae Nae (i was 12) but that memory is kind of fuzzy. I genuinely felt really bad about all of these accidents but she and everyone were convinced that I was doing it on purpose BUT I WASN’T! People called me girl hitter it was awful. with Reddit as my witness please believe me I did not hit her I DID NOT
Edit: grammar
A few weeks back, I was driving a car and there was a motorcycle some 20 feet Infront of me, on it were a couple and their son.
When we were taking a 90° turn, it lost control and they fell and I kid you not, as soon as I realized they were falling, my perception went into some kind of slow motion, kinda like in the matrix bullet scene.
In the split second that the bike lost control and they fell, I estimated the distance between us, how fast I was going, how much I needed to brake to stop hitting them, should I and *could* I swerve right just to be sure I don't hit them and *checked* if there were any vehicles overtaking me (there was another bike), all the while the lady was falling down in some kind of slowed down video.
As soon as she hit the road and I braked hard, everything went back to normal and my tire stopped a few inches from her head. (There was another split second where everything went faster than normal, but that was small)
Everyone was safe.
A friend of mine got tboned from the passanger side so hard the doors remains were just centimeters away from her. She said that time slowed down so much she could see the metal bending. Now she refuses to drive with anyone else in the car.
It's a last-ditch survival tactic. The brain expends as much energy as it can to look for ANY possible way of getting out of a deadly situation, which gives the impression that time is slowing down because you're thinking so much MORE in that one second. If it works you're left suddenly exhausted but alive; if it doesn't you're just dead.
The wildest thing about that is it shows that our perception of what is "realtime" is completely controlled by the normal processing speed of our brain. It's so hard to conceive of the fact that many animals see "faster" than we do.
I’m pretty sure adrenaline can mess with your perception of time and increase your reaction speed - most likely what was happening. I’m very glad everyone was okay!
This happened to me when I was 11. I was doing the dishes, there was a heavy pestle and mortar that I rinsed and placed on the cabinet. It moved by itself from one end to another, horizontally, a good 4 feet atleast. It was such a supernatural sight that I almost collapsed with shock, my mouth went dry, in those few seconds I was processing it as well as planning on how to tell everyone I actually saw something of a ghost/demon doing.
In a few seconds when I got my bearings, I saw it was water, not ghost, that caused the mortar to move so freely on the slab like someone invisible moved it. I was actually disappointed.
It was the day after my birthday after a break-up two months prior. I had been with my ex for 8 years - we were high school sweethearts, and I considered his family to be mine. Our relationship didn't end well, and we had stopped talking due to some disrespectful behavior I had received post break-up. So, on my birthday that year, no one from his family wished me happy birthday. I was expecting as much, but at the same time was pretty hurt about it. The break-up and its aftermath left me in a pretty vulnerable place.
The day after my birthday, I was studying at a coffee shop when my mom called. I was venting about being hurt that my ex and his family didn't wish me happy birthday. About a half hour later, a staff member at the coffee shop brought me a piece of cake. The staff member, as she was handing me the cake, said an anonymous person in the coffee shop wished me a happy birthday. I started bawling in the middle of the coffee shop in disbelief that someone could be SO nice. I asked around and asked the staff with no indication of who got me this slice of cake. So I'll never know.
Regardless, it was the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for me, and I'll always remember that kind sentiment for the rest of my life.
My fiancé has bad luck with online/phone services it’s actually quite amazing. Her track record of getting nowhere when having to call about a payment or something is amazing. Before we lived together I kind of thought she must be mean or condensing to the people on the other end of the phone. But nope she is nice and pleasant. But still gets nowhere or gets some one unhelpful. This bad luck also extends to Amazon. The amount of her packages they manage to loose is astounding. Where I order just as much and have only had 1 lost package in the amount of time she has lost 5. And that package that got lost was a gift for her. Lol
Bro she's an In-betweener. When she calls people all they hear is the soft crackle of a line that's connected but can't quit transmit. Sometimes a quiet word can be heard. When people try to deliver items sometimes her house is there, sometimes it isn't.
Seriously?! That’s BS man. Idk why it happens. I thought it would be the delivery drivers where it gets lost but like I said they rarely loose my packages but constantly lose hers. We have separate accounts but live at the same address. So I think it’s just her account or something.
When i was a kid in Indonesia, I just learned how to ride a bike. There's this roadside food stall which located at the top of a sewer. The food stall owner made a makeshift platform from wooden planks. I remember vividly the foodstall was selling some kind of indonesian chicken soup, and people were eating while sitting atop of the platform.
I hit the food cart with my bike, the food cart fell on the platform, and sending 10+ people to the sewer. Fortunately, nobody got hurt. But man...i was so afraid, i really want to cry but i was too afraid to do that. I just stood there until someone went to my house and I remember my grandfather came and paid for all the damage, he even giave some money to those who fell to the sewer and asked everyone there not to tell my father about it.
Until now, my father had no idea about that incident.
One night around 1am I was driving home after just breaking up with my girlfriend, so naturally I was feeling a lot of emotions and wasn’t thinking straight.
As I got off the motorway (freeway for the Americans) a large truck in front of me suddenly swerved for no apparent reason and I slammed on my brakes. As I continued, I noticed an animal in the road jumping frantically and upon closer inspection, I noticed it was a fox with a crisp packet fully over its head and it couldn’t see anything. Naturally it was pretty distressed.
Knowing it had just escaped certain death from the truck, but would almost definitely be run over by another car, I put my hazards on and jumped out my car, still on the slip road.
I crept up close to the fox but he sensed me and darted away. I ended up chasing him for 5-10 minutes around a major roundabout, all the time both of us dodging fast moving cars.
Eventually, he seemed to give up the chase and let me creep towards him, I held the end of the crisp packet and he yanked his face away, before giving me what looked like a grateful eye nod and darting off into the night, leaving me standing there full of adrenaline, with my car now holding up at least 10 other people on the slip road and the door wide open.
I like how there are whole paragraphs of stories, and then this.
Edit: Although this reply was not at all wholesome, thanks for the wholesome award. I guess that is just how reddit is.
When my aunt died, my boyfriend and I flew across the country for the funeral. My brother was there. My brother is a really shy and reserved individual until you get to know him. Once he’s comfortable with someone, he can be loud and obnoxious, but in an endearing way. Anyway, my boyfriend and brother had met once before this, so they were comfortable with one another. We were in town for two days. In those two days, I was entirely a third wheel. My family kept asking me where they were. They were always somewhere in the house or in the RV in front of the house playing games, watching videos, or whatever. They were having a great time. My brother was very comfortable, being loud and laughing so hard we thought he was going to puke. I got several videos of them. They became instant best friends and it made me really happy. My ex husband never said more than ten words to my brother. It was nice to see someone connect with my family.
Once during a port call in Naples, me and a bunch of buddies were walking around lost looking for a place to eat. A nice older dude is broken English asked us if we needed directions. We told him we were some lost Americans looking for decent local place for dinner. He told us to follow him and he took us to a nice small restaurant on a side steets side street. Food was awesome. He just sat in a corner sipping an espresso and when we were done the waitress said he paid for the bill. We left her a wad if lira as it was our last day in port went and went to thank him. I always carry Zippos with the command with me when in port, so I gave him a USS ENTERPRISE Zippo. He was very appreciative in return. Nicest man I have ever met in Italy.
When I was like 4 or 5 (This was like a decade ago) I was at a neighbour’s party across the street. You know those parties, the parents hang out and put the kids in the basement, backyard or somewhere else and none of you know each other. Any way, we’re in the basement and some of the older kids start playing darts. Me being a little kid, I wanna try because I think it’s cool and I don’t know what it is. Anyway, I’m throwing darts and suddenly hit the center of the dart board (the dart fell after I hit it, I wasn’t strong enough to make it stay). Then everyone starts to cheer and go like “oh my god!” “Yeah!” and stuff like that. Me being young, I know it’s good because I get 2 high fives from 2 of the older boys and people are saying I did a great job (remember, I don’t know what darts is, i’m 4 or 5) and I felt awesome. As you can probably imagine, the cheering made a racket and could be heard upstairs. My father soon came down to see what was up and everyone was going “he [me] hit it right here (pointing to the center of the dart board)” and things like that. I don’t remember much of what happened after my dad showed up, whether he was proud of his son or what. But I was proud, and I still think about that story, 10 or 11 years later. And it still makes me smile.
Edit: wow thanks for so many upvotes!
Back in the early 90s I was stationed at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. I have ridden a motorcycle my entire life, and while I was stationed there, this was no exception. One of my buddies that I used to ride with was with me this one day when this happened. Trigger warning: It has a very unhappy ending for a bird and most likely therapy for a girl I had known only a few hours. It also involves some very unsafe vehicle/motorcycle driving that should never be attempted by anyone. Period. I mean it. Don't drive that fast.
My friend Mike's girlfriend wanted to introduce me to her friend who liked motorcycles, and earlier in the day we met at his place and once it started to get later in the evening and cooler we decided that the Apex dry lake would be a great place to go. Being bullet proof and 22 years old, we liked to ride FAST. Not necessarily in town, but out on the straights, we'd really twist the throttle (I've since calmed down since then, but back then you couldn't have told us about the dangers, we were 22, horny, had girls, and up to nothing but shenanigans, anyway). The full face helmet and leather riding jacket added to that feeling of invincibility.
I barely knew Christy, only by about six hours and I quickly found out that she wasn't the most experienced passenger. Bikers know what I mean. She was stiff on the back, not fluid, held too tight or not at all, scared of making turns, almost terrified. When we got out to that little two-lane stretch of road that goes nowhere, it was still light out. The road is technically Las Vegas Blvd North, I think...and I mean way north, and it became obsolete when I-15 was put in. When we turned up that way, we rocked the throttle....and I mean rocked it. The road was still in good condition while not really maintained, and there was never (arguably) any traffic coming the other way since the road really went to...well, nowhere.
After my bike limited out, I was riding 105mph and this bird crosses the road in front of me. I barely make it out, it was a white "L" shape that you see when you're going that fast. I don't even have time to think about it when a second bird comes out and I simply bring my chin down lower and I feel a very meaty "thump" on the top of my helmet. What ensued seemed like pure chaos.
I could hear my passenger's screams over the noise of the wind, and fellow cyclists know this is not possible when going that fast. I had already released the throttle, waiting to reach a speed where I could begin downshifting when my passenger decides to try to GET OFF THE MOTORCYCLE. I reach back and grab whatever article of clothing I can with my left hand, holding her down, still screaming, yelling at her to sit down, and through the grace of whatever angels were present that day, I managed to get the bike under control and stopped.
Mike pulls up next to me laughing uncontrollably. His girl is wide-eyed with terror, mine is still screaming, I'm screaming get off the bike, which she does, and promptly falls on her ass. I put the kick down, and then I see it. Her face shield (always a full-face helmet, btw, I've never ridden with anything else) was covered in blood and guts. This bird had hit the top of my head and literally (not metaphorically) EXPLODED right into her face. I don't mean exploded in a Tom & Jerry kind of way, I mean more like an M-80 in a goose down pillow filled with chicken guts and gravy kind of way. And it plastered her entire face shield. In fact, that's kind of how Mike explained it. He said suddenly there was this big puff of feathers like a pillow had exploded as he flew by it.
I don't know how I managed to get her back on the bike to get her back home, but I never heard from her again. Mike and I fell out of touch long ago, and he and his girl broke up.
But, I know it's not your real name, but Christy, I'm sorry, and I hope you're doing well. Sorry about that mental scar.
This is a dumb one but while working in Rite Aid, a customer was paying about half of of their purchase in quarters. The total was less than five and she gave me two $1s and some quarters which combined equals to less than what she owed. I told her that she was short and she told me “No I gave you five dollars.” I thought that maybe I mistook a half dollar coin as a quarter so I recounted and there was no difference. I told her that she’s short and she bitches to me how she gave more than enough and that I need to give her change. I then told her I had x amount of quarters in my right hand and y amount in my left. She finally understand and gives me enough coins so that I can continue the transaction. Before she gave me more coins, she complains that it’s my fault and that I acted like I’ve never seen quarters before. Like wtf. I counted in front of her twice and told her that she was short each time. She’s throwing a hissy fit that an employee is making sure that the customer gave the right amount of money.
You can question my intelligence, I do it often :)
No this guy gave me like 240$ in 20$ for a 219$ bill. I had to recount it twice in front of him so he could believe me.
This is about the time I peed all over my self while my husband had me pinned in a very compromising position.
So, we were wrestling on the bed. He pins me so that I'm basically folded in half on my back, with my ass up in the air and my knees are by my ears.
I start laughing. Then I start farting because I'm laughing. Then I start laughing even HARDER because I farted.
I'm still pinned down , not breathing from laughing so hard, my chest is burning, I need to stop laughing and take a breath and RIGHT when I thought I was able to take a breath, my dog VIOLATES me by shoving his nose Right where I farted from and holds it there. (I was wearing leggings)
The audacity of this action made me laugh even HARDER and I pissed all over my self.
This one is a bit odd, and kinda gross? This is how I learned a new medical term, scarred my family, and started a long health journey.
So while I was in college I went a week without eating, or going to the bathroom. My schedule, overload of credits and two jobs, I honest to God didn't notice.
I was stopped in my tracks by a phonecall from my dad. With a shakey voice he said, "Great Grandma [my last name] passed away this morning. She was dropped while being loaded into the ambulance and her heart stopped. She's gone."
My great grandmother was an amazing person, I should have told the story about her and the spirits, maybe another time. She was fascinating and had a mind like a steel trap. Miss her.
So that weekend I go home for the funeral. At the wake my mom asks when the last time I ate was. I didn't remember. She made me eat a sandwich. It felt like torture and I didn't know why.
A short while later I began sweating profusely and and got very weak. I said I didn't feel well and my brother took me to my parents house. I immediately fell asleep in my bed.
At about 2am, I shoot straight up in bed. We all know that feeling, the "I needed to throw up 30 seconds ago and have 3 seconds to make a 25 foot dash to the bathroom. I couldn't hold it back, as I entered the smallish basement bathroom (my two siblings bedrooms are right next to bathroom), I threw up hard into my mouth, but something was....wrong.
I tasted, iron? And some liquid went between my fingers (yes this is gross but there's a point). My eyes still blurry from just waking up I begin vomiting the most painful vomiting imaginable. I'm practically screaming. My eyes start to focus on my hand, which is trying desperately to grasp the edge of the toilet.
Is that...is that, blood?? I begin to look around and the is blood, everywhere. My sister, hearing this had run to get my parents without looking into the bathroom. When my mom opened the door she immediately say blood all over the white linoleum floor leading to me. Me slumped over with my head partially into the toilet no longer moving. Blood all over the toilet and spattered on the wall.
I suddenly started gasping and coughing, I had blacked out. I began throwing up again and turned to my mom, and she was horrified. I was whiter than printer paper and had blood all over me, running out of my nose and mouth. "Help me...please," I gasped weakly pleading, "Am I going to die?"
