Okay, I have my pile of free hardbound copies of Faith Versus Fact (it’s part of my contract), and I’ll offer a few to readers over the next few weeks.
But they’re not free, for you have to win a contest. The single winner of this contest will get an autographed copy of the book with a cat drawn in it (to your specification). This week’s contest is easy. Just put in the comments of this post the answer to the following question:
Recount the funniest or most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you. (Note: it doesn’t have to be embarrassing if it’s just funny, or it can be both.)
Remember, the quality of writing counts: your anecdote should be written as a very short tale.
The deadline is a week from today: Sunday, May 10, 2015 at 1 p.m. Only one entry per person, please, and late entries will not be considered.
The winner decided by our secret crack panel of judges, and the book will be sent out shortly after the issue date (May 19).
There will be at least one more contest after this.
Shouldn’t that be May instead of March?
It’s fixed, thanks.
My brain has conveniently blocked embarrassing moments from my memory. 😉
They don’t have to be embarrassing; they can be just funny.
Subscribe (while thinking)
You could publish an anthology of these as your fourth book. 🙂
Life Versus My Readers: Why the Universe Mocks Them
Oh no not the crack panel! 🙂
Crack panel?
Jerry wrote, “The winner decided by our secret crack panel of judges….”
I was being deliberately obtuse for LOLz.
And I was being dense….hey, Rob Ford could be on this crack panel;-)
…and Marion Barry?
b&
Ford, Berry, there you go for your crack panel, Jerry;-)
Snort! As long as it’s not a *secreted* crack panel…..
I think a “grass panel” would be more effective for finding the humor in other people’s misfortune.
As long as the verdict isn’t: The winner is … /fucking/ brown.
/@
😀
It’s Midtown Manhattan. I have a bad cold. I’m walking along and then — *blurt* — some white goop hits my shoulder. Was it an avian gift? I wasn’t sure because I happened to be walking past a site that had paint buckets and the like several floors above me (though I couldn’t see any workers). So what did I do? I put my fingers in the goop and smelled it — but I couldn’t smell anything because of the cold!
I then immediately thought of what a passerby might have been thinking had he or she witnessed the whole thing: “Look at that dingbat! A pigeon just shat on him and then the guy stuck his fingers in the crap and smelled it! Gross!”
I washed it off as soon as I reached my destination. I never did figure out if it was paint from a painter that I couldn’t see or if the goop came from a bird.
A year or so after I graduated and started work, I reached the joyous day of having paid off my overdraft from student excesses. I came back from the rig, and there was a pay packet sitting in the bank, un-molested by malingering bank managers. And only a week and a half to the next pay day (joys of working offshore)!
I had noticed a nearby shop had leather jackets – biker jackets – on sale, and since I hung out with some such people, I went, felt leather, rolled it looking for creases in the skimming … chose a good one from the rack and brought it. Then back across the road to the cash machine, for food and beer money.
As I extracted my hard-earned from the machine … kersplat!! No question of the identity of the sky rat. A dotted line of bird turd all along the sleeve of the jacket, over the chest, through the middle of the wallet, over the cash, my hands and dotting into the distance like a malevolent theropod machine-gunner.
How the bar staff howled with laughter (while passing rolls of paper towel and floor-sponges). Allegedly this is considered a sign of good luck in Glasgow. Which says more about typical Glaswegian luck than about events like this.
Nearly a decade later a bunch of Hell’s Angels stole the jacket from a bar I was in. Left my keys and wallet – just took the jacket. By then it had acquired a patina of age, gravel rash, creases that fit it to me in the rain and a “lived-in” look. I took that as a nicer compliment than the “Glaswegian luck”.
Hi, I am French. This is important for my story.
Some years ago, I went to California with my wife, and we spent a few days with our American friends there. One day, we went to a restaurant near a beach. While we were eating I noticed a seal a few meters from us, and I told, in French, to my wife : “Oh, regarde, le joli phoque !” ( “Oh, look at this beautiful seal” ). And she said ‘Oh, what a beautiful “phoque”‘, and then, ‘Look, there is even a baby “phoque” over there’, and so on. 1 minute after that conversation, I noticed that everyone in the restaurant had stopped eating and was looking at us. My American friend just told me : “Seals. These are seals…”. As you have already guessed, the pronunciation for “phoque” is pretty much the same as for your F word…
Semi-relatedly (and not an entry, or course). There was a GI in WWII who had corralled a bunch of German soldiers in a cottage or something of the sort, near the end of the war when Germans were happy to surrender. With gun aimed at the door, he shouted in primitive German, “Everyone out, hands up, or else I’ll shoot.” But what he actually shouted was “Everyone out, hands up, or else I’ll shit.”
Apparently it was hard for them to keep their hands up since they were laughing so hard.
Thank you for making me literally laugh out loud!
My pleasure. I heard the story in a WWII documentary some yrs back, as a reminiscence by the actual GI who gave the order.
yeah, schießen vs scheißen
My mother used the wrong past participle at a diplomatic party in Vienna while trying to say that my dad was off hunting with some mucky muck. Nobody batted an eye at the time, but a friend told her later. She was mortified…
German’s great at tripping furriners up like that.
(Also not for entry.) Jess Jackson, the grand old man of the English department at Wm&Mary in decadesboth before & after WWII also taught Old Norse. My father went there for summer school in 1935 to take Old Norse from him and they became friends, which is how this story got handed down Apparently Dr. Jackson was invited to Iceland to give a lecture or something of the sort, and at a welcoming banquet he rose to thank his hosts, intending to say something in Icelandic (nearly = Old Norse) like “I bring you greetings.”
Instead, he apparently said “He shit.”
That could be cause for some embarrassment.
This reminds me of a giant roadside poster I saw some years ago. A Dutch aeroplane manufacturer want to boast about how many passengers could fit in their plane. So they put out these ads which said in giant letters : This Fokker seats 291 people. As you are French let me point out that the pronunciation of this word sounds like our F word with “er” on the end!
In Dutch, a breeder of horses is called a horse fokker. This amuses me to no end.
Also, Cinderella is called Assepoester. I find that slightly salacious.
So the Dutch Cinderella is a Kardashian? Who knew they had Instagram back then!
Sounds like it was the mother of fokkers!
Many years ago, when I were a lad, I went on a scout trip to Norway. There were scouts from all over Europe there and lots of friendships were made. One day I was with a group of Norwegian scouts, male & female, when one of the girls ran away shouting what sounded like “Mister Booksen”. Along with my other English friends we ran after her calling out for this “Mister Booksen”. None of the other Norwegians came along, they just burst out laughing. Later they told us that the poor girl had a problem with her trousers/pants and was shouting that she was losing them and was trying to get away from us.
At the same camp I was also asked by a very attractive young lady if I had had a “shag” that morning. Being only 14 and rather naïve I just blushed and ran away! Apparently the girl was actually asking if I’d had a shave. I’m sooooo glad I’m not a teenager anymore.
When my wife and I (both Americans but also near-fluent in French) traveled to Montréal many years ago, one of our souvenirs was a postcard with a picture of a seal with a sunrise in the background and the caption “Bébé phoque le matin”. You can imagine the jokes.