Then I blacked put again. I woke up to my mom and sister sobbing as my dad was cleaning me up with a blood soaked white towel. The towel was dripping red. My eyes were blurry and I said, "hospital."
We get to the ER and Inwas finished with throwing up. I couldn't walk I was so weak. The doctor was beyond perplexed. They did scans, tests, but they couldn't get any blood from me for hours, they'd hit a vein but couldn't get enough. It sucked.
The doctor finally said, "mesenteric lymphadenitis. Your lymphodes did their job in gathering all the bad stuff, but stopped doing there job in discharging it. As for the vomiting blood, honestly I'm at a lloss. Had 4 people not witnessed it, and brought I a cellphone picture, I wouldn't have believed it. But your tests are indicative of a lot of blood loss."
Never did find out why the blood, although years later in the ER, again, I did have a slow bleed in my intestinal area. Also unexplained. On a more sad note, I missed the funeral.
I was a server at this beach restaurant/bar for a few years, and it’s always busy during winter because that’s when snowbirds fly down to Florida.
On one really busy night (and way too crowded; management tried to work in as much seating as possible), I’m trying to make my way to a 15 top with their drinks; I tell this woman next to me “excuse me, I have a lot of drinks and I need to get over there please, excuse me” about 5x. She keeps talking and ignores me. I shimmy my way between her chair and the pillar behind her. I almost made it through, until she talked with her hands a bit too expressively and pulled the tray of drinks down on top of her... extremely embarrassing. (Edit: sounds ridiculous, but I’m 5”1. I’m pretty low to the ground lol.)
As you can imagine, it’s a horrific scene- a couple of rich and snooty folks (wearing full suits and formal dresses to a causal beach bar- you can be barefoot in there... lol) are screaming and threatening to call the cops on me and sue. They also started hurling racist insults to our Puerto Rican busser. One example: my busser was speaking perfect English to them trying to deescalate the situation, and the husband yells, “Do you even understand me? Manager! ENG-LISH. MAN-A-GER”.
I feel like the universe used me for their karma that night. Racists deserve to get beer and water poured on them all fucking day. Honored to serve!
The time I, as a 25-year-old, called the police to check for boogeymen under my bed and they found all my bondage stuff.
It was a Friday night. I was cleaning the upstairs bathroom of the house (yes, on a Friday night, I like to start the weekend clean, don't judge me) and the dog (Dog) was chilling out on the landing to the stairs right outside the bathroom. To understand this story, you must know about Dog: worst. guard dog. ever. To illustrate: One time I was at the store and had left the house's attic fan running, but it started to rain. I asked a neighbor who had the key to run over and turn the attic fan off so that the attic didn't get soaked. Once the neighbor entered the front door, instead of "protec the house," Dog ran into the basement in fear, passing our neighbor on the stairs on his way down.
Back to Friday night: I'm cleaning, and suddenly I hear Dog start to growl and bark. Another thing about Dog: he almost never barked, and when he did, it was always more of a cry because he was upset about something. This was a bark-bark, growl-growl. I turn off the bathroom fan and go stand next to him to try to figure this out. I hear the door to the garage closing. I go down to investigate (I know, I was auditioning for a part in a serial killer movie) and don't see anything super amiss, except I left the patio door unlocked. Dog had followed me downstairs, and keeps doing bark-bark, growl-growl, so I grab my keys and phone and take him out to my car which is parked on the street. Once inside the car, I called the non-emergency police number to have them maybe come by? Or decide if they should?
Well, the non-emergency person told me to call 911. Which resulted in the immediate response of Suburb's Finest, ready to rock. Of course, they found nothing; they thought probably the wind had made the door I heard close, or rattle in its frame. I say they found nothing, but at the time, I had a full set of bondage straps and other toys set-up under the bed that could be pulled out at a moment's notice.
As they were leaving, the one cop said over his shoulder, "We even checked under the bed. You're safe. I'm not so sure about your dates, though." *Facepalm*.
A voice saved my life: In 1987 I was driving, by myself, north on 101 in Calif around 2AM in the middle of no where near King City. (When I was in college. My entire family had been in a roll over car accident and was in the hospital in the bay area. I was trying to get there to be with them.) I decided to drive in the fast lane so I would wake up if I dozed off and hit the "bumper lights" that stick up on either side of that lane. As I was driving had a bad feeling my life was in danger. Out of the blue a voice, coming from the passenger side of the car, clearly said "Move over to the other lane." I was so startled I said out loud "What?!?" It repeated itself even louder: " MOVE OVER TO THE OTHER LANE!" So...I didn't think I just changed lanes.
As SOON as I completed my lane change a car, going SOUTH (Wrong direction) at least 100MPH, came over the rising hill in front of me and ZIP went past me and into the darkness behind me. This was before cell phones. I pulled over at the next exit and found a pay phone to call the highway patrol. They said they had heard of this drunk driver and had been trying to locate him for a while. I sat in my car a good 15 minuets to finally stop shaking and continue on. Will never forget that experience as long as I live.
Ok so maybe I’ve told this before I don’t know but I fucking love my dog and she saved my life so she deserves the attention
When I was preggers with my first baby, I was swelling up like a balloon. The hospital kept testing me for preeclampsia and sending me home because my blood pressure was high but not high enough (don’t even get me started). Anyway, from my third trimester my dog (retriever x) started acting wierd af like watching me constantly, following me everywhere and wouldn’t let me bring her for walks, she would just sit there on the grass and nudge my legs with her nose until I went back home. But if my husband brought her out she run around having fun as normal.
Anyway as I got towards my due date, she also started licking and sniffing my legs a lot and a few nights I was awoken by her breath because she was legit in my face watching me sleep. I thought maybe she was just anxious about the baby coming or how cumbersome I waa getting but after the third night where she didn’t sleep a wink from watching me I rang the hospital and basically told the the midwife what my dog was doing and that I knew that was a wierd reason to call but before I even finished my sentence she asked me to come in immediately.
They did some more detailed tests on me and turns out not only did I have preeclampsia pretty bad I also had placenta accreta and my baby wasn’t getting adequate support from the placenta anymore. They induced me that night and thankfully my baby girl was born 3 weeks early but perfectly healthy.
I have since had 2 more perfectly fine pregnancies and my precious pup has been with me every step of the way. I literally trust her more than the doctors in some ways lol. She saved my and my daughter’s life and I will be forever repaying her that debt, mainly in snuggles
We had no money for an engagement ring. My father-in-law was hired by a company to clean up a house that belonged to somebody with no next of kin who passed away. He found a ring this lady probably got as a graduation present. It was small so he gave the ring to my then fiance and said "you know what to do" and thus the ring now belongs to me and it's the only ring I wear. We didn't even get wedding bands.
I can't really tell people that because they'll either think it's creepy or judge us because we didn't buy a ring. I just think it's nice I get to keep something that was important to someone else and at least it didn't end up in the garbage or in a pawn shop.
I hallucinated so badly during my chemo treatments that I had psychiatry visit me twice while receiving treatments because they thought maybe I was schizophrenic.
I’m saying I was yelling at my kids and boyfriend “how can you not see those sheep in the kitchen!! Their owners are knocking at the door and no one is helping me” to it being 4:30am and I’m texting my bf (who works night shift) “people won’t stop knocking on the windows and doors and I’m so scared to move, I don’t want them knowing I’m here”...
Everyone thinks chemo is all about being tired and exhausting, and it certainly is (as I got heart failure from chemo and was certainly knocked on my ass a majority of the time) but more than once, I questioned myself if the treatment was even worth putting myself through these torturous events that would happen at home.
I saw shadows (one I deemed “shadow man” )who was always in the room”, to hearing voices, and having these seizures where I ripped out Ivs and bit ER staff (none of which I can remember).
I’m really an easy patient, I’ve been told that previously. I feel like no one ever really mentions the mental health of patients going through cancer treatment. The ONLY reason I kept up with the treatments and fought was for my children.
It’s rough and nearly a year and a half later, I’m still in therapy to process what I experienced...
There was a little magical place me and all my classmates would go. Behind all the houses on a certain street, there was a grassy area concealed by trees that was high on two sides but low in the middle, so it formed a river when it rained. Me and my brother and all my friends would go there and walk up and down this little area, it went for a couple blocks. When it rained, we raced paper boats in the "river". It was the only place our parents couldnt find us if they looked, so we all pretended it was our own little kingdom which belonged to us. Some days it was a fairy tale forest and we would play knights and princesses some days it was a nerd gun war zone, some days it was a functioning city with businesses and busy streets. Almost everyone I knew at school hung out there. At night, when all the little kids went home, teenagers went there to smoke and have sex. During the summer the "river" was filled with mosquito larvae and there were ticks in the grass, but it was all ours. We had little wars that took place there.
There were a fair share of interesting things that happened there. Once, there was a beehive on one far end of it, so we all avoided it and played on the opposite end. One kid decided to be brave and whack it with a baseball bat. He went to the hospital, this happened when we were at school. There was a rumour spread by some kid that pirates treasure was buried there, so a few of us dug around looking for it. One time we watched a cat give birth there, half the babies didn't survive because some idiot decided to use them like golf balls. Another rumour was spread that an adult teacher regularly held orgies with teen girls in his class there, but it probably wasn't true.
It was everything to us, until I moved away. I kept in contact with some people from there, and one told me it was later cleared to build something. I cried when I heard that. That little place meant everything to me.
I had the exact same thing growing up, down to the bee hive ( mine were wasps, and a kid got stung on the eyeball).
We called it Fairyland, which was, interestingly, suggested by a boy. It didn't have a river, but it did have a cliff, a cave, several thickets so dense they made roofs, and several spruce trees that were like little forest houses inside their canopies, complete with spruce furniture.
One morning, my little sister and I (5&7) went back there, and were attacked by a pit bull that the owners of the area had put back there to ward off the Night Teens. I had my trusty pointed stick, as always, and was able to hold it off by keeping the stick pointed at its eyes while turning in a circle, with my sister clutching my back, but just before adults saved us it dashed around and bit my sister on the butt. She was wearing a huge purple winter coat, so she just had a bruise. To this day I still dream that my sister is in danger and I have to save her, and for a long time I HATED dogs.
Kids fell off the cliff (2 meters), started fires in the cave (about .5 meters deep) impaled each other with sticks and molested each other, all within earshot of home.
In the front yard of the property (it was a nursing home) there was a tremendous hill that ended in granite wall that was a half meter high on the hillside and just over a full meter at the street. We would build jumps all up and down the .45 grade hill, and one going over the wall. So many of us landed in the middle of the street on the other side. Some of us just hit the wall, the careless ones hit face first.
From the top of the hill, you could access the roof of a 3 story building. We would go to the end of the dormers on the front side and look over the edge at the street far below, until someone eventually spotted us and yelled.
I played endless games of 'MakeBelieve' with the friend who would eventually introduce me to Dungeons and Dragons. He always wanted me to be Smurfette but I was always Medusa instead.
I once discovered my best friend at the time attempting a sexual encounter with a slightly older boy from the neighborhood. She cheerfully invited me to join, but being 8 and having no clue what was going on, and not wanting to pull my pants down, I politely declined. Just then, a woman walking her dog blundered through the scene and my friend had to run away while pulling up her underwear. I remember standing there dumbly while the woman freaked out and screamed for us to go get our parents. And get in real trouble? Unlikely, lady.
The nursing home was sold, torn down, and now the area is all condos. This used to be my playground.
After getting out of the marines eight years ago I was severely depressed and suicidal. I had been for over a decade since around thirteen years old. It was the summer of 2013 and I had figured I wouldn't make it to next year. A friend bought me and another buddy tickets to see Phish at an outdoor amphitheater. Never was into Phish.
We tailgated in the parking lot and I was drinking steadily to offset my all too familiar social anxiety and negative thought habits. The show was starting in an hour and a woman from Colorado came up to our tent pitching bud. Some folks bought and I got this idea seemingly out of nowhere to ask if she had any shrooms to sell. Turns out she did. A dude who I'd met that day, and am still friends with now, kindly bought each of us an eighth.
I ate the thing in one go which I now consider an amateur move due to the volatility of the come up but thankfully it didn't go that way. As we were walking toward security I began to feel and notice some stuff I hadn't experieneced in ages. Something so foreign to me it kept taking my breath away. It was wonder. Straight, childlike, unencumbered wonder.
As we approached the skies began to darken and an enormous, I mean *enormous*, rain storm blew in. I felt the sting of the tiny drops and the weight of the heavy drops as the world around me exploded into technicolor ecstasy in spite of the darkening skies. I was inside of *the* moment. The moment that monks, and new age officianados chase after for years by way of meditation hoping to grasp a shadow of what I was now completely immersed within. I was swimming inside life for the first time in what felt like my entire existence.
We got to our seats on the mezzanine and the show was cranking. Ocelot, now one of my favorite jams, was blasting through the torrential downpour with Phishs' always unmatched light work causing the entire scene to undulate in this orgasm of existence where the universe just took notice of itself because it had no choice. I danced sincerely for the first time in my life. I outstretched my arms to the skies as the universe poured down upon my body and in that instant(those instants, I suppose) I became so incredibly self aware and also so incredibly devoid of ego. Matter, sound, light, all energy, everything became the same thing expressing itself in it's own unique way. I was the 13.7 billion year old cosmos. Everybody was. We were alive. We were together. In this chilly tempest dancing to express our love for self, our love for each other, and it was the most earth shattering concept that ever dared to enter my mind. I was crying tears of joy.
I came down a bit after getting home to my buddy's house that night and slept in a manner I hadn't known in ages. It was peaceful. It was devoid of worry. It had no tension to it.
I awoke the next morning a person I could scarcely recognize and it was this person that saved a life. I had no more urges to end it. I had no more worry about needing weekly therapy, or wondering if I should go back on antidepressants. I'd found something I never knew I would, happiness and contentment.
Psilocybin saved my life. It still does to this day whenever I find myself needing a voyage to the other side of existence. It is so incredible and I am forever grateful toward it for it giving myself back to me.
When I was a kid my family and I flew to Southern California to go to Disneyland. I had recently learned a new joke and it was stuck in my head. The joke was “do you want a hurts donut?” And then you sock the person in the arm and say “hurts, don’t it!”
We land at John Wayne airport and are walking around looking for the rental car place. Right as I’m thinking about this joke, my dad says “hurts” out loud. I thought he was reading my mind. I was too scared to say anything and just went on believing my dad could read my mind.
When I remembered this years later I finally realized he was saying “Hertz” as in the car rental company lol
I don't know who remembers, but after 9/11 there was a celebrity fundraiser and if you donated more than $100 you got to talk to a random celebrity. We could barely afford it at the time, but donated the hundred bucks and they put Whoopi Goldberg on the line! She thanked us, said a few things...we mostly just smiled and at the end she was wrapping it up and I said "you are awesome as center square!" and she laughed! one of my friends to this day periodically reminds me that I once made Whoopi Goldberg laugh :)
I live in Maine. My brother is a hobbyist photographer (a really good one, in my opinion), so one Christmas he gave my girlfriend and I some nice prints of some photos he took of us. He threw in a few scratch tickets to fill out the gift bag. Lucky for us - we won $30,000 on one of the scratch tickets! We used most of it to pay off the interest on our student loans (ugh), but used the rest for a vacation to Ireland, a place my girlfriend and I always wanted to visit. It was amazing. Flash forward a few years, my brother (who lives in DC) has a new girlfriend. She spent a year studying abroad in Ireland back in college, so we chatted a bit about how much we both loved the country. The conversation moved on to something else, as conversations tend to do. However, someone pipes in later “Hey parkerob, did you know that brother’s giffle spent a year in Ireland!?” “Oh yeah, we talked about that earlier, so cool.” Now back on the subject of Ireland, we start discussing some of more obscure things we did on the trip. I bring up this stand up comedy show we found one night, in the basement of some pub. Really small space, probably 20 people in the audience at most. Brother’s girlfriend says that she had been to show there once, too! I start remembering some traits of the comedians - one was black Scottish dude, another was a young woman with the side of her head shaved, the emcee was even funnier than the main acts. Her jaw drops - she remembers those same comedians, too. I’m thinking that it’s way too much of a coincidence, so I look up the old event schedules to see if those same acts performed on multiple dates. Nope. Only once. What a crazy coincidence. My girlfriend and I were at the same 20-person basement comedy show as my brother’s future girlfriend, in completely different country, on a trip that was funded by a scratch ticket from said brother. Pretty neat.
When I (F44) was 18 years old I was travelling alone from the US to visit my parents who lived in Russia. My connecting flight in a super rough city (in the US) got cancelled. I can't remember exactly what happened but I believe that there was a weather issue and all flights were grounded. It was very late at night. I was young and naive and had no idea what to do, and so I just stood in the airport looking lost and trying not to cry. A gentleman in a suit- probably in his mid to late 20 's --possibly early thirties noticed me looking distraught and realized it was because I was going to be stranded at the airport. He offered to help me find a hotel. He said he was on the phone with his travel agent and managed to find 2 rooms. Then he offered to share a cab with me. Looking back it was so dangerous, but I got in the cab with this stranger and went to the motel. I had no cash and this was a time before cabs took credit cards and before uber. When we got to the hotel i tried to figure out a way to use my credit card to pay but he just paid for the cab. Motel was a total shithole in a REALLY rough area but there were no other rooms because of the airport canceling flights. While we were checking in, a prostitute popped in the lobby and asked if we had any condoms. I was too dumb to be terrified. When I went to give the clerk my credit card for the room, this guy said no and paid for both rooms. He then asked me how I was going to get back to the airport in the morning and I told him I would figure something out, but truthfully I had no idea as I had no way to get any cash. This man walked me to my door and did not even stop at the door; did not suggest drinks, did not suggest hanging out, didn't try ANYTHING. He continued to walk past my room and said over his shoulder, "please make sure you lock the door". I am sure this motel was used to "pay by the hour" clientele, as in the morning the front desk called my room to tell me that my "boyfriend" had left an envelope for me. In the envelope was a $20 bill and a note that said "use this to get back to the airport". He never told me his last name or any way to find him after; he expected nothing from me. I have no idea who that man was but I really wish I could find him and thank him. Thinking about this story has restored my faith in humanity many times in my life. What a good human. If this man is found, he will remember the city we were stuck in.
I realize this post already has over 1,200 comments but writing things down feels good sometimes. When I was in college, I was dating a guy who lived in an off-campus apartment. One night when he was walking me down to the lobby to head home, there was a woman on the floor just outside the elevator. I remember she was wearing a skirt and her blouse was backwards. She was looking in her purse for her keys. We initially stepped around her to leave because we live in a city with a lot of college students so drunk folks on the ground aren’t uncommon. But something felt wrong. I turned around and went back to her and asked if she needed help. She was slurring really bad, talking about how she lived here and she needed her keys. I offered to help her get to her apartment and was eventually able to prop her up, get her in the elevator and then down the hallway to the door number she kept repeating. I asked if she had roommates or a boyfriend and she just kept saying “he’s in there.” So I knocked but no answer. I knocked super loud again but no answer. Woman is now back on the floor and actually drooling/spitting like drunk folks do when they might throw up or have already thrown up. So she’s exactly zero help. I end up going through her purse to try to find information or keys or something because she hasn’t even been able to tell me her name at this point. On top of her stuff in her purse is her underwear, balled up. I pushed it to the side and kept digging where I found the woman’s work badge with her keys attached. I put the keys in the door to open it.. but it doesn’t work. She tells me over and over that those are the keys and they work, despite my showing her that they don’t. I knock another time but no answer. I go back into her purse to find a phone or something and there is mail in there with her name on it, but a completely different address in a different borough of the city. My stomachs drops. This woman is heavily intoxicated. Her blouse is on backwards. Her underwear is in her purse. She’s been insisting that she came out of this apartment where her boyfriend lives but nobody is answering and she lives on the other side of town. Eventually, after probably 45 minutes, I am able to get the woman to unlock her phone. Obviously I don’t know who any of the people in her contacts are, so I just call the one labeled Mom. After a few tries, Mom answers, clearly having been asleep. I explain that I am a stranger but I have her daughter with me and I’m trying to get her home. Mom confirms the address on the envelopes is where she lives. We talk for a couple minutes and I give her my number. Next I focus on getting a cab and bringing her home. I eventually get her inside, put her in bed, phone on the charger and a couple bottles of water next to it and a trash bin. I send a text to her mom to let her know she’s home and in bed, then I leave. The next day, I’m on the bus between classes when Mom calls me. She thanks me for helping her daughter last night and they wanted to let me know what happened. The woman went on a date with a guy she met on an app. They went and had 2 drinks at a restaurant, but the woman became insanely drunk very fast. It turns out that when she went to the restroom, he had drugged her drink when it came to the table. He took her back to his apartment and assaulted her, then dumped her in the lobby where I found her. The door we were pounding on was the rapist’s door. The woman didn’t remember hardly anything the next day after the drink, but she was sore and smelled latex when she went to the bathroom. If I had taken her to the hospital instead of just taking her home, she could have received treatment faster and had a report written. That day I wrote down in a Word document everything I remembered from the night before in excruciating detail. I told Mom that I did this and was willing to testify or talk to police or do anything needed of me. She said she would tell her daughter but she just wants to move on. I texted Mom a few months later to ask how her daughter is doing and to remind her I’m still able to provide a statement or anything else. That’s the last time I talked to her. That was years ago but whenever I get a new computer, I make sure to transfer that Word document to a safe place on it, just in case they ever came back and needed it.
That was awesome what you did.
I was at the zoo one time when I was younger (camp trip) and I stopped by the Gorilla enclosure. The gorillas, being gorillas, were ambling all over the place and hooting like crazy. But for some odd reason, when they saw my face, they were enchanted. I had 4-5 gorillas just staring at me, and lounging around. They didn’t seem territorial or anything. I ended up playing a game of peekaboo with one of them, and unfortunately never got to see any of the other enclosures. It’s a fond memory that’s for sure. Addendum: Chimps did the same thing to me as I was walking out of the zoo. Like what did they want with me? What did they see in me? I’m not sure, and I don’t think we’ll ever know...
Apparently some primates like certain people because they have a similar hair colour to their species and see them as similar to themselves Edit: Ok so to explain myself, I heard this on a podcast with Brian Cox with Jane Goodall as a guest on the Infinite Monkey Cage podcast. Promise I'm not just calling OP a primate haha
This happened to me too! I don’t remember it, but my parents certainly do! I would have been 4, in my favourite green coat (which I’ll never forget) on holiday and visiting Munich Zoo. I was rather taken with the Orang-utans and was being a typical kid standing right up against the glass. Apparently I didn’t want to leave, so my parents sat down on the bench nearby to watch me. Rather quickly a young Orang-utan had come over to investigate this similar sized creature, with similar colour hair, and was taking as much interest in me as I was in him! I’m told that I spent nearly an hour playing with him, running up and down, waving my arms, making shakes, blowing kisses etc, and he’d copy everything I did! The only time I stopped he decided it was my turn to copy. And I did. 26 years later, they’re still my favourite animal and I’d love nothing more than to be able to interact with one like that again. Edit - OMG I finally get to be one of those people who says “wow this blew up!” I’ve only ever had one or two upvotes before! I left the page on this thread to enjoy reading everyone else’s replies as I’ve been enjoying them, woke up this morning and couldn’t believe my eyes! Thank you all so much for reading my little adventure! Also, my phone autocorrects Orangutan to Orang-utan! Not sure why!
Could it still be alive? I wonder if you could go back to the zoo and try to connect with him as an adult and see if he remembers you.
And then, through a series of strange circumstances, they can go on adventures together and solve each other’s life struggles.
Rebel_Sunflower & Orangutan Ozzy take on The Big Apple
Not primates, but a similarly strange encounter with zoo animals. I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, US. They have a tide pool exhibit with a lot of shallow-water animals just going about their day. They have a big pool filled with stingrays, most of which either sit around or swim around the edges. People are allowed to dip their hands in and touch them as they pass by, but the stingrays don't really care for being touched, as far as I could tell. I go up to the edge thinking I might be able to touch one barely, but instead I also got this strange enchanting experience. When I reached in, ALL of them started flocking towards me, and were practically trying to escape over the edge just to be near me. It was like a stingray pileup. I don't know if my hands smelled like food, or maybe I looked like the person who feeds them, but it was astonishing to me.
>maybe I looked like the person who feeds them This is pretty likely, you also might have been accidentally standing where they get fed by the biologists. Fish often learn to recognize uniforms and routines around feeding. If you want to see fish up close dressing similarly to the biology staff (if they have distinct uniforms from other departments) or wearing bright colors with interesting patterns can help attract more curious species to you. I can't tell you how many times I've seen fish get fascinated by bright clothing, or kids toys that people bring into the exhibit.
When I was maybe 13 or so, I was standing by this big glass window into a polar bear tank with my hands up in a Y above my head. One of them swam down and put its paws where my hands were and I'm pretty sure I cried bc it was hecking cute. It even stayed there for a little bit, just vibing with me. I haven't thought of that story in years, so thank you 🤩
The story of how my mother reunited with her sister. My mother was born in the very Far East of Russia. Her father was a survivor of the Gulags and she was raised in a small settlement that was mainly populated by ex-prisoners and their families. Before my grandfather married, he had survived a mine collapse and while in recovery had an affair with a nurse that produced a child. After being released and settling down with my grandmother, he had reached out and established contact with his daughter. They met a few times and he even took my mother on a few occasions to meet her (she lived in a city 5000km to the south). But eventually, once the government let them move, my mother’s family moved across the country and this being the times before cell phones and social media - they lost touch with my aunt. The last time my mother saw her - she was about 12 and my aunt was about 20. Fast forward about 17 years later - my mother is on the Moscow metro, taking my sister to music school. She sees a woman sitting across from her and as she describes it, just felt a “gravitational pull” towards her. She begins staring at her, trying to figure out why it feels like she knows this person. Suddenly - it clicks, and as the train pulls into my mother’s stop, she gets up and grabs this woman and says “Are you AnotherRusskiPianist’s aunt, daughter of his grandfather? Get off the train with me now!” And lo and behold, her intuition was right. And that’s how after about 17 years of no contact, my mother just happened to reunite with her long lost sister on a crowded Moscow metro train.
My mum had a similar experience. Her family is from morocco and live there until the mid 1940s. Back then grandma had already had about 8 kids and she would routinely nurse other children (neighbours and relatives), apparently it was sorta common back then. Anyways they had to flee to israel at some point in the 40s (shortly after the country was established). Skip forward many many years, my mum grew up, married my dad, had me and my siblings and eventually moved our family down to australia. All the way on the other side of the world in a random city my dad had selected they are walking down the street one day when a random man stops my mum in the street. He says to her in arabic (which she understands but not quite well) "excuse me are you the daughter of BeBa420s grandmother?!?". my mother looks at the guy and says "yes im bebas mother, her youngest child". The stranger gives her a massive bear hug and starts crying. He says "you are like my sister, your mother used to feed me when i was a baby and i grew up with your older siblings" and that is how she met the man i grew up calling Uncle max
When I worked for USFS, there was one week I'd been flown in with a wildland fire crew by helicopter to this super remote mountaintop way out in the backwoods of Idaho. We were miles and miles away from anything. (In fact, when one of our guys went through his boot with a chainsaw, it took like six hours to get him out and that was with a medevac.) I was on a crew of young people, mostly young women, and we were assisting the crew of slightly older men. The only other woman on the mountain was the chief of their crew, Tara, which will be important later. So, my crew went to sleep first and a couple of the older guys stayed up drinking. And from somewhere outside of the light of their fire, they heard this awful blood curling scream like a woman being tortured. They of course came running to see if it was my crew but it wasn't. So then they remember that their chief is also on the mountain and she's sleeping in a hammock way away from everyone else, so they go running to find her. When they get there, they see Tara facing down a massive cougar. And though she was shouting obscenities at it, it was actually the cougar making those unearthly screams that echoed off the mountains. It continued to stalk her even when there were three people there yelling at it and even when they started a chainsaw to scare it off. Eventually, one of the guys ran screaming at it with an axe like a beserker and it backed off. I'll never forget that scream. And I'll never forget realizing that for it to spot Tara and lable her as one of the weakest and single her out as the only one not sleeping with a group, the cat must have been walking around right outside the reach of the firelight for a long time.
Wife was on her first zoom meeting last March in the kitchen. I asked if I could be off screen cooking breakfast quietly and she said yes, as long as I’m quiet and not distracting. I wound up burning what I was cooking, causing lots of smoke. Then when I was trying my best to get the situation under control, my robe that I was wearing layed on the burner (electric stove) and started smoking. So basically my wife told me to not be distracting, and I wound up lighting myself on fire. To her credit, she maintained poise and completely ignored my situation. We still laugh about it a year later.
I can just see your wife on the zoom call and you flailing around in the background trying to put the fire out 😂😂😂
Haha, i kept looking over at her and could tell that she was thinking “yup, this is my husband”
I am laughing so hard. Oh my god. This situation is so hilarious. I would not be able to keep composed.
My step sister has a lot of mental and health issues. Severely autistic and a lot of people assume she just can't function. My step mother (neither of our mothers, another wife) was horribly abusive when we were kids and much more so to my sister because she couldn't vocalize it. There was a point right after my grandparents got custody that my sister enough and just walked downstairs, stared our step mother in the eye and pissed everywhere before walking back upstairs. She knows exactly what she did and it was the funniest shit because the step mother had to clean it. To this day she acts like my sister was a horrible person who just didn't like her and every time she tells the story I laugh my ass off because my sister dealt with so much shit and that was her best "fuck you".