Also semi-relatedly (and not an entry, of course): While doing field work in the British Virgin Islands some years ago, I visited one of the smaller islands, whose owner had built an open-plan house (a common style in the islands) on the island’s ridge crest. I was surprised to find emblazoned across one of the large timbers that supported the roof over the entrance to the main living area the words “Fuck Brasil”. I was later told that the timbers used to build the house had been supplied by a prominent Brazilian timber firm whose founders were Dutch, “Fuck” being their name.
Also not an entry and in this case not a true story:
A WWII pilot was speaking at a ladies luncheon club. “…all of a sudden a fokker was heading towards me from out of the sun and another fokker was attacking me from behind…”
The president of the luncheon club interrupted “Ladies, I think I perhaps ought to inform you that a Fokker was a type of German aircraft”
The ex-pilot resumes “The Lady President is quite correct but these fockers were Messerschmitts!”.
A couple of years ago I was touring with some friends and due to meet them in Andermatt (Switzerland). At the end of a long tiring day (and several mountain passes) I went over the Furka Pass which goes up like a wall on the west side but has lots of reassuring Armco. I had guessed the east side would be like the east side of the Nufenen, a gentle valley. Was it hell, the road sticks high on the mountainside with nothing but those stone posts at intervals or sometimes a handrail out of water pipe which wouldn’t stop a bicycle. I couldn’t face it.
Luckily there was no traffic, so I crawled down there on the left (wrong) side of the road at 20mph and at the few blind bends or when I saw a car approaching, crept over to the correct right-hand side (the side with the view) at 10mph till it had gone. My friends caught me up near the bottom and wondered who this idiot was till they recognised me.
But at least I could say to them, “Well I’ve done the Furka and I’m never going near the Furka again!”
I offer this story, and report honestly that it fortunately did not happen to me:
Calling in sick to work makes me uncomfortable. No matter how legitimate my excuse, I always get the feeling that my boss thinks I’m lying. On one recent occasion, I had a valid reason but lied anyway, because the truth was just too darned humiliating. I simply mentioned that I had sustained a head injury, and I hoped I would feel up to coming in the next day. By then, I reasoned, I could think up a doozy to explain the bandage on the top of my head.
The accident occurred mainly because I had given in to my wife’s wishes to adopt a cute little kitty. Initially, the new acquisition was no problem.’
Then one morning, I was taking my shower after breakfast when I heard my wife, Deb, call out to me from the kitchen.
“Honey! The garbage disposal is dead again. Please come reset it.”
“You know where the button is,” I protested through the shower pitter-patter and steam. “Reset it yourself!”
But I’m scared!” she persisted. “What if it starts going and sucks me in?” There was a meaningful pause and then, “C’mon, it’ll only take you a second.”
So out I came, dripping wet and buck naked, hoping that my silent outraged nudity would make a statement about how I perceived her behavior as extremely cowardly. Sighing loudly, I squatted down and stuck my head under sink to find the button.
It is the last action I remember performing.
It struck without warning, and without any respect to my circumstances.
No, it wasn’t the hexed disposal, drawing me into its gnashing metal teeth. It was our new kitty, who discovered the fascinating dangling objects she spied hanging between my legs.
She had been poised around the corner and stalked me as I reached under the sink. And, at the precise moment when I was most vulnerable, she leapt at the toys I unwittingly offered and snagged them with her needle-like claws. I lost all rational thought to control orderly bodily movements, blindly rising at a violent rate of speed, with the full weight of kitten hanging from my masculine region.
Wild animals are sometimes faced with a “fight or flight” syndrome.
Men, in this predicament, choose only the “flight” option.
I know this from experience. I was fleeing straight up into the air when the sink and cabinet bluntly and forcefully impeded my ascent. The impact knocked me out cold.
When I awoke, my wife and the paramedics stood over me. Now there are not many things in this life worse than finding oneself lying on the kitchen floor buck naked in front of a group of “been-there, done- that” paramedics.
Even worse, having been fully briefed by my wife, the paramedics were all snorting loudly as they tried to conduct their work, all the while trying to suppress their hysterical laughter… and not succeeding.
Somehow I lived through it all.
A few days later I finally made it back in to the office, where colleagues tried to coax an explanation out of me about my head injury. I kept silent, claiming it was too painful to talk about, which it was.
“What’s the matter?” They all asked, “Cat got your tongue?”
If they only knew!
Why is it that only the women laugh at this?
Is this a made-up story? I seem to have heard it before, and at any rate if it’s not real it doesn’t count.
I do not know whether this really happened to somebody. (It seems plausible though.) I did not submit it as an entry to the contest. Just for fun.
I’m glad it’s not an entry; I don’t think I could ever top that.
I heard a version of this story decades ago, only it was a dog who stuck his cold nose where the sun don’t shine, causing the man to bang his head.
Well, I hadn’t heard it before and I was laughing to the point of tears! 😀
I had heard it before, but I was laughing to the point of tears anyway. It’s just too easy to imagine being real. 😉
😀
This one isn’t an entry, and is true:
I had a colleague – let us call him “Tippex” for another story involving him. I worked with him on and off for about 4 years.
At 2 in the morning on night shift, he was wont to get a bit sleepy (after midnight meal; graveyard shift ; I suffer those yawns my self)/ And he would retire behind the instrument racks to a convenient “nest” of cardboard boxes on the floor for a snooze, clutching a spanner.
Why the spanner? Well, if the Rig Boss comes into the unit and it is unattended, and “Tippex” hears the door slam, then “Tippex” makes grunting and spannering noises, gets up and makes words about tightening up a gas line. And if “Tippex” didn’t hear the approach of the Boss, then his plan was “I was working on a gas leak behind the instrument racks and I remember hearing the door go, went to get up, and remember nothing more”.
“Tippex” tried to teach me about the importance of a clipboard, but I knew that one from working in a paper mill. He was also a damned good pore pressure engineer and taught me a lot. Not just about how to get away with being a lazy-so-and-so. He’s probably retired now, but some of our contemporaries (Mick The Mudslinger ; Red Hand Les ; Jar-Jar Steve ; Gaffa-tape ; Braincell [Gaffa and Braincell were walking down a street in Northern Iraq last month and bumped into each other for the first time in 20 years. It is a small world!]) are still in harness and will know exactly who I mean.
I don’t know if I could narrow it down to the funniest or most embarrassing moment. But this one was pretty high ranking.
I was sixteen years old. Tan, fit, proud. I was at the beach with a couple of other male friends. We had been hanging out with a group of young women and I had become enamoured of a particular one. She and I had been talking for some time and things seemed to be going very well. Suddenly, taking me completely by surprise, my baggies (swim shorts) were ripped down to my ankles in one fell instant, and there I was standing in front of the young woman I was hoping to get to know better, and her friends, buck ass naked. Courtesy of my good friend. Hey, what are friends for?
I was in Mexico, living on a boat (as I am wont to do) and I needed to defrost my freezer, which was 3″ deep in ice. I had to remove all my frozen food and place it in a cooler, and I wanted to add dry ice to keep everything frozen – regular ice wouldn’t work of course to keep meat frozen solid.
I asked someone who spoke English (I do not speak Spanish well enough to talk my way out of a wet paper sack) how to say “dry ice” – he told me the translation is “hielo seco” – literally Ice Dry.
Next I went around asking people “donde esta la hielo seco?” – where is the dry ice? Finally someone told me to take a certain bus and get off at a place which sounded like a construction supply company, and in fact, when I arrived I found myself in front of a lumber yard as we call it in the US.
I found the manager in a small office and I told him “por favor, yo quiro hielo seco” – I want dry ice please. He smiled and said No Problemo – he led me out across the yard to a bin which was filled with STYROFOAM. Big long pieces in varying thickness. I gasped with my mouth hanging out and started to laugh. They looked at me like I was crazy of course, and from somewhere deep inside my brain, I came out with “yo quiero hielo de carbon dioxide” – I want ice made of carbon dioxide! And then THEY all started laughing, the manager, the workers, the secretary. All of them. I should have mentioned, I had already paid them for it! I should have known when he asked me how big a piece I wanted, then wrote up the invoice and it was like $2. Duh! Most embarrassing and funniest.
It happened 40 plus years ago, yet it remains etched in my memory and is still a bit difficult to recount. I was a high school cheerleader and considered being tan and being a cheerleader as two of the most important accomplishments of my life.
I had been taking gymnastic lessons, and in about one out of every ten tries I could do an aerial cartwheel (a cartwheel without placing hands on the ground). For some reason I decided to try it at the school pep rally, because I knew it would make me famous!
The moment arrived and it was my turn. I ran out onto the gym floor to execute the aerial cartwheel, and, just as I was supposed to push off forcefully with my left leg while kicking my right leg up behind me, my worn down tennis shoe slipped on the gym floor so there was no push, yet my right leg brought me off the ground. I continued flipping over, but my head was only one inch from the floor and I landed flat on my side and slid along the gym floor on my side for what seemed like forever! As soon as I stopped sliding, I quickly jumped back up and jumped a few times like cheerleaders do, with my hands on my hips and smiled, trying to look as cute as possible; hoping that no one had noticed that I fell.
As I looked up at the upstairs track encircling the gym, filled with students, they were slapping each other, rolling with laughter and pointing at me! The entire gym reverberated with howls and hoots – hundreds of students witnessed the downfall of “the most popular girl in school.” For months afterward, fellow teens in the halls stared at me and whispered, “There’s that poor girl who fell in the pep rally!”
Sometimes I just covered my head with my cheerleader sweater and tried to hide. I think I am over it now, or perhaps I have just learned to make fun of myself to hide the pain.
In modern times your event would be duly recorded and put online with a zillion views. At least you went for it! Thats’ gotta count for a lot.
True! Glad it was long before cell phone recording!
For the longest time I tormented myself, asking, “Why didn’t I just do a safer move?” Of course, it’s because I was a show off – that’s why! I paid dearly for my personality!
Awww, so many embarrassments, so little time…
I wouldn’t tell you any of the worst hundred of my most embarrassing moments for a copy of the Old Testament signed ‘God’.
Now you really got us interested.
Just the result of social awkwardness, a keen sense of embarrassment, and a good memory.
LOL!
When I was a police officer I was asked by a distraught pet owner to determine if the deceased dog we had temporarily stored outside the department’s kennel was his pet. He apprised me that his dog was a black lab and had a red collar. The dispatcher told me that the dog was in a garbage bag, which was placed next to a stockade fence next to the kennel. Unbeknownst to me, there was a Rottweiler inside the kennel, behind the fence. I walked out into the dark of night and began to unwrap the bag to identify the dog. Just as I got it opened, the Rottweiler began to bark. Due to the proximity of the deceased dog to the live dog it seemed as though the dog in the bag was barking. This scared the living crap out of me and I jumped three feet in the air. (I know it’s sad the dog was dead, but it shouldn’t take away from the hilarity of the story.)
Funny! (and RIP d*g)
Well, since you ask…
…some years ago I had a wedding gig at one of those posh resorts — the real fancy type, suited security at the gate, marble everywhere, fountains, not a flower showing the slightest hint of wilt despite the searing heat only June in Phoenix can bring, the works.
Anyway, at some point I need to use the facilities and find my way there. This, too, is over-the-top posh. Gold everywhere either solid or with plating so thick it showed no signs of wear. Lots more marble. Expensively unobtrusive scents in the air. And even a tie rack by the door with an impressive array of what looked to be very fine silk ties!
As I’m washing my hands, in the mirror I notice the gentleman before me pause by the tie rack on his way out the door, pick one of the ties at random…and, then inexplicably he wipes his feet with it and tosses it in the bin before heading out. All in full view of the attendant who didn’t even bat an eyelash.
So, on my way out, I asked him what the bit with the ties was all about. Wasn’t it a bit strange?
“Not at all,” he replied. “You see, these are the ties that dry men’s soles.”
…thank you, try the nut-crusted cheese-stuffed fried flatfish, I’ll be here all week, and not for consideration in the contest….
b&
NO FAKE STORIES!
Sorry…but I did mention, didn’t I, that the nut-crusted cheese-stuffed fried flatfish really is quite tasty…?
b&
Taming Ben is like trying to herd cats….LOL
Oh, cats are often heard. In fact, I think I hear one right now….
b&
Do you deliver??
Ha!
Sure, but not necessarily promptly…and the mileage fee might get up there….
b&
When my two adorable daughters were 5yo and 3yo we were trying to get them toilet trained and to be “big girls” and put on “BIG GIRL PANTIES” all the time and to stop using diapers completely (diapers are for babies they were told and you are now “BIG GIRLS”. WE must have said that 1000 times over the weeks.
One evening, I had them fed and watching the Disney channel intently, so I thought I could go to my room and take a quick shower before bedtime stories began.
I was done in record time, put on a robe, and was drying my hair, when I thought I heard something. I turned off the dryer, and sure enough I heard 2 distinct giggles and I didn’t know how long they were there or what they “saw”.
I turned around and gave chase, and the two trespasser’s ran down the hall toward the TV,
and I distinctly heard the 3 year old say to the five year old
“I’m gonna tell my teachers, that I saw my daddies BIG GIRL PANTIES!!!!!!”
The following day I installed a lock on my door.
Many years ago I went to visit my mother and my sister was there with her two young daughters. As I was eating a dinner that mum had left for me the youngest, about 4 years old at the time, was sitting next to me watching me eat. She looked at me very solemnly and said “You’ve got a beard”. I had a mouthful of potato so couldn’t reply straight away and she continued “Daddies got a willie”! Cue one mouthful of potato over the table.
That’s funny!
When I was in grad school working on my PhD thesis, I let a tree steal my shoes.
There was nothing to do in the lab one summer afternoon, so I and a friend of mine were trying out a Nerf boomerang in the middle ‘quad’ of our very large campus (this was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). The quad is a large, park-like area in the middle of campus where people come and go between buildings.
Before too long the boomerang became stuck in a very large cottonwood tree. So I took off a shoe and threw it into the tree to attempt to dislodge the boomerang. After a couple of tosses I succeeded in getting the shoe firmly stuck in the tree. So now I had to resort to throwing my second shoe into the tree to try to retrieve the first shoe. This shoe soon became firmly stuck in the tree. So there I was without shoes! The sun was setting and I had a couple miles to walk home since the bus would not let people like me on (no shoes, you see). There was a scattered crowd people who were watching the whole thing, and I am sure they were pretty amused.