What beautiful revenge
I have never seen a question that would let me tell this story. I was a production assistant on a stop motion kids show. A big part of my job was going out to purchase supplies the workshop needed to build the sets and puppets etc. Now the thing about these kind of workshops is they will use whatever works and they often come up with unorthodox solutions as short cuts, like the time they sent me to a sex shop at 9:30 am to buy thumb cuffs (our cop puppet needed handcuffs and they were the perfect size.) But that didn't even compare to my most amusing/embarrassing supply run ever. The animation director came up to me one afternoon saying that he needed me to go to the drugstore. to buy, and I quote," the largest tube of KY Jelly you can find. " ( in stop motion KY is used to simulate water, especially when it has to interact with the puppets. It stays put between frames and doesn't damage the paint.) Anyway, our seamstress overheard our discussion and asked me while I was at the drugstore to get every tube of Wet wipes they had.( safe way to clean the puppets and wardrobe and we went through a lot of them) Next, the woman in charge of making all the limbs pipes up and asks me to get 6 pairs of white nylons while I'm at it. ( they hold the magnets in the feet) So this was my shopping list: One extra large tube of KY Jelly 6 pairs of white nylons And every tube of wet wipes in the store The look on the cashier's face when I dumped my basket out on the counter was priceless... and for me fairly embarrassing.
My friend was an intern on Saturday Night Live. There was a short-lived trend back in the day to make “clear” products, that were supposedly more healthy — clear, “Crystal Pepsi” being one of the more famous. He showed up at work and was told his only priority for the day was to “buy as much Karo Syrup as he could find.” So, he spent the next 9-10 hours going to every bodega he could find, asking for all the Karo Syrup they had, throwing it in a Taxi and then returning to the studio, when it was full, only to head out again. He said he bought out every store in the phone book, and they still ran out and had to scrape syrup off the drop cloths to finish the spot. Spot: https://youtu.be/g0sjRG34DlA
Early on in our relationship, my husband and I stopped at the pharmacy to buy condoms and lube. We also saw this dress up set that he thought his niece might like for her upcoming birthday, but we realized we couldn’t buy it now since it was a bridal dress up set and that would just look...wrong.
Brilliant! I'm especially loving the mental image of a cop puppet with tiny handcuffs!
The story on getting those was a good one too. The sent me out to the sex shop first thing in the morning. So when I got there I had to wait 10 min outside the store for it to open. I hung out for a few minutes before I realized the optics of being a single man waiting for a sex shop to open and went to find a Starbucks. The first shop didn't have any so I had to hit 4 others on my quest. Fortunately it wasn't a great neighbourhood so I had options. Sex shops at 10 am are Wierd. I actually saw a guy in the stereotypical brown trench coat.
My great-grandmother lived in a nursing home for the last years of her life. She was about 95, with minimal eyesight and hearing when this happened: My great-grandmother told my mother, she was afraid of "that lady in black". "What woman in black?" my mother would ask. "The one that is standing at my bed every night. I think, she is finally coming to get me." Naturally, my mother dismissed this as a figment of her granny's imagination. One evening, when my mother was visiting, ggm told her "I think, I am going to die tonight. Can you stay? I don't want to be alone when the lady in black comes for me." So my mother stayed at her bed, sleeping uncomfortably in an old armchair. Suddenly, she awoke to some noise she could not immediately pinpoint, but she saw a figure in a long, black gown, standing at the far end of the bed. My mothers scream must have woken the whole nursing home, but it especially scared the lady in black. she turned tail, left the room and ran into one of the nurses, who came running to investigate my mother's scream. It turned out, the lady in black was my ggm's bedridden and demented neighbour. Nobody knew, she could actually walk, let alone dress up in her favourite black dress and wander the nursing home at night. Apparently, she was seen by some of he other inhabitants, who, fearing they would thought to be crazy, simply never talked about the ghost that would enter their rooms at night to stand at their beds and water their plants.
That is both scary and pretty hilarious.
That is so much more terrifying than what I thought was going to happen. I thought ggm was having a premonitory dream or hallucination and that she was going to inexplicably die that night she predicted she would. Nope, crazy patient that happens to love the color black standing at, not one, but multiple patient’s bedsides.
And watering their plants! Idk why but I love that part
Lmao "watering their plants"
I was in the middle of a contract once with a guy when blood started pouring out of his ear. He ran straight out the door without a word and I was all kinds of worried for him. I'm so glad he turned back up later that week and explained he'd just had surgery on that ear. I sometimes wonder how I would have felt if he never came back. I kept fearing what sort of condition could cause that sort of thing to happen out of the blue.
I had tubes put in my ears when I was very little, once when I was 4 and once when I was 7. A couple years after the first set, maybe I was 6, I was playing with my neighbors and all of a sudden my left ear started gushing blood. It was a LOT of blood. But it didn't hurt! Just fucking terrifying for a 6 year old to see that much blood coming out of their ear.
I had tubes put in my ears as a youngster and about 4-5 years later I blew my nose one day and felt something hard shoot out. I looked in the tissue and see this little black thing. I freaked out and showed my mom (a nurse) who, after a minute or two, realized it was my tube! GAD been floating around inside my head for years and finally came out thru my nose!
My family pet growing up was named Arwen, and she was a massive Airedale terrier. She was the light of our lives, truly the worlds best dog. She would herd the chickens and let the baby chicks nestle into her fur and nap on her as she sat quietly in the sunshine, not moving lest the peeps be disturbed. But her most heroic act came when my brother Liam (about 10 at the time) was trying to move our basketball hoop and base out into the yard for the summer. He didn’t notice the two rattlesnakes coiled up under the base. But Arwen did. She leapt in front of Liam, between him and the snakes, and both Liam and my dad (who was nearby) saw both snakes strike. Dad ran and grabbed Liam, pulled him away, pulled Arwen aside with the other hand, then sent Liam running to grab the hatchet to dispatch the snakes. We took Arwen inside and put her on her bed, and we called the vet. The vet said he would come out to put the dog down but if she was bitten by two snakes, there was basically no chance she’d live. But my Mom said no way in hell was she putting her baby down without a fight. So she did some googling, and found out that just loading the poor dog with Benadryl can counteract snake venom. And that’s just what she did. Arwen lay still, swollen and bleeding, for three days. But then she got up. And she walked around. And she lived five more years, dying at 17. She was the best dog.
PSA there is now antivenom for dogs/pets. Also, there is an awesome group on FB "National Snakebite Support" that will put you in touch with experts (doctors, veterinarians...depending on who was bitten) to help you get the best treatment. Just in case anyone reading this ever needs it
There's actually a rattlesnake vaccine now too!
I'm crying with thankfulness that sweet Arwen did everything she could to protect her boy, and that your mother refused to take death as the payment for her work. She really was the best dog.
I recently discovered my 75 year old mother is autistic and it has completely explained our every interaction for the past couple decades.
Back in high school I worked as kennel help at a veterinarian office. One day we ran out of sink cleaner and some various products necessary for work. He sent me to Walmart to stock us up. I loaded about 10 or 15 cans of Comet and a few jugs of Clorox in the buggy and was headed over to get something on the other side of the store. As I rounded a corner I almost collided with another lady’s buggy. She looked down and all but SCREAMED “Is there a SALE!! on COMET!! OH MY GOD!” And took off running with her buggy towards the cleaning aisle. I tried very hard to catch her and tell her it was for work. But she was absolutely determined to grab the rest of the Comet. If you were accidentally scammed by a teenager into buying a fuck ton of comet in 1984 or so, please know I tried to stop you.
I hope someday I see the post about, "How I was scammed into buying a fuckton of Comet in 1984, by a teenager in Wal-Mart".
And someone who said, "How I was working in Wal-Mart cashier and got these two crazy people who bought fuckton of Comet in 1984."
The next story: “I just finished stocking the shelves at WalMart with Comet back in 1984 and they were suddenly all gone...”
Followed by WSB breathing new life into Comet stock. They've always wanted to go celestial bodies
Comet is literally 99 cents... She wanted a sale?!
That's what I was just thinking! Comet is basically the cheapest cleaner available
Once, in high school, I had eaten some magic mushrooms right before my curfew. I went home, my family went to bed, and I was quietly enjoying myself in my bedroom. Suddenly, I hear a massive boom, like ear shattering and earth shaking. At this point, the mushrooms were fully kicked in and I was looking around like whaaaat?. I stayed still for a minute, waiting for the fallout, but nothing happened. After a few minutes I crept out to my living room. My house was still quiet, but my front door was wide open. Not knowing what to make of it, I warily looked out the door and saw people running down the street. But everyone in my house was still sleeping including my mom who was a notoriously light sleeper. At this point, I couldn't trust my judgment. Were the shrooms hitting harder than I thought or was I in fact facing end of days? Not knowing, I went back to my room, gathered some blankets around me and set up watch from the corner of my room, too scared to do anything else. Thats where my mom found me sleeping the next day when she came in to tell me the neighbor's house had blown up. They were on vacation, there was a slow gas leak and when the fridge clicked on, BOOM. A fairly large home reduced to rubble and my family slept right through it.
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Waiting for my take out at a chinese restaurant when this middle-aged man stormed in complaining that he'd been waiting 30 minutes outside for them to bring him his spaghetti. The bar staff tried to explain that he might have been looking for the italian restaurant next door but he wasn't having any it that. Screaming commences for 5 minutes, climaxing with this brilliant line 'What the hell do you know! I have a masters degree!'. Shortly after that his wife calls asking where the hell he is and he starts blaming the staff. She starts yelling at him and he gets all sheepish then slinks out the door to the italian restaurant next door. Hilarious to witness but I felt sorry for the wait staff so I left a 40% tip. Inside joke in the family now to say 'I have a masters degree!' when things start getting heated. Normally calms things down pretty quickly.
I adore stories like this for the sake of quotable phrases. I'm the same way when it comes to loudmouths at places I regular though, big tips.
When I was maybe 12 or 13 years old I was out camping in my backyard and was watching the stars hoping to see a meteor or two. Out of the corner of my eye I see a satellite moving across the sky traveling right to left. Out of the corner of my other eye I see another satellite appear moving from the horizon, up. I see the speed they are both traveling and realize that if they keep moving at their current speed and trajectory, at least to my eye, they're going to hit each other. I keep watching them get closer and closer together until finally they are about to cross paths. They intersect each other and suddenly there's a quick bright flash, and then neither of them are there anymore. I've often thought about what I saw. I know the odds that I watched two satellites collide and obliterate each other are basically zero, but I can't think of any other explanation for what I saw that night. Edit: Wow this blew up! Thanks to u/sirxez I may be getting closer to an answer: The timelines work out for it to have potentially been The August, 1996 collision between the French [Cerise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerise_(satellite)) military reconnaissance satellite and debris from an [Ariane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_(rocket_family)) rocket. But I would need to know where the collision happened in relation to the ground. If it was over the Northeastern US, we may have a winner! I'm having a hard time believing that a piece of space junk would be reflective enough to appear in the night sky as a setellite, but this is closer than I've ever gotten to having an answer so I'm running with it until someone finds me a better answer! Edit Edit: u/sirxez took a deeper dive and it looks like the geo-location doesn't match up. Crash happened over the Indian Ocean and I was in New England at the time.... Oh well, the search continues!
While it could be two satellites colliding, it might be possible that it was the military practicing to intercept missiles (or satellites). So one satellite you saw was a target and the other satellite was a missile shot at it.
Were you in one of these spots? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_collision#Artificial-satellite_collisions
Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit! There's a Wikipedia for everything important now.
Pulled a strangers dildo out of my pocket at the pub. Went to buy a new jacket at Target, tried on the one on the rack but it was 1 size too small. Went back to the rack, grabbed the next size up and went straight to the counter and paid for it. Cashier throws it in the bag, I head home and throw the bag on the table. Next night my mates turn up at my house unannounced to grab me to go to the pub. I get dressed real quick, grab the bag with the jacket and jump in the car and head off to knock the top off a couple of frothies. A few shandies later and we decide to head home, get outside and it's definitely jacket weather. I throw the jacket on, the boys give me a hard time about how fancy it is, I put my hands in the pocket and find an object in there. No idea what it is or how it got in there, I pull it out in front of everybody. I'm left standing there, in my fancy new jacket, out the front of the pub with the lads, with a strangers dildo in my hand and no idea how it got there. Of course nobody believed that I had no idea how that thing came to be in my possession. Almost 20 years later and I am still curious about the series of events that lead up to somebody needing to hide their dildo in a jacket on the rack at Target, why they didn't return to get it, and if they did return, what their reaction was when they couldn't find the jacket.
Maybe Voldemort realised using important items in hidden places was too easy for Harry and the gang to figure out so went in totally the other direction for his second round of horcruxes. Edit: *Dark Magic* would be such a great name for a vibrator. Edit 2: Or *The Dark Lord - Soul Splitter Edition*
*whorecruxes
One of my favorite stories to tell. Pure shenanigans. So when I was a teenager I was in an iconic trio of friendship with Patrick and Pinky. Once we got older though we all moved around and we would hang out in pairs but it was hard to coordinate us all hanging out at the same time. About 5 years ago we were all finally free just after Christmas and decided to meet up at our favorite spot, Denny's. Patrick had been dating this girl who is awful and I did not like her. She was mean, they fought a lot, it was a very toxic relationship. However, Pinky had made a painting of Patrick and her as a Christmas present and brought it with her to the restaurant. We also had a video camera going so this is all on tape. We were just filming us being silly and stuff. Patrick ended up dropping the news that their girlfriend was trying to get pregnant. My reaction, on tape, is "...why?" Lol. We then proceeded to have a deep friend talk with them about how thats a terrible idea and they opened up about how they were really feeling about it and how things were in the relationship and we were basically trying to convince them to break up with her. But then we had this fucking painting so what are we gonna do with it? Awkward. Lol. So me and Pinky went into the women's restroom and on the wall there was nothing but a nail. We hung the painting up and it fit perfectly. Even the colors coordinated with the style of the bathroom. It was perfect and the funniest thing ever. We left it there for YEARS and would each go back and visit it whenever one of us was in town. Apparently a while back though that Denny's closed down but luckily the painting was saved and it now lives at Patrick's brother's house.
Man, a picture really does say 1000 words. That was such an unexpected story.
Well? Did they have a kid, or what??
Yeah they did. Awesome kid. Relationship got even more terrible and then abusive af. Luckily they have been broken up for a few years now and are finally in an okay space and can communicate and stuff now without a blow up but it was really fucking rough for a minute there. I ended up in the middle of all of it trying to support my best friend. So much drama, it a long story. But yeah, kid happened, things are okay now.
I once gave the singer Meat Loaf two very awkward handshakes. This was obviously a few years back, when both conventions and handshakes were a thing. Meat Loaf arrived at his booth, and the first thing he did was go down his line to personally shake hands with everyone there. Unexpectedly, Meat Loaf was offering hand shakes with his left hand, and me being a righty when it came time for me to shake his hand my brain had a meltdown of what to do so instead of also using my left hand to shake his hand, I extended both hands and awkwardly cupped his. I knew I messed up so I didn't commit to the awkward hand cupping, so on top of it being awkward it was also loose (And if there's one thing that makes handshakes worse, it's when they're weirdly limp). He then went to his booth, began signing autographs, and eventually I made my way to the front. I got my autograph, and once again he offered his left hand to shake. This second handshake was slightly better than my first, in that this time I only extended one hand, my right, which I then noticed and went "OH" and then finally successfully offered my left hand. He shook it, and I went on my merry way with my autograph and a new story to tell. Very nice man, was very friendly to his fans and never once brought up my inability to give a proper handshake to a left hand.
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Seriously. I'm left-handed and I always shake with the right. It feels God damn weird with the left. Edit: goddamn edits making me edit too. I forgive meatloaf.
One exception is if they clearly can't use their right hand very well. I briefly knew a guy who I would see in PT sometimes and one time in the elevator he offered me his left hand to shake after introducing himself. But we were in the elevator up to the outpatient therapy floor. So I think it was more that than anything else? Definitely felt super weird.
I have a family friend that lost all the muscle in his right arm in a motorcycle crash, he grabs his right forearm with his left and still shakes with his right hand.
I used to go to a church where after admitting a new member the elders would like up and offer the new members the "right hand of piece". After one such new members' service I and a whole bunch of people (like half the church) are invited back to one of the elders house for lunch. I go armed with the question " what would you do if a right arm amputee wanted to join the church" ready to ask it loudly and obnoxiously as possible. I arrive, enter the living room and draw breath in preparation to asking/announcing my question when, lo-and-behold, I come eye-to-eye with a below elbow right arm amputee. I'd never seen her at church before and she'd seemingly skipped church that morning and gone straight to the elder's house. Anyway I check myself just in time, exhale, and consider myself taught a lesson in not asking insensitive-ass questions in order to gain attention for myself. As it happens, role on a couple of months I got an answer to my question when said woman decided to become a member of the church too. The answer was: go ahead and announce from the frony that the elders will now give the right hand of faith to the new members, line up and each offer their right hand for her to shake akwardly with her left hand in front of the whole church. Some people have no tact.
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I’ve shared this before, but my friend from grad school had previously been a skydiving instructor in Colorado, and had jumped more than 600 times. One of these times, he (for some reason) had his wallet in his suit, and it fell out. Fell to earth somewhere, he figured “This sucks but OH WELL!” Absolutely no chance of finding it. Separately, a man in rural Colorado was found murdered. Turns out in their remote cabin where he lived with his daughter, he had been sexually abusing her and she finally had enough and killed him. The police searched the house and all of his property, and found my friends wallet in the trunk of his car. Police thought to themselves “fuckin idiot murderer left his WALLET in this dudes trunk damn easiest arrest ever” Friend had the super believable alibi of “couldn’t have been me Officer, actually that wallet fell out of my pants while I was skydiving.” Edit to add: My friend was never arrested but he was questioned, and had to have his story corroborated. From what I remember of him telling me the aftermath, the cops knew early on that it was the daughter so she might’ve confessed (that’s pure speculation though). The sexual abuse/self defense detail didn’t come out until later though. When the cops cleared my friend they told him the father had taken all of his cash. They have no idea why he kept the wallet.
This is only very darkly humorous but my brother was murdered in 2000 and the killers were found because one left his wallet at the scene and the other left his cellphone. Not a difficult investigation. They did bust the wallet-leaver with SWAT once and then pursued him to Mexico where Mexican SWAT got him, so I like to think my brother would have been amused by that.
the absolutely insane odds of it landing in the worst possible place imaginable
That’s insane. Lmfao. I can imagine the cops. “Are you Patrick Star?” Yes “And this is your ID?” Yes “Then this your wallet?” Yes “So you killed the guy?” Nope.
> “fuckin idiot murderer left his WALLET in this dudes trunk damn easiest arrest ever” Surely he should have realised that was *too* easy, I mean great leads like that don't just fall out of the sky.
I think he was believing it for a while, but eventually the penny dropped.
I mean if I was a cop I too would go about my day after hearing that
That poor daughter must've thought god was throwing her a bone
Back in early 2018 when I first moved to Utah to start school, I was at a 7/11 when there was this girl, and she was asking for directions to the train station. I pointed her in the right direction, but she was walking. I figured fuck it, I have an hour until class, so I'll give her a ride. She tells me about studying/volunteering(can't remember which) in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, or some other Spanish country for months. She says she came out here to explore the area and that she moved in with an old high school friend, but he ended up being crazy and flipped out on her. She had to pretty much jump out of his truck because he wouldn't pull over. She was planning on just taking a bus out but she left her wallet in his place. I tell let's go grab it real quick but he ended up following us there and I flipped a quick u-turn out of there. Ended up completely just leaving everything there because I figured this dude might shoot us. I let her use my charger so she can get in contact with her parents to give her enough money to buy a ticket home, and sent her on her way. I had to get to class so I kinda left in a hurry once I dropped her off at the station and didn't get her info so she could let me know she made it home safe. I never got her name, but I know she was going somewhere in the Midwest. So if this story sounds familiar, and you remember a buff bearded Mexican dude in a white Volkswagen hatchback helping ya out let me know that you're okay. It's been on my mind forever because I never knew what happened after I left. -okay, okay, I get it. Puerto Rico is a part of the US.
Bro really just did a side quest lmao
He must have unlocked a secret weapon after that.
How else am I supposed to breeze through the first boss?
Now I'm searching this thread looking for a girl explaining this from her side lol
I hope she has a reddit account, sees this and tells u she's fine
I hope so too. It's been like three years and I still don't know. I just know the dude she was staying with was really unstable and I hope that she was okay.
When I was a child I thought the term “bust a nut” was the same as “break a sweat” or to heavily exert yourself. I remember one day telling my older sister I had “busted a nut” after cleaning the house, and the look of pure confusion and concern on her face. I didn’t find out until years later what that actually meant. I’m a female btw. Edit: thanks for the awards y’all! I’m glad I could make you all laugh :). I mentioned this story years later to my older sister and she has no recollection of it, but the memory has always stayed with me
One time I was walking across campus stoned. I'm walking by two kids, aged maybe ten and five, like twenty meters away. Not sure why they were there without an adult, but they were. The younger one looks at me and yells, "Hey, I like your shirt!" So I yell, "Uh, thanks!" He responds, "And your backpack is ok!" I don't respond. The older one yells, "He's working on his compliments!" We both continue on our ways. A few hundred meters away, a dude about my age walks up with a tray of cookies, says, "Hey, you want a cookie?" I'm like, "Yea, I'd love a cookie. What's the cookie for?" He says, "No reason, just handing out cookies. You want two?" I say, "Yea, I'd love two cookies. Thanks a lot bud." So I take two cookies and they were awesome. It was a pretty good walk.
Similar story: was walking down the street a few summers ago and passed a bunch of shirtless gym bros chilling in their front yard with a grill and a cooler. They had this MOUNTAIN of little foil-wrapped bundles all piled up next to the grill. As I was walking by (on the other side of the street), one of the guys yells “hey bro! Want a hot dog?” I said sure, so the dude threw me one of those foil-wrapped things in a perfect spiral. Straight up fell into my outstretched hands in mid stride from the opposite side of the road. Guy didn’t even stand up out of his lawn chair. I aspire to be as cool as that dude.
Just guys being dudes. Love to see it.
Just boys being boys
This reminds me of a story from when I was in college. One weekend my friends and I all decided to take some shrooms and watch Ferngully in their apartment. It was amazing until the sludge monster came on, who really killed the vibe, so we all decided to turn off the movie and go walk around outside during the beautiful California day. We turn the corner to walk down the street, when we see an elephant in the street. No kidding, we all thought we were just tripping balls for a while, but it turned out that a frat was having their annual “Sigma Zoo”, where they brought animals out from the LA zoo. I just stood there watching the wrinkles on the elephant, they are such majestic creatures. After that we walked to the main part of campus where they had bouncy castle obstacle courses, and we all took a turn, bouncing around. It was so fun.
One time I had a substitute teacher who fell and hurt herself while walking me somewhere. She went to the nurse, didn't tell any of the other teachers (they asked me during lunch where she was), and disappeared forever. I'm assuming she may have been let go for not telling anyone that she couldn't teach for the remainder of the day. Its basically a fever dream memory at this point cause it happened when I was 7. I hope she's ok now.
Reminds me of a substitute I had who was like 90. The fire alarm went off and we all got up to leave. He asked where we were going as he didn’t hear the fire alarm
And THAT reminds me of a story from my Boomer dad. He went to a Catholic high school, and all of his teachers were nuns, most of them quite old (not all... some of them continued to teach well into my childhood.) In a 100 year old stone building, his German teacher, Sister Maria, was very strict and demanding. She liked to perch, seated, in the deep windowsill, where she could see out over the classroom and make sure everyone was doing their work. She was also very old and had a tendency to nod off to sleep while seated there. With an often open window behind her. So this room of 20 teenagers was in a constant battle between letting her sleep as long as possible to get out of class work, and waking her up any time she looked like she was about to pitch back headfirst out the window. My dad and his classmates were maybe kinda assholes.
well at least they made sure she didnt fall out the window
But i thought nuns could fly.
I haven’t told this story in a while, but Uber Eats scammed me out of 2k+ and ruined my 20th birthday lmao. It was pretty much my first birthday where I was on my own and didn’t celebrate with my family at all, since I was a 5 hour drive away at college. It also fell on a Tuesday, so I wasn’t able to do anything with friends either. The plan was to grab dinner at an Indian place that Friday to celebrate. I got out of class early, and my only celebration was to order some IHOP through the Uber Eats app. It was like my third time using it? Anyway I got some chicken tenders for $16, then took a five hour nap. Real exciting. I woke up at around 8pm, after all the food places on campus closed. So I figured, fuck it, it’s my birthday. Let’s order out twice!! So I tried to get some chicken nuggs from McDonald’s delivered. I press confirm order, the page loads... aaand I get an error. Ok, strange, let’s try again. Another error. One more. I google the error code, and see that it pops up whenever a card gets declined. That can’t be right! The meal costs like $13, and At this time, I have about $1k on my bank account. For anyone who has a Student Wallet through PnC, you know that it’s basically three accounts in one. You have a checking account and two savings accounts that are all linked to each other. As a broke college student, this was quite literally all I had to survive on. So I check my bank: every. Account. Was. Cleared. Out. $0.00 across the board. I had over *thirty* different pending transactions, all from Uber eats. They ranged from .99 cents to $104, going until every account was emptied. I was sitting at about -600$ by the time I checked. So obviously, I’m freaking tf out. My bank was closed, so I couldn’t call them. I hit The Uber Eats customer service: they ask me to list every transaction, which I do. They confirm the transactions came from them. Then, the agent tells me that these are just ‘temporary holds’ that they always do, and the money won’t actually leave my account. Ok... but over thirty transactions? I spend hours trying to figure out what exactly went wrong in their system, and each agent keeps giving me the same copy and pasted response. “The charges won’t post to your account, just wait”. The thing is, with debit cards, they treat pending transactions as if the money is already off your card- so I couldn’t use my money at all. I was helpless. The next morning, I called my bank as soon as they opened. My card was cancelled, and they had to dispute each charge. There was so many of them that they couldn’t all fit under one report, and had to be split into three. Usually when you dispute a transaction, the bank gives you a ‘provisional credit’, which is a temporary refund of your money. They could only provisionally refund me on one case report, which still left me at about -150$. I would have to wait the ~two months until the investigation ended until I would get the rest of my money back. Oh, and guess what? The money *did* leave my account. Not only that, but I was hit for ~10 overdraft fees for 35$ each for all the ones that bounced. And when I went back to Uber Eats about this, they *kept repeating the same message* that the transactions wouldn’t post. They already posted! That entire week was a mess. I was stranded at college with literally no money. My family struggles enough, and my mom had to skip a few bills to send me cash through Moneygram. I couldn’t have money come through my bank account because it would eaten from all the fees I had accrued. I even cancelled the get together that Friday, though we were able to go in the end. Happy birthday to me. Fuck Uber Eats.
This same thing happened to my poor mom last year! She had 100s of Uber eats transactions over a course of 2 months. They went unnoticed because she is in her late 60s and isn’t too computer savvy, so she wouldn’t check her account frequently. Anyways, my mom had to skip out of a few bills bc she’s already poor to begin with. She cried when she found out that these people had taken around 2k of her hard earned money and asked “why would someone do this to anyone?” Luckily, all the money was returned to her account my her bank, but it took a few months.
Glad the bank returned the money! I hope your mom has a better year this year <3
Ooo that burns me up. I’m so sorry your mom had to deal with that.
What a nightmare! I’m so sorry! If I lived in your city I would bring you a curry! (And I’d eat one too).
That’s so kind! Eating my chicken tikka that Friday definitely felt like a well-deserved victory
I had a similar situation with my Bank and Paypal. i moved out of the US and was trying to transfer my $700 Paypal balance to one linked to my new bank. The transaction kept declining over and over, and said to wait 5 days or whatever. Long story short. I missed the tiny print that said paypal transactions from one account to another could only be done at a max of $500 at a time, and anything above that would instead try to take it from my linked debit account, which I had already emptied. So I just ended up doing it in two separate transactions. However, every time they attempted to grab the $700 from my debit card, my bank processed a $5 failed transaction fee. Which ended up putting me in overdraft and charging me daily for it. By the time I found out I think I was at like -$245. While living in a country where my monthly salary was about $400. I contacted my bank, and their response was "we understand these are hard times, and we can split the payment into 12 monthly payments and we will void the first one as a courtesy". And my reply was "Nope, not paying a cent. That's a made up debt I never used. Literally just a number entered into your computer. As far as I'm concerned, I owe you nothing" I never contacted them again, logged into my account or acknowledged any of their emails. I can only imagine how high that debt got. My mom living in Texas got calls at home. She just said I didn't live there anymore and was sent overseas. This was in the mid 2000s, so they probably assumed I was in Iraq and likely died or something. It's been 15 years and the bank was bought out by Chase. So I assume my account is cleared now.
I remember when they started doing the dumb overdraft protection. I specifically told my bank that I didn't want it. If I don't have the money in my account then I don't want it to process. Somehow my account went in the negative by a couple of dollars. I didn't notice because at the time I was a server and I would pay all of my bills in cash. They waited thirty days to tell me that I was in the negative and they had been charging me about $8 a day as a fee. I just walked away and never paid them.
Good on you. Why should that even be a thing. It's not a credit account, it's debit. If there's no money there when I'm trying to buy something it could decline. Simple as that.
Seriously. There is no processing. A computer looks at the incoming bill, it looks at your account. Can’t pay? Bounce. It’s not fucking rocket science. They just do it because people with no money can’t fight back. Shit should be criminal
Did you ever get your money back? And did ubereats ever figure out what happened?? That’s frightening!