But I was quickly rescued. A nice and very athletic student then chose that moment to offer help. He ascended the tree like he was born to it, and quickly rescued all three items. This was actually quite amazing since the tree had a large diameter, and the lowest branches were easily 15 feet up. I naturally thanked him profusely.
This is not, by the way, the stupidest thing I have done. Not by far.
Well come on then, fess up!
Not yet! This is a contest for funny or embarrassing. I am holding out for a Stupid Contest before I tell you about the various ways I have tried to kill myself with spiders.
Goddammit Mark, that’s just cruel. I’m dying to know how you’ve nearly killed yourself with spiders now!
I bide my time. I was young.
One involved black widow spiders, another a very busy state highway; but also with spiders.
I was at a conference at work. I shifted my weight slightly, and the right rear leg broke off my chair. As I went slowly down, clawing at the table while trying not to knock my lap top to the floor, I looked around, and I saw that look in the eyes of every other doctor at the table. They all were going to run over and pound on my chest!
Fortunately, they didn’t get the chance!
I was having lunch with a few friends one Saturday at a local Italian restaurant. After a few beers, I got up to take a restroom break. Neither I nor my friends knew where the restroom was located. Not to worry, I spotted a waiter several feet away, standing motionless next to a large potted tree.
“Excuse me, where’s the restroom?”
The waiter, standing with his or her back to me, didn’t respond. In the meantime, I could hear my friends laughing about something.
I walked a few feet more.
“Excuse me, can you tell me where the restroom is?”
Guffaws of laughter from my friends. Someone must’ve told a joke!
A few more feet and I reached the waiter, his or her back still to me. With some annoyance – “Excuse me!”
Uproarious laughter from my friends.
I walked around the potted tree to face the waiter, and then hung my head in embarrassment. I noticed another table or two had joined in the laughter with my friends.
The “waiter” was a decorative mannequin.
Many many years ago, whilst I was at university I was in a bar watching some friends play darts in one of the student bars ( Cwrt Mawr in Aberystwyth to be precise ) when one of the players completely mis-threw a dart and it stuck firm into my upper thigh. Dead silence for a second from everybody followed by “Are you OK? Do you want an ambulance?” I looked down, heaved the dart out and handed it back and said “Sure I’m fine ….” and I carried on as before. The guy’s game, understandably went from bad to worse ……
I wasn’t a complete sod though so I told him much later in the evening that I was an above-knee amputee and that he had hit my prosthesis ……
More embarrassing for him than you…
It was .. but it was extremely funny for me !
That’ll be a tough one to top….
b&
A pointed story, and right on target.
Lucky he only his your leg & not your middle wicket!
Explaining that that was a prosthesis would be a sticky wicket.
I must tell you a story about my brother Hugh.
At the time of the story Hugh and his family were living in an old farmhouse on the Sixth Line and ran a horseback riding enterprise. Unfortunately the ancient roof leaked when it rained. One sunny Sunday morning Hugh decided to climb up on the roof, with a bucket of tar, and fix that bothersome leak. So, rope in hand, up he goes. (I, thoughtfully, volunteered to hold the ladder and guide the bucket.)
The house was an early 20th century,two story frame building and the roof had been repaired,with tar, many times. As well in order to prevent snow buildup the roof was very steeply pitched .
Hugh struggled up the roof. On reaching what he thought was the site of the leak he began to apply tar liberally to broken shingles. Very diligently and much too liberally. After an hour or so he was satisfied and admiring his handiwork decided to ‘deroof’ himself.
But he can’t move! He is stuck fast to the hot,tarry, sticky roof! Damn! He curses. He wiggles. He bellows. He squirms. But as he frees one limb another gets stuck in the hot ,gooey, black mess. Hands, knees, feet and finally buttocks. The shouting and cursing soon attract a crowd.
Nobody can help! Hugh has been up there for hours. By now it’s late afternoon. The heat and earlier sunshine have melted the tar Now it begins to rain.The wind rises. In the distance we hear thunder. In resignation Hugh raises his fist skyward and shaking it angrily shouts, “Well you son of a bitch, you’ve got me where you want me. Now do your worst!”
Hugh finally got down covered in tar, cursing and appealing to God to take him now.
BTW he is a Christian believer!
Should be : So rope in hand up he went.
Has your brother been to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles? He might have a unique empathy for the mastodons, sabre-toothed tigers, dire wolves, and other poor creatures trapped there – tens of thousands of years before Genesis, just to point out.
I was thinking, is he a rabbit? (And where’s his briar patch?)
/@
That’s funny. I was picturing Basil Fawlty. “Thank you, God! Thank you so bloody much!”
And then cue a moose head falling on him…( i know it’s outdoors, but maybe from the sky??)
No doubt just a North Carolinian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_Heel
Background: When our children were toddlers, my spouse thought that I was way too indulgent in letting them take (reasonable) risks and learning from them.
Story: One weekend afternoon, I’m playing with the kids and the spouse says, “I’m going to the store for a couple hours. Please, no “science experiments” or rough housing while I’m gone.” I dutifully – and sincerely – promised it would only be Legos and Barbies until she returned.
Well, after a while, my daughter became tired and fell asleep on the couch. My son and I continued to play on the living room floor. Then I suddenly had the urge for a bowel movement. I thought, he has legos and cartoons. What could possibly go wrong in my absence?
After completing my business, I open the door to the bathroom at almost the same time my spouse opens the front door to the house and we both walk to the living room. When we both arrive in the living room, we discover that our son has climbed up three shelves of our entertainment center and is hanging there.
She screams out, “Joe, what are you doing up there?” To which he replies, “I’m Spiderman.” Her gaze then turns toward me with “the look.” The only reply I could muster was, “Well, he’s Spiderman.”
Happy note: No children or electronics were damaged in the incident.
Good reply! 😀
Thanks!
For an instant, I thought about replying to her with the actual story. But, I didn’t think she would believe it. Hell, based on history, I’m not even sure I would have believed me if I were in her place.
A memory prompted by Ben’s mention of fish, and in the funny category which could possibly have been embarrassing if I’d been unaware, this happened at the FASEB meeting in Dallas in ’79. We’d gone out to dinner at the Baby Doe Lost Mine Restaurant, which seemed to be a hopelessly pretentious place. But one of the appetizers was Rocky Mountain Oysters. As a consummate omnivore I seized on this first-ever opportunity, figuring I might have to wait another 28yrs for another chance, I ordered them along with catfish in slivered almonds (I said the place was pretentious).
The waitress comes to take my order, first turning to flash me some leg thru her slit dress, and I say I’ll have the Rocky Mtn Oysters with the catfish. “Ah, you know sir,” she says with a certain false sincerity, “the Oysters are not seafood.”
(For any who don’t know, RMO’s are bull testicles. These turned out to have been sliced on a microtome with enough breading to smother any flavor they might have had, so I have no idea what they actually taste like.)
In April, 1970, I was a freshman living in the men’s dorm at college in Boston and the guys on my floor were heavily into pranks. One day, someone got ahold of compressed air canisters and someone else had a long metal pipe, so someone had the stupid idea of getting nails and seeing how far we could expel them.
Our dorm was an older building and had windows that would open. Across the street was a parking lot for about 75 cars and behind that was a newer women’s dorm.
We opened the window and started shooting the nails by loading one in the pipe and putting a compressed air canister in the other end and hitting it with a hammer. Being on the fourth floor, the projectiles flew across the parking lot and were hitting the side of the women’s dorm.
Now this was a couple of weeks before the Kent State shooting but after the “Days of Rage” riot and a time of protest, so when someone called the police, they thought it was a sniper and the TPF arrived in riot gear with armored vehicles with lights and sirens. The guys disassembled the “weapon” and we all went down to the cafeteria for lunch. They never figured out where the projectimes came from.
Yes, I know what we did was incredibly stupid, even for 18 year olds, but we learned our lesson.
Pardon? you were carrying out chemistry experiments? nitrogen tri-iodide? Pardon? What you saying? Pardon?
Young and stupid. And immortal. Pretty much everyone does it, and the majority survive.
I have a comparable story. We were much younger (14-15)and had threaded 3/4 inch pipe and put a cap with a hole drilled in it on one end. Fire crackers (preferably 2 inchers) were inserted with the fuse coming through the drilled hole in the cap, and either marbles, or our own lead shot – made by pouring molten lead from a height into water – packed in. We had a well-hidden “camp” high in the bluffs above Puget Sound and would fire it toward the water from there.
One day, about 2 hours after we had started our firing, two cursing, red-faced, and scratched cops came at us from the heavy brush behind us that was at least 200 yards from the nearest road access (we always climbed the bluff from below and had no idea that it was even accessible from another direction).
Apparently a scuba diver in the Sound was near one or more of our shots and swam frantically to the beach and called the cops to report that someone was shooting at him. We had a good talking to from the police and our weapon was confiscated.
Re nitrogen tri-iodide: yeah, we made that in our teenage mad scientist lab and went upstairs to play cards while the filter paper was drying out in the garage. A lot later, the homeowner mother of my friend came upstairs after pulling her car into the garage and started slapping him silly. What is with all these people who are so paranoid that loud bangs make people think that others are shooting at them? Of course, since we had more concentrated nitric acid, a few weeks later we attempted – unsuccessfully I am happy to report – to make nitroglycerine.
(Not an entry)
When I was at Engineering school in the old hostel at Ardmore, I was the ‘smoke bomb specialist’ (zinc dust and sulphur mostly, also used by amateur rocketeers). On one occasion we thought it would be fun if a few bushes on the main campus emitted clouds of smoke randomly. Dumb I know. So I tried to devise an extremely slow-burning time-fuse. Some friends and I drove into town at 1a.m. and they sat in the car while I went out to deploy the infernal devices. I planted one in the bushes by the main University entrance, then went round the back to plant another, I found a nice bush about 3 feet high, when a security guard and a dog walked out of the main building. So I crouched down behind this tiny bush while the guard and his dog walked slowly past six feet from me. (The dog must have been deaf if he couldn’t hear my heart pounding). How they managed not to notice me I still don’t know. So calling on all my reserves I lit the thing and sneaked round the front of the building only to see flames in the bush by the door – the cardboard toilet roll holder which I had used to hide the slow fuse had caught fire, kinda predictably. By now my nerve was gone, and I didn’t know where the guard was, but I removed the holder, re-lit the slow fuse and walked as casually and innocently as I could (at 1.a.m.) back towards the car. I’d got about ten feet when the damn thing went off, not with a puff of smoke but with a crack like a gunshot. I instantly stuck my head down and ran like hell straight across Princes Street, I was still accelerating when I disappeared into the flax bushes in Albert Park. My friends in the car were killing themselves laughing. Sadly this was in the days before cellphone cameras.
I have many stories in my life but this is a good one worthy of a book or a free turkey. If you reside in Toronto, Canada you must be aware that a major landmark is being reduced to rubble because it is not a historical site but a commercial site that in my books should have been redesignated as one of the most distinguished capitalistic trademarks of Toronto. That site is Honest Eds. It was literally the ideal day dream of Mad Men. It was architecturally depraved with red letter signs of low prices that would attract all socio-economic backgrounds. The owner Ed Mirvish would offer a door crasher on special days that would attract customers from around the city and beyond. I worked there for the summers while attending university. One day I had the pleasure of handing out the special door crasher , the once a year turkey. Now this was a gift that, once announced , motivated line ups throughout the kingdom that found its way to the door of Honest Eds where the security guards and myself would give out a limited amount of turkeys but just enough to earn some publicity. This was my first time and I planned to make a splash and just maybe I could do it every year. We opened the doors and the each person exchanged pleasantries and received a turkey. Now many of these people were wealthy enough to own a turkey farm but free is free. We finished and I sent the security guards back to work and I apologised to the crowds that the turkeys were no more. One outraged individual yelled, “what is in the box behind you?” I replied, “What box?” “This box” as he lunged towards a medium brown cardboard box that I realized that I had missed. He ripped the box open like the Hulk in heat . Others followed and to my dismay there were more turkeys and the others had seen them I felt like the female character in I Zombie. They were trampling all over me and fighting over the turkeys. The legs and breasts were flying and so were the turkeys’. Next thing I saw was darkness and a security guys arm holding some turkey stuffing. I awoke in a Honest Ed Sales Car which had Honest Ed Sales Car written all over it . We were on our way to the hospital to check me out after the turkey attack. Bottom line is that nothing is free in this world.
In response, I have no choice but to reply with this classic:
b&
Thanks for that! I still remember it – it was great to see it again! 🙂
Gonna miss Honest Ed’s! Years ago my ex was trying to find a plastic jesus for his brother’s new used van. He had a backpack on and sort of a smirk on his face as he cruised the jam-packed aisles. The house “dick” started following him so he left without getting his jeebus.
Ed had what ever you needed or desired for a cheap price.
Except that they appeared to be out of plastic jesuses on that day circa 1980…
Some years ago, I landed in Bombay (as it was them called). I was using a rather distinctive old green suitcase (I was on a budget so my baggage was kinda primitive). I saw this funny old suitcase coming around the baggage conveyor grabbed it and headed off to my hotel.
On the way, I noticed that I must have somehow gotten a bit stronger during the flight, because the case suddenly seemed lighter than I’d remembered it.
When I got to my hotel, I sat down, rested for a few minutes, and then happily opened my suitcase and it was full of Bibles translated into Hindi. This was an undeniable fact; a simple matter of perception. But it was unacceptable. I found myself doing what I’d only ever seen in comedy shows, and didn’t believe it could be a real-life reaction. I impulsively slammed the lid down, waited, and opened it again very slowly and timidly peeked in. It was still full of Bibles translated into Hindi.
I was not happy.
You’re wise to double check; sometimes the brain likes to hallucinate!
So did you pick up the wrong luggage or had your possessions been replaced with the bibles or did you possessions turn into bibles (like how all music turns into Queen in Good Omens?
Yeh, shoulda explained that a bit better. I’d grabbed the wrong suit case. I assumed that I’d be the only one with such an unusual old brand.
I eventually got mine back again. Maybe I saved a few souls though by rescuing them from been missionized.
I am in high school, and recently my friend, lets call him M, won a close election in the class SGA. To celebrate we decided to spend an evening about town with a few friends, having dinner at a cheap Italian place and then seeing Chekhov. Afterwards, we went about some more, and we began walking down the main street, all together. Now its around midnight, and my friend who had won the election had been in a production of “Fiddle on the Roof”, so my and my friends (of which only one can sing) begin the seranade M with an awful rendition of the song “To Life” from that musical, with the lyrics changed to say “To M, To M, L’chaim. To M, our treasurer, our friend” etc. We went about this with arms interlocked walking down the main street in our town, and must have seen mad. Anyway, the evening ended with a nice game of D&D, and no one said anything in school the next day.