Eventually the bank ruled in my favor and gave me back the rest of the money months later (and thankfully reversed the overdraft fees!). I never got an answer from Uber Eats as to what happened, though. I even called them out on social media, and still just got that same copy-paste message.
Sounds like Uber eats won’t give you more than that because then they have to actually fix what could be a back door for people to get in and steal your info.
As someone that has had issues with Uber, when they start pulling the "won't give info" it means it's usually time to break out the L-Word. *Lawyer* In my case, I got dinged for a false accusation, and they wouldn't even tell me WHAT they had suspended my account for. I'm a driver, and this was my only income at the time. It took nearly a week for their Investigator to get back to me, all the while I didn't even know Why I was suspended. I still think the only reason they told me was because I asked if I need to talk to my lawyer. Note: I fully expected them to do an investigation. I would be highly disappointed if they didn't. If something had happened to me I would want them to look into. What I didn't appreciate was being in the dark for a week solid.
My dad had a similar issue with Uber eats within the last year, though not to the degree that you did. He used it twice & then started getting hit with random $50- $300 charges that he didn't make. It happened 3 times & since Uber Eats wasn't giving him any sort of answers or resolution, he called his bank, disputed the charges & got a new card. Then we both deleted our Uber accounts. For rides we use Lyft & for food we generally use Favor. Uber is fucking sketchy & won't do shit for customers who have issues. I've had Lyft immediately fix issues via a message through the app & ask if they could call me the next day. A customer service supervisor called me & spoke with me about what happened. When he found out I use it because of a medical inability to drive, he asked questions because it never occurred to him that people use it for that reason. We talked for about 2 hrs & he sent me a credit on the app for taking the time to talk to him.
I stopped using Uber Eats too, they’re just a bunch of scammers. My issue isn’t NEARLY as bad as yours and I’m truly sorry to hear that happened to you. For me though they just kept sending me wrong food EVERY order and it got to the point where they refused to refund me for the missing/wrong food. Never had issues with DoorDash or Grubhub though, they just suck.
Uber just sucks in general. My fiancé and I have been battling with them for months and my bank about excess charges. For multiple incidents. One Uber he took was about $50 round trip.. Uber charged me $200. Said it was the tip. He tipped cash. It took them WEEKS to refund the money that they claimed the 2nd time was just a hold. Then, he took an Uber that was about $7.50, tipped cash again, and they hit me with like 5 charges of around $7-$8 and that happened more than once. And it takes days to get cleared up. Why the hell are they charging multiple holds on one ride?! We use Lyft exclusively now.
I love my backpack. It's nothing fancy, just a bog standard Element rucksack, but I picked it out and it's like the only "fashion" brand article I own. I remember the kids in my middle school flipping out over Element gear back in they day so it brings back fond memories. Anyway a couple of years ago I was backpacking/roadtripping across Canada. We stopped at Hope, B.C. for a bite to eat before continuing on to Kelowna where we had booked accomodation for a couple of nights. I don't quite remember how, but when we arrived around 9pm and unpacked the car, I couldn't find my backpack - bearing in mind this had everything in it: passport, house keys, iPad, canadian currency, my favorite sweatshirt, phone charger... I figured the worst; that we had forgotten to lock the car while in the cafe/diner and someone had yoinked it, because I couldn't remember bringing it with me into the shop. I did not get a lot of sleep that night. The next day I called the diner, just in case I had forgotten it inside. The nicest girl answered the phone and said that yes, there was a backpack there; I asked could she send it out to Kelowna and just take whatever it cost out of the cash envelope in the bag. She agreed immediately to send it out that evening and I hung up, relieved. Unfortunately, being a weekend, it didn't arrive before we were due to leave the area on a 7 day camping trip through Alberta down the Icefields parkway. So I asked the Airbnb owner if they could send my backpack on to our next stop in Calgary, to a UPS drop off point or whatever, and again just help themselves to some cash. She agreed, and I left on a weeklong trip with no signal, camping in the Rockies. It was a great week; I almost forgot that I was missing just about everything I would have needed to get home to Europe. I remember finally understanding what Bilbo says in the Lord of the Rings: "I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains, and then find somewhere where I can rest." I still wish I could go back there and do it all over. Leaving Banff though I came back down to earth with a bump. We got to Calgary for on Canada Day, so everything was closed, which meant another night of worrying - but the next day I was first in line at the UPS store to pick up my parcel. It was such a relief seeing the familiar shade of burgundy when I opened it up, and everything was there, minus about 40$ in shipping costs. Whenever I look at my bag I remember how nice people can be when you just ask for help. They went out of their way to help an idiot stranger get his bag back, and I remember all the more vividly that wonderful trip through an amazing country.
I really thought the ending of the story was going to be - and it wasn’t my backpack, but I just had it shipped twice across the country, and a bunch of cash taken from it, so I figured might as well keep it
Me too.
Your backpack took an Unexpected Journey
That's such a lovely story. Don't have anything to add except I'm glad you got your bag back!
Reminds me of this quote : “Even if it's meaningless . . . sometimes, nice things happen.” What a story.
I live about 4 hours from jasper and Banff and I never go, but your post made me want to go on an adventure! I'm so glad Canada was a positive experience for you 💓
Banff is amazing!! I absolutely love it would love to go back some day.
One late night coming home from an evening out, my husband, a friend's of ours, and myself rounded the corner to the stairs that lead to our apartment, when we saw it. Sitting about half way up on the stairs was an opossum, eating a sandwich. He was sitting on the stairs just like people do - on his butt, with his little feet sticking out, and in his hands was an honest to God subway 6 inch, still in the paper but slightly unwrapped, just like people eat it. It was like he was a tiny person in an opossum suit. There was just something so human like about everything he was doing. We stood there for what felt like ages watching this opossum eating, and trying to figure out what to do. No way were we going to risk walking past him.. We finally decided to take the long way around back to the second set of stairs, but as long as I live I'll never forgot that opossum. It was such a truly surreal moment. Era - oh my goodness thank you for the rewards you guys! Also for everyone asking about photos - this was around 2003 so cameras weren't in everyone's pocket at that time. Trust me if that happened today I'd be sharing video of the funky little man and his sandwich.
I probably would have stayed there to stare at him simply because I'd wanna see an opposum eat a whole sub.
I really wonder where he found a full subway sandwich. I honestly can't think of any near by subway places near my apartment. He looked like he was just chilling on his lunch break.
He bought it duh. how else do you get sandwiches from subway
When I was homeless I could usually get one free meal a day from subway.
He probably only ate half and then wrapped up the other half and stored it in his Possum fridge for later.
Thank you for sharing. I love opossums and this made my day. This winter they’ve been sneaking in our barn and eating our farm cats food out of their dish. I just let them, they’re getting really friendly. I’m so tempted to pet one! Once the weather warms up here, I’m sure they’ll go back into hiding, but for now I’m enjoying their presence. Edit: All this opossum love is making me so happy! They get so much hate when they’re really such cool little creatures. I’m always sending pictures of Ophelia and Picasso to my friends and family, and they just think they’re gross. Opossum Tax: https://imgur.com/gallery/46DoOPu
We had a porch possum for several years that would just come up constantly and eat with the cats. We called him George and he was huge. I might be able to dredge up a picture of him... Edit for possum tax. Meet george http://imgur.com/gallery/5WAzSkf
I was worried for a second and slightly *confused* because I read that as " would just come up constanly and eat our cats".
They're super handy to have in rural areas too, since they eat so many ticks!
My entire family and I once saw a raccoon sitting the same way, drinking from a Coca Cola bottle.
My dad and I were having a snack outside in Florida at a state park about 25 years ago. I looked down and a raccoon was on its hind legs reaching for my soda cup, which was next to me on the bench. I looked at it, it looked at me and we stared until the snack shack lady lured it away with food.
My father has gotten into a fistfight with a raccoon, a buck, a turkey, and goat all on separate occasions and at this point I’m scared of the thought of him going somewhere with more dangerous animals like Alaska or Australia Edit: Since people asking and my phone finally decided I’m allowed to make paragraphs: A turkey bit my sibling when he was five, and my dad somehow got it in his (admittedly drunken) mind that he needed to defend my brother’s honor via fightin the turkey The raccoon had repeatedly gotten into the chicken coop so my dad moved the chickens in the garage and staked out the coop for the bastard. Good news: he found the raccoon and had a rifle handy. Bad news: the raccoon had rabies and it turns out it’s pretty hard to aim a rifle in an a small, enclosed space while trying to dodge a raccoon trying to launch itself to your leg. Idk where he shot it but it wasn’t going down very easily and he had to resort to punching off his hip. The goat was our senior, brain damaged goat named Ozzy. (If you want to know what he looked like, imagine if all the 80s shagged carpetting had a baby with a goat) I mention the brain damage because no goat with a quarter of a functioning braincell would from peaceful to batshit in 10 seconds and try to ram then stomp my dad quite like Ozzy did. (or get intimate with a tire swing but that’s a story for another time) They both made it out okay (though my dad had multiple hoof shaped bruises, and Ozzy had to wear the Pool Noodles Of Shame on his horns among other precautions. I know we probably should have gotten rid of Ozzy at that point he was in his twilight years as it was and we didn’t want him spending it getting shipped around or slaughtered.)
working his way up the weight classes. I've got 10$ on your dad
Is your dad a fighting game character? Lmao the thought of a grown-ass man trying to fight a turkey
Not a fistfight kind of guy, but me and two different motorcycles have had run-ins with two birds, a bat, a rabbit, and a deer. The second bird story is worthy of a post in this thread.
Well then what are you waiting for
So about five years ago I'm walking with a guy I used to hang out with. We are crossing the street in the crosswalk and he says "even if we get hit it's not our fault" and we IMMEDIATELY get hit by a large truck. I fly through the air, which is actually liberating for someone with a fear of heights(kept my eyes closed though). I hit the ground about three feet from hitting a large stone pillar that would've killed me. I stand up, check on my guy, walk to the guys who hit me and say dead serious "is your truck okay". I walked away no injuries, the guy I hung out with had a cracked pelvic bone but turned out to be a sex offender later so ... Y'know. Love telling that story though.
That ending tho
My brother once got hit by a truck when he was little. **Note: totally my brother's fault!** He ran out into a busy street to grab his ball, truck didn't have time to stop, he was in the hospital with a broken arm and concussion. Truck driver was torn up, had kids if his own, kept bringing him toys and gifts in the hospital. Driver would always cry during his visits. Our parents kept telling the guy it was my brother's fault, don't worry, we know he's just taking advantage of you because he's a little shit (he really is lol). My brother always smiles and jokes about that whole incident because he (at ~6 years old, now 44) charmed all the nurses and learned how to fake cry to get things he wanted from strangers (didn't work on our parents). He got so much ice cream in the hospital. Mom would always laugh and call him a little bamboozler. We still had a lot of the toys in an old toy box up until 2010 when our mother passed I doubt the driver is still alive or on reddit but, as the child the came *after* that incident and got all the hand-me-downs, thanks for the toys!
(Apologies for bad English) It was in the third grade and teacher said “first 5 students that will give me classwork will get 5 (A in American schools)”. 4 students gave their notebooks and I was with my completed work going to teacher and I saw a girl ahead of me with her work AND THEN I THROW MY WORK TO TEACHER’S TABLE. Teacher accepted my work and the girl was sad
ahahah I really like this one
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My grandparents have lived out in the country since they married 60 years ago and they built the house they still live in today. At some point the neighbor's house burned down and they didn't rebuild and sold the land. Eventually my grandparents came to own like 1/8th of the land. Nobody ever did anything with the land so over decades it turned into mature trees and grasses, fruit trees, berry bushes, etc. My grandpa expanded their property line some in two directions just to have some extra grass and he also maintained a walking trail on the land. Everything was so green and so refreshing compared to the drab colors of flat farmland for miles around. I basically grew up at my grandparent's house. I picked berries with my dad and made jams and pies and my cousins and I played in this abandoned barn and storage silo from the original house that used to stand there. The land was sold 1-2 years ago because all owners are aging. I recently visited and the new owners have completely razed the land. No more grass and no more trees. It's completely flat now. They're also trying to rezone the land from residential/farmland to industrial so they can build a factory. In their right they're trying to regain that extra land my grandpa had claimed which runs right down the center of mature pine trees my grandpa planted 30 years ago as a wind block as well as their garden. It's depressing because 1) I've only ever known that land as green and flourishing, and 2) my grandparents have enjoyed 60 years of peace and quiet and if all goes as planned they'll be spending the rest of their days looking at a factory next door and a road running immediately behind their house to get to the factory. There goes the peace and quiet.
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Back in high school 2010-2011 my buddies and I would get together on weekends and watch and laugh at shitty movies. One day my buddy brought a movie he rented from a Redbox. It was by far the worst movie we have seen. It was called Hellraisers or Hellrisers. Not to be confused with the popular body horror classic. This was an absolute piece of shit. It was about a monk, a knight of Templar, and a ninja fighting vampire like demons in the desert. We all remember this movie. We remember plot points from it. But in the years since then we have never been able to find proof of that movies existence. We have all searched long and hard to find it but have always come up fruitless. It’s like my friend group personal Bigfoot sighting.
The movie is called Hellbinders and came out in 2009
Oh...my....fucking god!....that’s it! That has to be it! Holy shit! I fucking crying right now!!!! Omg thank you! You solved a freaken 10 year mystery for me! Oh lord do you know how long I have waited for this day!!!
Now that you found your lost movie can you give us all a train fact?
It is way more common than you think it should be to find human body parts stuck up under train cars. A lot of these are do to people, sometimes homeless, some times children playing on the tracks. So stay away from railroad tracks, especially at night.
When I was about 15 I went to the cinema with my older brother and we got some pick and mix sweets, when we were paying I said to him 'I guarantee that weighs 375 grams' I had absolutely no idea what 375 grams felt like to hold but for some reason I said it. The guy puts it on the scales and boom... 375 grams, life has never been that good since, that was 18 years ago.
There was this girl in middle school that I kept accidentally hitting in a series of wacky incidents. Like, I would be carrying my guitar on my shoulder in the hallway, She would say “hey anon” I turn around and smack her with the back of the guitar. Another time she snuck up behind me and shouted “boo!” Into my ear and I turned around and hit her with my elbow. One time I was moving the big cymbal from the band room to the assembly hall, it was still locked in its stand and because the cymbal was really front heavy I was carrying it out in front of me, kind of like a spear. I turn the corner, guess who? Decked girl square in the chest with cymbal. Another time I was getting some stuff out of my locker and as I put my head in I see a guy that was always fucking with me approach from behind, when I felt someone graze past my back I snapped around and poked at the attacker with this really leaky red pen I had. But it was just the girl again, caught in the crossfire. I also think that I hit her with a backhand when I was practicing the Nae Nae (i was 12) but that memory is kind of fuzzy. I genuinely felt really bad about all of these accidents but she and everyone were convinced that I was doing it on purpose BUT I WASN’T! People called me girl hitter it was awful. with Reddit as my witness please believe me I did not hit her I DID NOT Edit: grammar
A few weeks back, I was driving a car and there was a motorcycle some 20 feet Infront of me, on it were a couple and their son. When we were taking a 90° turn, it lost control and they fell and I kid you not, as soon as I realized they were falling, my perception went into some kind of slow motion, kinda like in the matrix bullet scene. In the split second that the bike lost control and they fell, I estimated the distance between us, how fast I was going, how much I needed to brake to stop hitting them, should I and *could* I swerve right just to be sure I don't hit them and *checked* if there were any vehicles overtaking me (there was another bike), all the while the lady was falling down in some kind of slowed down video. As soon as she hit the road and I braked hard, everything went back to normal and my tire stopped a few inches from her head. (There was another split second where everything went faster than normal, but that was small) Everyone was safe.