I was purposefully vague on location and names because I rather not embarrass my friends.
PS; I accidently put this comment in the wrong place before, so, ya…
I once lived in a garden flat in Rehavia, an upscale neighbourhood of Jerusalem, frequently visited by 5 or 6 of the city’s stray cats. Now Jerusalem’s cats are legendary. Neither completely wild, nor quite domestic, they are everywhere, like a signature of the town, and many people feed them. I let the cats roam freely inside the flat, but on my last day, when I wanted to pack my things, I kept them locked out all day. One brief moment of inattention, they sneaked in and, in an act of obvious vengeance, urinated all over the open suitcase. There was no time to do anything. I had to catch the flight. I still think about them…
P.S. In unlikely case of winning, could I have a copy without a cat drawing?
well, I guess I’ll share one just for the fun of it. When I was taking a philosophy course at Penn Valley community college, our prof. decided we should take a class trip out to the University of Kansas natural history and anthropology museums(this is the same prof, Verle, Muhrer, who introduced me to Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens) for a quick tour of science and evolution. I, being a single father, was given permission to take my son, who was maybe 4 or 5. So, we met up at the museum, walked in as a group, wandering around the first floor quietly observing the stuffed animal and ecosystem dioramas. My curious and clever young son noticed a large stuffed bear, standing on it’s hind legs in a nice bipedal position, points to the appropriate area and in his loudest little boy voice boldly states to the crowd:
“THERE’S IT’S PENIS!” and walks off.
At age two, I embarrassed my parents during a guided tour of the Breakers mansion in Newport RI by demanding to know whether “the naked babies were going to have a bath?”
Because why else would the cherubs in the paintings be naked?
When I was about 3 and we were seeing the Lipizaner horses perform in Vienna, I apparently piped up ” But Mommy, where are the cows?” ( not embarrassing for me, but possibly for my parents.)
But where are the cows?
There ought to be cows.
Well, maybe next year.
LOL!
Fortunately for all, I did not sing…
Decades back, some good friends invited me and my flatmate out for a special occasion, to the classiest restaurant in Auckland. So classy it even had escargots on the menu.
So after a couple of glasses of wine my friend persuaded us to try these escargots. So they duly arrived and my flatmate took one look and announced in a loud clear voice (with a mixture of surprise and amusement that could be heard clear across the restaurant) “but these are SNAILS>/i>”
We cracked up.
In gross anatomy labs for first-year medical students, we have fourth-year (senior) medical students as teaching assistants. Everyone, including the faculty, wears university hospital-issue scrubs, which are flattering to no human body type that I’ve seen. Each of our gross anatomy suites (all interconnected) has about 55 students, 2-3 TAs, and one or two faculty. And so the stage is set for this humiliating drama.
I was working with a group of students at their cadaver tank (the height of which is awkward for a tall, long-legged individual such as myself), when one of the senior TAs walks up behind me and whacks me across the buttocks with a clipboard. THWACK!!! It made the LOUDEST noise, whether due to the body-builder phenotype of the TA, the muscle/fat ratio of my gluteal region, the presence of my keys in the back pocket of my scrubs, or a combination of all of these. 55 heads lifted in unison from their dissections, and directed their attention at the source of the noise. If the human auricular muscles allowed it, they would have swiveled their ears. The freshmen medical students reminded me of zebras and gazelles, when the lions show up at the waterhole and start squabbling over the best drinking spots.
As a person who has given a horse-trainer friend a wedgie (while both of us were cantering down the practice field on our respective mounts) in retaliation for his snapping the back of my sports bra during a ride-off, it was very difficult to refrain from responding in kind to this masonite assault launched on my posterior. Since I’m faculty, and the thwacker of my butt was a student, I had to settle for running through every shade of red and purple available to my complexion. And although I genuinely like and respect the majority of my MD and almost-MD colleagues, I feel that this incident was a metaphor, and a warning, for some of my less-than-pleasant interactions with physicians.
I’d call that an assault. Wouldn’t anyone?
What that jerk did is completely inappropriate. Why would you put up with it?
I’d call it life as a woman.
Nothing will change unless people speak up. This woman is a teacher-an authority figure. She should act like it and put that bozo in his place; not only for herself, but for any women this boor will be working with in the future. Consider it part of his education.
Telling him off would also make it clear to the other students present that this behavior will not be tolerated. A teachable moment.
Of course it was a completely inappropriate assault. However, had I told the student off or humiliated him in front of the freshmen and his peers, it almost certainly would have been seen by the university administration as “punching down.” The TAs are taking a course for a grade while they’re working in the gross anatomy labs, so that sets up a hierarchy in which I’m at least partially responsible for their evaluation and grade. I did inform the two course directors about the incident, but have no idea whether the TA was punished or even chastised.
To their credit, two of the freshmen students at the tank bucked the hierarchy to chastise the TA. One, a woman, said “I can’t believe you did that. Why did you hit Dr. Barn Owl?” and the other, a man, said “What the hell were you thinking?” The latter was actually visibly angry, the former appeared upset, and one or both may have reported the incident to the course directors as well.
I’m sorry to hear that a teacher can be accused of “punching down” (I am already sick of that phrase) for insisting on being treated with decency.
In many such cases it’s much better to have bystanders do the objecting. I’m glad a couple spoke up for you. We should all act similarly for each other.
I was 15 years old and was starting the first night on my very first job working in one of the largest drinking establishments in Western Canada. Most bars don’t allow children to work, but British Columbia had (has?) a lot of strange liquor laws and licenses depending on the type of bar. This one was a night club, which the license requires to sell food. Minors could work but were not allowed to handle alcohol. One of the very first things the bar manager had me do was to take a case of menus the head manager just had printed, and put them the dumpster.
Once I returned I was put to work as a busboy, carrying clean glasses to various bars throughout the hotel and bringing back the dirty glasses. I did that once to learn where the bars are and the best way to get there. The rest of the night I spent in the tiny kitchen loading and unloading the dishwasher. The hotel had five separate bars each with it’s own theme, of which the largest bar, the nightclub, had three bar-tending stations where customers and waitresses could get drinks. It wasn’t very long before the place was packed with heavily inebriated customers, soon it was standing room only. The music was so loud my ears rang the next day.
To this day I can remember the smell, stale beer mixed with stale sweat and a special deodorant that was used to cover up the smell of vomit. It came in gallon jugs and they bought it by the caseload. Frequently.
Most of the bartenders screamed their demands through the internal phone system, using the kind of language that would make their mother cry. Except for Dave, who was unfailingly polite. I never got to work Dave’s bar.
Later I would start having dreams of washing never ending trays of lipstick stained glasses full of cigarette butts and the occasional condom, but those nightmares were in the future.