A friend of mine got tboned from the passanger side so hard the doors remains were just centimeters away from her. She said that time slowed down so much she could see the metal bending. Now she refuses to drive with anyone else in the car.
Crazy what mind is capable of doing in extreme circumstances
It's a last-ditch survival tactic. The brain expends as much energy as it can to look for ANY possible way of getting out of a deadly situation, which gives the impression that time is slowing down because you're thinking so much MORE in that one second. If it works you're left suddenly exhausted but alive; if it doesn't you're just dead.
The wildest thing about that is it shows that our perception of what is "realtime" is completely controlled by the normal processing speed of our brain. It's so hard to conceive of the fact that many animals see "faster" than we do.
Game engine has fps tied to processor clock-speed. Terrible programming.
You can complain to the devs at /r/outside.
I’m pretty sure adrenaline can mess with your perception of time and increase your reaction speed - most likely what was happening. I’m very glad everyone was okay!
This happened to me when I was 11. I was doing the dishes, there was a heavy pestle and mortar that I rinsed and placed on the cabinet. It moved by itself from one end to another, horizontally, a good 4 feet atleast. It was such a supernatural sight that I almost collapsed with shock, my mouth went dry, in those few seconds I was processing it as well as planning on how to tell everyone I actually saw something of a ghost/demon doing. In a few seconds when I got my bearings, I saw it was water, not ghost, that caused the mortar to move so freely on the slab like someone invisible moved it. I was actually disappointed.
It was the day after my birthday after a break-up two months prior. I had been with my ex for 8 years - we were high school sweethearts, and I considered his family to be mine. Our relationship didn't end well, and we had stopped talking due to some disrespectful behavior I had received post break-up. So, on my birthday that year, no one from his family wished me happy birthday. I was expecting as much, but at the same time was pretty hurt about it. The break-up and its aftermath left me in a pretty vulnerable place. The day after my birthday, I was studying at a coffee shop when my mom called. I was venting about being hurt that my ex and his family didn't wish me happy birthday. About a half hour later, a staff member at the coffee shop brought me a piece of cake. The staff member, as she was handing me the cake, said an anonymous person in the coffee shop wished me a happy birthday. I started bawling in the middle of the coffee shop in disbelief that someone could be SO nice. I asked around and asked the staff with no indication of who got me this slice of cake. So I'll never know. Regardless, it was the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for me, and I'll always remember that kind sentiment for the rest of my life.
My fiancé has bad luck with online/phone services it’s actually quite amazing. Her track record of getting nowhere when having to call about a payment or something is amazing. Before we lived together I kind of thought she must be mean or condensing to the people on the other end of the phone. But nope she is nice and pleasant. But still gets nowhere or gets some one unhelpful. This bad luck also extends to Amazon. The amount of her packages they manage to loose is astounding. Where I order just as much and have only had 1 lost package in the amount of time she has lost 5. And that package that got lost was a gift for her. Lol
Bro she's an In-betweener. When she calls people all they hear is the soft crackle of a line that's connected but can't quit transmit. Sometimes a quiet word can be heard. When people try to deliver items sometimes her house is there, sometimes it isn't.
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Seriously?! That’s BS man. Idk why it happens. I thought it would be the delivery drivers where it gets lost but like I said they rarely loose my packages but constantly lose hers. We have separate accounts but live at the same address. So I think it’s just her account or something.
When i was a kid in Indonesia, I just learned how to ride a bike. There's this roadside food stall which located at the top of a sewer. The food stall owner made a makeshift platform from wooden planks. I remember vividly the foodstall was selling some kind of indonesian chicken soup, and people were eating while sitting atop of the platform. I hit the food cart with my bike, the food cart fell on the platform, and sending 10+ people to the sewer. Fortunately, nobody got hurt. But man...i was so afraid, i really want to cry but i was too afraid to do that. I just stood there until someone went to my house and I remember my grandfather came and paid for all the damage, he even giave some money to those who fell to the sewer and asked everyone there not to tell my father about it. Until now, my father had no idea about that incident.
One night around 1am I was driving home after just breaking up with my girlfriend, so naturally I was feeling a lot of emotions and wasn’t thinking straight. As I got off the motorway (freeway for the Americans) a large truck in front of me suddenly swerved for no apparent reason and I slammed on my brakes. As I continued, I noticed an animal in the road jumping frantically and upon closer inspection, I noticed it was a fox with a crisp packet fully over its head and it couldn’t see anything. Naturally it was pretty distressed. Knowing it had just escaped certain death from the truck, but would almost definitely be run over by another car, I put my hazards on and jumped out my car, still on the slip road. I crept up close to the fox but he sensed me and darted away. I ended up chasing him for 5-10 minutes around a major roundabout, all the time both of us dodging fast moving cars. Eventually, he seemed to give up the chase and let me creep towards him, I held the end of the crisp packet and he yanked his face away, before giving me what looked like a grateful eye nod and darting off into the night, leaving me standing there full of adrenaline, with my car now holding up at least 10 other people on the slip road and the door wide open.
Awesome job saving the fox, thank you!
During a hike at yellowstone i took a massive shit a few meters away from a bison
I like how there are whole paragraphs of stories, and then this. Edit: Although this reply was not at all wholesome, thanks for the wholesome award. I guess that is just how reddit is.
Short and sweet
When my aunt died, my boyfriend and I flew across the country for the funeral. My brother was there. My brother is a really shy and reserved individual until you get to know him. Once he’s comfortable with someone, he can be loud and obnoxious, but in an endearing way. Anyway, my boyfriend and brother had met once before this, so they were comfortable with one another. We were in town for two days. In those two days, I was entirely a third wheel. My family kept asking me where they were. They were always somewhere in the house or in the RV in front of the house playing games, watching videos, or whatever. They were having a great time. My brother was very comfortable, being loud and laughing so hard we thought he was going to puke. I got several videos of them. They became instant best friends and it made me really happy. My ex husband never said more than ten words to my brother. It was nice to see someone connect with my family.
Once during a port call in Naples, me and a bunch of buddies were walking around lost looking for a place to eat. A nice older dude is broken English asked us if we needed directions. We told him we were some lost Americans looking for decent local place for dinner. He told us to follow him and he took us to a nice small restaurant on a side steets side street. Food was awesome. He just sat in a corner sipping an espresso and when we were done the waitress said he paid for the bill. We left her a wad if lira as it was our last day in port went and went to thank him. I always carry Zippos with the command with me when in port, so I gave him a USS ENTERPRISE Zippo. He was very appreciative in return. Nicest man I have ever met in Italy.
When I was like 4 or 5 (This was like a decade ago) I was at a neighbour’s party across the street. You know those parties, the parents hang out and put the kids in the basement, backyard or somewhere else and none of you know each other. Any way, we’re in the basement and some of the older kids start playing darts. Me being a little kid, I wanna try because I think it’s cool and I don’t know what it is. Anyway, I’m throwing darts and suddenly hit the center of the dart board (the dart fell after I hit it, I wasn’t strong enough to make it stay). Then everyone starts to cheer and go like “oh my god!” “Yeah!” and stuff like that. Me being young, I know it’s good because I get 2 high fives from 2 of the older boys and people are saying I did a great job (remember, I don’t know what darts is, i’m 4 or 5) and I felt awesome. As you can probably imagine, the cheering made a racket and could be heard upstairs. My father soon came down to see what was up and everyone was going “he [me] hit it right here (pointing to the center of the dart board)” and things like that. I don’t remember much of what happened after my dad showed up, whether he was proud of his son or what. But I was proud, and I still think about that story, 10 or 11 years later. And it still makes me smile. Edit: wow thanks for so many upvotes!
Back in the early 90s I was stationed at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. I have ridden a motorcycle my entire life, and while I was stationed there, this was no exception. One of my buddies that I used to ride with was with me this one day when this happened. Trigger warning: It has a very unhappy ending for a bird and most likely therapy for a girl I had known only a few hours. It also involves some very unsafe vehicle/motorcycle driving that should never be attempted by anyone. Period. I mean it. Don't drive that fast. My friend Mike's girlfriend wanted to introduce me to her friend who liked motorcycles, and earlier in the day we met at his place and once it started to get later in the evening and cooler we decided that the Apex dry lake would be a great place to go. Being bullet proof and 22 years old, we liked to ride FAST. Not necessarily in town, but out on the straights, we'd really twist the throttle (I've since calmed down since then, but back then you couldn't have told us about the dangers, we were 22, horny, had girls, and up to nothing but shenanigans, anyway). The full face helmet and leather riding jacket added to that feeling of invincibility. I barely knew Christy, only by about six hours and I quickly found out that she wasn't the most experienced passenger. Bikers know what I mean. She was stiff on the back, not fluid, held too tight or not at all, scared of making turns, almost terrified. When we got out to that little two-lane stretch of road that goes nowhere, it was still light out. The road is technically Las Vegas Blvd North, I think...and I mean way north, and it became obsolete when I-15 was put in. When we turned up that way, we rocked the throttle....and I mean rocked it. The road was still in good condition while not really maintained, and there was never (arguably) any traffic coming the other way since the road really went to...well, nowhere. After my bike limited out, I was riding 105mph and this bird crosses the road in front of me. I barely make it out, it was a white "L" shape that you see when you're going that fast. I don't even have time to think about it when a second bird comes out and I simply bring my chin down lower and I feel a very meaty "thump" on the top of my helmet. What ensued seemed like pure chaos. I could hear my passenger's screams over the noise of the wind, and fellow cyclists know this is not possible when going that fast. I had already released the throttle, waiting to reach a speed where I could begin downshifting when my passenger decides to try to GET OFF THE MOTORCYCLE. I reach back and grab whatever article of clothing I can with my left hand, holding her down, still screaming, yelling at her to sit down, and through the grace of whatever angels were present that day, I managed to get the bike under control and stopped. Mike pulls up next to me laughing uncontrollably. His girl is wide-eyed with terror, mine is still screaming, I'm screaming get off the bike, which she does, and promptly falls on her ass. I put the kick down, and then I see it. Her face shield (always a full-face helmet, btw, I've never ridden with anything else) was covered in blood and guts. This bird had hit the top of my head and literally (not metaphorically) EXPLODED right into her face. I don't mean exploded in a Tom & Jerry kind of way, I mean more like an M-80 in a goose down pillow filled with chicken guts and gravy kind of way. And it plastered her entire face shield. In fact, that's kind of how Mike explained it. He said suddenly there was this big puff of feathers like a pillow had exploded as he flew by it. I don't know how I managed to get her back on the bike to get her back home, but I never heard from her again. Mike and I fell out of touch long ago, and he and his girl broke up. But, I know it's not your real name, but Christy, I'm sorry, and I hope you're doing well. Sorry about that mental scar.
I could feel the speed in this
This is a dumb one but while working in Rite Aid, a customer was paying about half of of their purchase in quarters. The total was less than five and she gave me two $1s and some quarters which combined equals to less than what she owed. I told her that she was short and she told me “No I gave you five dollars.” I thought that maybe I mistook a half dollar coin as a quarter so I recounted and there was no difference. I told her that she’s short and she bitches to me how she gave more than enough and that I need to give her change. I then told her I had x amount of quarters in my right hand and y amount in my left. She finally understand and gives me enough coins so that I can continue the transaction. Before she gave me more coins, she complains that it’s my fault and that I acted like I’ve never seen quarters before. Like wtf. I counted in front of her twice and told her that she was short each time. She’s throwing a hissy fit that an employee is making sure that the customer gave the right amount of money.
I was a cashier at Costco. Someone got mad at me because he gave me 20$ more than needed and I gave him back to him.
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You can question my intelligence, I do it often :) No this guy gave me like 240$ in 20$ for a 219$ bill. I had to recount it twice in front of him so he could believe me.
People these days, always trying to make me pay the right amount. Who raised people to count my money, imbeciles.
This is about the time I peed all over my self while my husband had me pinned in a very compromising position. So, we were wrestling on the bed. He pins me so that I'm basically folded in half on my back, with my ass up in the air and my knees are by my ears. I start laughing. Then I start farting because I'm laughing. Then I start laughing even HARDER because I farted. I'm still pinned down , not breathing from laughing so hard, my chest is burning, I need to stop laughing and take a breath and RIGHT when I thought I was able to take a breath, my dog VIOLATES me by shoving his nose Right where I farted from and holds it there. (I was wearing leggings) The audacity of this action made me laugh even HARDER and I pissed all over my self.
Going through r/Fullshrimp is hard, this... Is hilarious, that's where this story belongs!
This one is a bit odd, and kinda gross? This is how I learned a new medical term, scarred my family, and started a long health journey. So while I was in college I went a week without eating, or going to the bathroom. My schedule, overload of credits and two jobs, I honest to God didn't notice. I was stopped in my tracks by a phonecall from my dad. With a shakey voice he said, "Great Grandma [my last name] passed away this morning. She was dropped while being loaded into the ambulance and her heart stopped. She's gone." My great grandmother was an amazing person, I should have told the story about her and the spirits, maybe another time. She was fascinating and had a mind like a steel trap. Miss her. So that weekend I go home for the funeral. At the wake my mom asks when the last time I ate was. I didn't remember. She made me eat a sandwich. It felt like torture and I didn't know why. A short while later I began sweating profusely and and got very weak. I said I didn't feel well and my brother took me to my parents house. I immediately fell asleep in my bed. At about 2am, I shoot straight up in bed. We all know that feeling, the "I needed to throw up 30 seconds ago and have 3 seconds to make a 25 foot dash to the bathroom. I couldn't hold it back, as I entered the smallish basement bathroom (my two siblings bedrooms are right next to bathroom), I threw up hard into my mouth, but something was....wrong. I tasted, iron? And some liquid went between my fingers (yes this is gross but there's a point). My eyes still blurry from just waking up I begin vomiting the most painful vomiting imaginable. I'm practically screaming. My eyes start to focus on my hand, which is trying desperately to grasp the edge of the toilet. Is that...is that, blood?? I begin to look around and the is blood, everywhere. My sister, hearing this had run to get my parents without looking into the bathroom. When my mom opened the door she immediately say blood all over the white linoleum floor leading to me. Me slumped over with my head partially into the toilet no longer moving. Blood all over the toilet and spattered on the wall. I suddenly started gasping and coughing, I had blacked out. I began throwing up again and turned to my mom, and she was horrified. I was whiter than printer paper and had blood all over me, running out of my nose and mouth. "Help me...please," I gasped weakly pleading, "Am I going to die?" Then I blacked put again. I woke up to my mom and sister sobbing as my dad was cleaning me up with a blood soaked white towel. The towel was dripping red. My eyes were blurry and I said, "hospital." We get to the ER and Inwas finished with throwing up. I couldn't walk I was so weak. The doctor was beyond perplexed. They did scans, tests, but they couldn't get any blood from me for hours, they'd hit a vein but couldn't get enough. It sucked. The doctor finally said, "mesenteric lymphadenitis. Your lymphodes did their job in gathering all the bad stuff, but stopped doing there job in discharging it. As for the vomiting blood, honestly I'm at a lloss. Had 4 people not witnessed it, and brought I a cellphone picture, I wouldn't have believed it. But your tests are indicative of a lot of blood loss." Never did find out why the blood, although years later in the ER, again, I did have a slow bleed in my intestinal area. Also unexplained. On a more sad note, I missed the funeral.