McPhail was the busboy who was teaching me the ropes. He showed me how to wash and stack glasses, which half empty dirty drinks can safely be consumed and which not. His rule was to avoid drinks with cigarette butts and lipstick. I never drank any although in the future I witnessed many more busboys finishing unknown customers drinks. McPhail had just shown me how to remove the can of insecticide from the automatic sprayer in the kitchen, which he drop kicked into the garbage while telling me “If this F-&*%& crap kills insects, imagine what it’s doing to our brains”, when the bartender kicked open the door and screamed “Where the F*** are my glasses?” I asked for a tray of highballs and a tray of collins glasses! Get them on my bar NOW you useless pieces of turds!
I turned around to see if McPhail was getting those, since I had been stuck on the dishwasher, but somehow he had managed to disappear and I was the only useless piece of turd left.
I grabbed a tray of highball glasses that had sufficiently dried and cooled and made my way towards the door. I went outside the kitchen since the glasses had to be stacked on the outside of the bar, I lifted it up to place on the single tray left. Just at that moment the band stopped playing and someone flung open the door right beside me. It hit the tray and the entire set of glasses, all 36 tumbled to floor and shattered.
Naturally many of those in the bar yelled, whistled and clapped. I turned beet red in my busboy uniform, my over sized black velvet bow tie contrasting my bright cherry red face. I quickly cleaned up the glasses and dumped all the broken glass into the garbage and went to stack another set of glasses onto the bar.
Of course, since I was so embarrassed and mortified, I never realized the error I was making and the door opened yet again. A second entire tray of glasses fell onto the floor and broke. It felt like every single person in the night club clapped, whistled and cheered. Those making the most of it were my fellow employees, the bartenders and other busboys, as the bars could be clearly seen as elevated islands of light in the bleakly dark nightclub. Even the waitresses were having a good laugh at my expense, in their slinky silk dresses.
This time the person who opened the door was the mufti-millionaire owner of the hotel. Lucky for me, he didn’t fire me right then and there for destroying almost 72 glasses in five minutes, he just told me to hold the door open while I stacked the glasses.
He didn’t even treat me like I was some sort of incompetent moron. And that’s what I remember most about him, that he was kind to me when I was new and being stupid and destroying his property. That and the naked woman dancing on his bed when I delivered room service later that night.
The twenty dollar tip didn’t hurt either.
That brings back 40-yeal-old memories of working as a hotel busboy in Yakima, WA. I’d almost forgotten those room service deliveries to the manager’s room on the top floor.
Only moderately amusing, but with the added bonus of involving Royalty.
In the late 80s I was Chair of a prominent London choir, which gave a regular carol concert for charity in the Royal Albert Hall.
One year, HM the Queen honoured us with her attendance. Along with others, I was lined up to meet the Royal party during the interval. After bowing to HM, I met Prince Philip, who asked how long our choir had been going. I said “About 20 years; we started out as a sight-reading club”. He replied: “What? A cycling club?!”
I have earned quite a few pints over the years with this (absolutely true) story.
Embarrassing story
Were to begin, as a child I suffered from asthma attacks which progressed into chest infections. I would miss a week or more of school and on my return I wouldn’t allowed out for break time (recess). This wasn’t a major issue when I was in the main school building but when I was in senior infants (ages 5 – 6) the classroom was in a two room prefab with a central common area and three toilets outside of the classroom.
At break time the teacher would lock the classroom and go for tea in the teachers’ lounge (actually the principal’s classroom) this wasn’t an issue when they only took a ten minute break but they were notorious for taking an hour at this break for meetings.
I had been out sick for a week and as always my parents had sent me in with a note to say I had to stay indoors for a few days to prevent any further infection. The teacher left and said she was locking the door to prevent other students coming back in. There were two of us in the room for that lunch break. After ten minutes there was no sign that the teacher was returning, twenty minutes pass. I have a small issue, I needed to use the toilet and unfortunately I need to void my bowels. My fellow student tried to help by lifting me up to climb out the window but they are small and very high off the ground since the building is on a raised platform. The emergency exit is screwed shut. So pacing, crossing legs and everything we can think of to stop the inevitable defecation occurring.
As if reaches the thirty minute mark, I can hold no more and proceed to fill my pants. Another ten minutes pass before the teacher returns and I then have to quietly tell her what has occurred. I am made to stand at the back of the room, normally a punishment. Nearly every one of my friends is trying to find out what terrible crime I’ve committed to be forced to stand for the next hour and a half. Class ends, luckily it’s a half day and my parents are there to collect me. My parents say that the note my teacher sent was the most apologetic and concerned one they have every received.
I am lucky that the other boy never told anyone what happened as I can just imagine the bullying I would have received.
5-year-olds are left unattended for up to an hour?! By teachers?!
Locked in a room?!?!
Good old fashioned Irish education
Holy shit.
You poor thing!
Should I win – I know, unlikely – I’d like my cat to look like Cyrus the d*g.
No d*gs. I said CATS!
📖
At age 11, knowing that our landlady was baking a birthday cake for me, I was prowling in her kitchen. I saw a jar of what I believed to be cake frosting, opened the lid dipped in my finger and put my finger in my mouth without much thought. It was a jar of bacon-grease.
And the problem with that is … ?
/@
My mother used to keep a large pot of soup in the spare refrigerator downstairs. As a little kid, I thought the orange crust of congealed grease on top looked like cheddar cheese and took a big bite.
One semester I was somehow required to teach 10th Grade Math in the Home Ec room, with me holding forth from the stove and mirrors on rhe ceiling. One of my brighter lights snuck the fridge door open and took a glug of what he thought was apple cider. Turns out it was the used oil for frying French fries. He did not live that down among his classmates for quite a while.
Bleargh!
Although I am an introvert, I sometimes have to do something funny to get attention. Once at a party I was carrying a healthy slice of lemon meringue pie on a styrofoam plate. I had the sudden urge to do a pratfall over an ottoman while skillfully saving the pie intact. Unfortunately, styrofoam is quite slippery, and the pie flew into the air and disappeared between the arm and cushion of the host’s lovely sofa. Nobody laughed. But everyone was concerned to know if I had hurt myself in the fall!
This isn’t so much amusing as me being a jerk, but several years ago I had the dubious pleasure of living in what I guess could be termed a boarding house with people of mostly foreign origin who did not speak English well or at all. One of them thought she owned the place, and liked to have take over the kitchen for the entire evening. She also got me to (foolishly) give her the Wi-Fi password so she’d not only entertain her friends in the kitchen all night, she had Netflix parties and produced prodigious amounts of garbage. The result was I had to take out her garbage every morning, and wasn’t ever able to fix dinner and the internet she wasn’t paying for was unusable by anyone else. So I lost it one night and complained with the name of a certain god and with the word for a sex act inserted as a middle name.
Another of my ‘roommates’ was of the evangelical variety. And she was quite upset by my taking her god’s name in vain. So she told the other lady and her friends (who were quite angry that I dared question their Netflix parties) I was a selfish Jew.
The next day she ‘confessed’ to me, said it was only because one of the people there mispronounced ‘selfish’ and because I had deeply upset her with my words. She also let me know that Jesus loved me.
I let her know that so did Allah, the Buddha and a thousand Hindu gods.
Interestingly, to Jews of the not-sitting-by-cootie-girls-on-a-plane variety, “shellfish” Jew would be the greater insult: there’s no mitzvah against selfishness!