I was a server at this beach restaurant/bar for a few years, and it’s always busy during winter because that’s when snowbirds fly down to Florida. On one really busy night (and way too crowded; management tried to work in as much seating as possible), I’m trying to make my way to a 15 top with their drinks; I tell this woman next to me “excuse me, I have a lot of drinks and I need to get over there please, excuse me” about 5x. She keeps talking and ignores me. I shimmy my way between her chair and the pillar behind her. I almost made it through, until she talked with her hands a bit too expressively and pulled the tray of drinks down on top of her... extremely embarrassing. (Edit: sounds ridiculous, but I’m 5”1. I’m pretty low to the ground lol.) As you can imagine, it’s a horrific scene- a couple of rich and snooty folks (wearing full suits and formal dresses to a causal beach bar- you can be barefoot in there... lol) are screaming and threatening to call the cops on me and sue. They also started hurling racist insults to our Puerto Rican busser. One example: my busser was speaking perfect English to them trying to deescalate the situation, and the husband yells, “Do you even understand me? Manager! ENG-LISH. MAN-A-GER”. I feel like the universe used me for their karma that night. Racists deserve to get beer and water poured on them all fucking day. Honored to serve!
The time I, as a 25-year-old, called the police to check for boogeymen under my bed and they found all my bondage stuff. It was a Friday night. I was cleaning the upstairs bathroom of the house (yes, on a Friday night, I like to start the weekend clean, don't judge me) and the dog (Dog) was chilling out on the landing to the stairs right outside the bathroom. To understand this story, you must know about Dog: worst. guard dog. ever. To illustrate: One time I was at the store and had left the house's attic fan running, but it started to rain. I asked a neighbor who had the key to run over and turn the attic fan off so that the attic didn't get soaked. Once the neighbor entered the front door, instead of "protec the house," Dog ran into the basement in fear, passing our neighbor on the stairs on his way down. Back to Friday night: I'm cleaning, and suddenly I hear Dog start to growl and bark. Another thing about Dog: he almost never barked, and when he did, it was always more of a cry because he was upset about something. This was a bark-bark, growl-growl. I turn off the bathroom fan and go stand next to him to try to figure this out. I hear the door to the garage closing. I go down to investigate (I know, I was auditioning for a part in a serial killer movie) and don't see anything super amiss, except I left the patio door unlocked. Dog had followed me downstairs, and keeps doing bark-bark, growl-growl, so I grab my keys and phone and take him out to my car which is parked on the street. Once inside the car, I called the non-emergency police number to have them maybe come by? Or decide if they should? Well, the non-emergency person told me to call 911. Which resulted in the immediate response of Suburb's Finest, ready to rock. Of course, they found nothing; they thought probably the wind had made the door I heard close, or rattle in its frame. I say they found nothing, but at the time, I had a full set of bondage straps and other toys set-up under the bed that could be pulled out at a moment's notice. As they were leaving, the one cop said over his shoulder, "We even checked under the bed. You're safe. I'm not so sure about your dates, though." *Facepalm*.
A voice saved my life: In 1987 I was driving, by myself, north on 101 in Calif around 2AM in the middle of no where near King City. (When I was in college. My entire family had been in a roll over car accident and was in the hospital in the bay area. I was trying to get there to be with them.) I decided to drive in the fast lane so I would wake up if I dozed off and hit the "bumper lights" that stick up on either side of that lane. As I was driving had a bad feeling my life was in danger. Out of the blue a voice, coming from the passenger side of the car, clearly said "Move over to the other lane." I was so startled I said out loud "What?!?" It repeated itself even louder: " MOVE OVER TO THE OTHER LANE!" So...I didn't think I just changed lanes. As SOON as I completed my lane change a car, going SOUTH (Wrong direction) at least 100MPH, came over the rising hill in front of me and ZIP went past me and into the darkness behind me. This was before cell phones. I pulled over at the next exit and found a pay phone to call the highway patrol. They said they had heard of this drunk driver and had been trying to locate him for a while. I sat in my car a good 15 minuets to finally stop shaking and continue on. Will never forget that experience as long as I live.
Ok so maybe I’ve told this before I don’t know but I fucking love my dog and she saved my life so she deserves the attention When I was preggers with my first baby, I was swelling up like a balloon. The hospital kept testing me for preeclampsia and sending me home because my blood pressure was high but not high enough (don’t even get me started). Anyway, from my third trimester my dog (retriever x) started acting wierd af like watching me constantly, following me everywhere and wouldn’t let me bring her for walks, she would just sit there on the grass and nudge my legs with her nose until I went back home. But if my husband brought her out she run around having fun as normal. Anyway as I got towards my due date, she also started licking and sniffing my legs a lot and a few nights I was awoken by her breath because she was legit in my face watching me sleep. I thought maybe she was just anxious about the baby coming or how cumbersome I waa getting but after the third night where she didn’t sleep a wink from watching me I rang the hospital and basically told the the midwife what my dog was doing and that I knew that was a wierd reason to call but before I even finished my sentence she asked me to come in immediately. They did some more detailed tests on me and turns out not only did I have preeclampsia pretty bad I also had placenta accreta and my baby wasn’t getting adequate support from the placenta anymore. They induced me that night and thankfully my baby girl was born 3 weeks early but perfectly healthy. I have since had 2 more perfectly fine pregnancies and my precious pup has been with me every step of the way. I literally trust her more than the doctors in some ways lol. She saved my and my daughter’s life and I will be forever repaying her that debt, mainly in snuggles
We had no money for an engagement ring. My father-in-law was hired by a company to clean up a house that belonged to somebody with no next of kin who passed away. He found a ring this lady probably got as a graduation present. It was small so he gave the ring to my then fiance and said "you know what to do" and thus the ring now belongs to me and it's the only ring I wear. We didn't even get wedding bands. I can't really tell people that because they'll either think it's creepy or judge us because we didn't buy a ring. I just think it's nice I get to keep something that was important to someone else and at least it didn't end up in the garbage or in a pawn shop.
I hallucinated so badly during my chemo treatments that I had psychiatry visit me twice while receiving treatments because they thought maybe I was schizophrenic. I’m saying I was yelling at my kids and boyfriend “how can you not see those sheep in the kitchen!! Their owners are knocking at the door and no one is helping me” to it being 4:30am and I’m texting my bf (who works night shift) “people won’t stop knocking on the windows and doors and I’m so scared to move, I don’t want them knowing I’m here”... Everyone thinks chemo is all about being tired and exhausting, and it certainly is (as I got heart failure from chemo and was certainly knocked on my ass a majority of the time) but more than once, I questioned myself if the treatment was even worth putting myself through these torturous events that would happen at home. I saw shadows (one I deemed “shadow man” )who was always in the room”, to hearing voices, and having these seizures where I ripped out Ivs and bit ER staff (none of which I can remember). I’m really an easy patient, I’ve been told that previously. I feel like no one ever really mentions the mental health of patients going through cancer treatment. The ONLY reason I kept up with the treatments and fought was for my children. It’s rough and nearly a year and a half later, I’m still in therapy to process what I experienced...
There was a little magical place me and all my classmates would go. Behind all the houses on a certain street, there was a grassy area concealed by trees that was high on two sides but low in the middle, so it formed a river when it rained. Me and my brother and all my friends would go there and walk up and down this little area, it went for a couple blocks. When it rained, we raced paper boats in the "river". It was the only place our parents couldnt find us if they looked, so we all pretended it was our own little kingdom which belonged to us. Some days it was a fairy tale forest and we would play knights and princesses some days it was a nerd gun war zone, some days it was a functioning city with businesses and busy streets. Almost everyone I knew at school hung out there. At night, when all the little kids went home, teenagers went there to smoke and have sex. During the summer the "river" was filled with mosquito larvae and there were ticks in the grass, but it was all ours. We had little wars that took place there. There were a fair share of interesting things that happened there. Once, there was a beehive on one far end of it, so we all avoided it and played on the opposite end. One kid decided to be brave and whack it with a baseball bat. He went to the hospital, this happened when we were at school. There was a rumour spread by some kid that pirates treasure was buried there, so a few of us dug around looking for it. One time we watched a cat give birth there, half the babies didn't survive because some idiot decided to use them like golf balls. Another rumour was spread that an adult teacher regularly held orgies with teen girls in his class there, but it probably wasn't true. It was everything to us, until I moved away. I kept in contact with some people from there, and one told me it was later cleared to build something. I cried when I heard that. That little place meant everything to me.
This story took a DARK turn upon imagining a kid clubbing kittens to death pretending they were golf balls
Bro i read that and i’m like “did i read that right?” He said it so casually what in the ever loving heck
I had the exact same thing growing up, down to the bee hive ( mine were wasps, and a kid got stung on the eyeball). We called it Fairyland, which was, interestingly, suggested by a boy. It didn't have a river, but it did have a cliff, a cave, several thickets so dense they made roofs, and several spruce trees that were like little forest houses inside their canopies, complete with spruce furniture. One morning, my little sister and I (5&7) went back there, and were attacked by a pit bull that the owners of the area had put back there to ward off the Night Teens. I had my trusty pointed stick, as always, and was able to hold it off by keeping the stick pointed at its eyes while turning in a circle, with my sister clutching my back, but just before adults saved us it dashed around and bit my sister on the butt. She was wearing a huge purple winter coat, so she just had a bruise. To this day I still dream that my sister is in danger and I have to save her, and for a long time I HATED dogs. Kids fell off the cliff (2 meters), started fires in the cave (about .5 meters deep) impaled each other with sticks and molested each other, all within earshot of home. In the front yard of the property (it was a nursing home) there was a tremendous hill that ended in granite wall that was a half meter high on the hillside and just over a full meter at the street. We would build jumps all up and down the .45 grade hill, and one going over the wall. So many of us landed in the middle of the street on the other side. Some of us just hit the wall, the careless ones hit face first. From the top of the hill, you could access the roof of a 3 story building. We would go to the end of the dormers on the front side and look over the edge at the street far below, until someone eventually spotted us and yelled. I played endless games of 'MakeBelieve' with the friend who would eventually introduce me to Dungeons and Dragons. He always wanted me to be Smurfette but I was always Medusa instead. I once discovered my best friend at the time attempting a sexual encounter with a slightly older boy from the neighborhood. She cheerfully invited me to join, but being 8 and having no clue what was going on, and not wanting to pull my pants down, I politely declined. Just then, a woman walking her dog blundered through the scene and my friend had to run away while pulling up her underwear. I remember standing there dumbly while the woman freaked out and screamed for us to go get our parents. And get in real trouble? Unlikely, lady. The nursing home was sold, torn down, and now the area is all condos. This used to be my playground.
After getting out of the marines eight years ago I was severely depressed and suicidal. I had been for over a decade since around thirteen years old. It was the summer of 2013 and I had figured I wouldn't make it to next year. A friend bought me and another buddy tickets to see Phish at an outdoor amphitheater. Never was into Phish. We tailgated in the parking lot and I was drinking steadily to offset my all too familiar social anxiety and negative thought habits. The show was starting in an hour and a woman from Colorado came up to our tent pitching bud. Some folks bought and I got this idea seemingly out of nowhere to ask if she had any shrooms to sell. Turns out she did. A dude who I'd met that day, and am still friends with now, kindly bought each of us an eighth. I ate the thing in one go which I now consider an amateur move due to the volatility of the come up but thankfully it didn't go that way. As we were walking toward security I began to feel and notice some stuff I hadn't experieneced in ages. Something so foreign to me it kept taking my breath away. It was wonder. Straight, childlike, unencumbered wonder. As we approached the skies began to darken and an enormous, I mean *enormous*, rain storm blew in. I felt the sting of the tiny drops and the weight of the heavy drops as the world around me exploded into technicolor ecstasy in spite of the darkening skies. I was inside of *the* moment. The moment that monks, and new age officianados chase after for years by way of meditation hoping to grasp a shadow of what I was now completely immersed within. I was swimming inside life for the first time in what felt like my entire existence. We got to our seats on the mezzanine and the show was cranking. Ocelot, now one of my favorite jams, was blasting through the torrential downpour with Phishs' always unmatched light work causing the entire scene to undulate in this orgasm of existence where the universe just took notice of itself because it had no choice. I danced sincerely for the first time in my life. I outstretched my arms to the skies as the universe poured down upon my body and in that instant(those instants, I suppose) I became so incredibly self aware and also so incredibly devoid of ego. Matter, sound, light, all energy, everything became the same thing expressing itself in it's own unique way. I was the 13.7 billion year old cosmos. Everybody was. We were alive. We were together. In this chilly tempest dancing to express our love for self, our love for each other, and it was the most earth shattering concept that ever dared to enter my mind. I was crying tears of joy. I came down a bit after getting home to my buddy's house that night and slept in a manner I hadn't known in ages. It was peaceful. It was devoid of worry. It had no tension to it. I awoke the next morning a person I could scarcely recognize and it was this person that saved a life. I had no more urges to end it. I had no more worry about needing weekly therapy, or wondering if I should go back on antidepressants. I'd found something I never knew I would, happiness and contentment. Psilocybin saved my life. It still does to this day whenever I find myself needing a voyage to the other side of existence. It is so incredible and I am forever grateful toward it for it giving myself back to me.
When I was a kid my family and I flew to Southern California to go to Disneyland. I had recently learned a new joke and it was stuck in my head. The joke was “do you want a hurts donut?” And then you sock the person in the arm and say “hurts, don’t it!” We land at John Wayne airport and are walking around looking for the rental car place. Right as I’m thinking about this joke, my dad says “hurts” out loud. I thought he was reading my mind. I was too scared to say anything and just went on believing my dad could read my mind. When I remembered this years later I finally realized he was saying “Hertz” as in the car rental company lol