Considering they prevented anyone else from making dinner for themselves, were using up all the bandwidth so no one else could use the internet while not sharing the cost of the service, and then left tons of garbage for others to take out for them I’d like to think I wasn’t the selfish one in that situation. The person who told them I was a selfish Jew? The day before I moved out she asked me if there were black people in Brooklyn. In hushed tones, as if there were black ninjas lurking in the walls who might strike if they heard.
(/lagniappe)
Wow. All I can say to that is Jesus F**king Christ!
Ok, so when my wife & I were at Le Bar Hemingway at the Ritz in Paris (yes, I’m a big fan of Hem’s writing, and at the time I was working for the Hemingway Home in Key West) I ordered a Sidecar. It was a fave of Hem’s, so I thought, what the hey.
I was sitting at the end of the (very small) bar, nursing the drink and looking at the Hem pics on the wall next to me, when I saw it: the official doc from The Guinness Book of World Records proclaiming the Ritz Sidecar the world’s most expensive cocktail–700 Euros (at that time–now it’s over 1300).
I couldn’t speak, but tapped my wife’s shoulder and pointed. When I had regained the faculty, I asked the bartender if I were really on the hook for that much, and he said, “oh, no–you must ask for the Ritz Sidecar specifically–yours is only 22 Euros.” Whew!
My wife then asked who typically ordered them, and he pointed at a gent at the other end of the bar. “That man orders them for his friends,” he said. At that, my wife called over to him, “can we be your friends?”
He laughed–but he didn’t order anything for us.
Not short, but true…
My wife and I went to Houston on a Saturday to take our teacher certification tests. While there, we stopped at the Natural Science Museum, to meet some friends and see the exhibits. That was the “Lord of the Rings’ movie exhibit for those taking notes.
We sat on a park bench and read for a bit, waiting. The missus commented on the size of the squirrels. Half joking, I said, “here squirrel” and made cute squirrel-like sounds. Four little fuzzy heads oriented on us like mammal missile launchers.
The leader of the pack… pride… doom of squirrels, a rather robust individual who was more obviously male than most dogs I’ve seen, approached. He sat and looked cute, waving his paws in the air. Oh boy, was it a trap.
I went to the car and found something for them to eat. I wouldn’t call it healthy, even for humans, but these squirrels were obviously on the fast track to clogged arteries. Fortunately, they live across the street from the largest hospital complex in Houston. The mind boggles at the idea of a 2nd year intern trying to perform a triple bypass on a four- pound squirrel… anyway.
The treat that I found was an old bag of cheese Ritz Bits ™. I said, “Well, I’ll show him.” and held one of the delectable and stale sandwiches in my outstretched fingers. I continued to make cutesy little noises. The squirrel approached me with the bravado of John Wayne making an example of a few hundred Mexican soldiers at the Alamo.
I got an excellent view of the special feature of order Rodentia as he delicately reached out and grabbed the morsel… from my now shaking fingers. You see, rodents specialize in teeth. Teeth that grow continuously, unless sharpened and honed to a razor edge by sharp foods like acorns and human fingers. Unfortunately, this leader of the ‘rat pack’ hadn’t eaten anything tougher than Wonder Bread and bologna for far too long. His incisors were a wonderful length for picking a painfully small Ritz cracker from my fingers.
Emboldened, the remainder of the mob approached. I quickly handed out sandwiches and observed these obese squirrels chewing on them like fat little four year olds. The smallest squirrel, ironically having the longest and bushiest tail (having bright eyes would be too obvious a joke here), was assaulted by a pair of grackles, thinking him an easy target for their murderous beaks (get it? Murder of crows… nevermind). Obviously, no animal smaller than a great dane would attack the leader of this squirrel herd. That little, small squirrel, holding onto his morsel like Lance Armstrong holding the lead at the Tour de France, made slashing motions with his claws. Grackles fled the scene, embarrassed at their inept theft attempt. This leader had trained his squad mates well. No mere bird was going to cash in on their cuteness factor.
Finally, after each squirrel of the pod… gaggle… whatever, extorted a handful of treats from us, I came to a painful realization… the Ritz Bits were gone. That’s when things turned ugly. I had lost sight of tactical reality and found myself surrounded by a pride of agile rodents who meant to get their treats. I faked left and dove for the car to find another bag of anything. My wife was left to appease the flock.
She began getting nervous when the runt, He of the Longest Tail, started making eyes at her ponytail and approaching (on the picnic table) with amorous intent. I returned with nothing more than a half full glass of water and some squeezed lemons. The leader was NOT HAPPY with this development. I sensed our relationship had taken a turn for the worse.
We decided that the restrooms and cool, air-conditioned, rodent free confines of the Museum offered a way out.
Thus endeth the tail, not with astounding victory or bitter defeat, but all the world looking like we had been chased out of the park by four squirrels. Look damnit, they were huge squirrels!
Short, but *very* embarrassing. I cannot digest egg or potato. Both give me gas. Horrible, terrible, painful uncontrollable gas. So, anyway, when I was a pre-teen, I had the great fortune to snag an invite to the birthday party / sleepover of the most popular girl in school, + all of her popular friends. I made the fateful mistake of eating French fries that day. I also would not be surprised if the cake had egg. At any rate, the problems didn’t start until late that night, when we were all sleeping. 10+ girls in the basement rec room. I got out of my sleeping bag and tried to slowly make my way to the bathroom – I had to pee. I naively thought that I could walk while severely bloated. Twas but a fantasy. For the entirety of my walk to the bathroom, a stream of very loud farts exited my body. So loud that *everyone* woke up, asking wtf was going on. Some bright person figured out that it was me, and the entire room of the most popular girls erupted in laughter. To a pre-teen, such an event was really the most embarrassing thing that could happen at that age, especially if amongst other girls.
I try to avoid eggs and potatoes as often as possible.
How awful for you! We females do get so much more embarrassed by farts than males do:-(
For sure.
Farting is positively de rigeur behavior at a boys’ sleep-over.
Probably even when you’re 50 or 60! ( I have three brothers…)
I am still waiting to grow out of this phase. 36.
😉
don’t hold your breath (or other gases);-)
Having sleepovers?
Ha!
Unfortunately, I don’t get invited to many any more.
But no, I meant the more aromatic phase.
This seems like a good spot to put this warning: do not consume more than one FiberOne bar (General Mills) in a 24hr period. Trust me.
😀
This isn’t my entry to the contest, as we’re only allowed one, but I’ve had a similar experience.
I had to go and relieve in the office at another branch when I was in my early 20s. I was put up in the flashest hotel I had ever seen, and was feeling pretty important. I was in the lift (elevator), trying to look like I stayed in places like this all the time. Someone got in with me, and farted revoltingly. He got out asap, leaving me there alone. A couple of floors down a gorgeous man joined me in the very smelly lift. His obvious assumption by the look on his face was that it was me, and who can blame him.
Saying something would have made it worse, so I just hoped I’d never see him again.
Just your luck:-(
It is actually! 🙂
LOL! (in commiseration!)
A little funny but mostly embarrassing and costly. During those pesky working years I was required to move around from time to time. One of those moves was to Waco, Texas, where we bought a house and moved in. I then decided we needed additional storage space and purchased one of those 8 X 10 build it yourself, metal storage buildings that come with all the parts and five million little screws and nuts. A real cheap and fun thing to put together in the back yard.
Once completed and the weekend nearly shot there was just one more thing to finish this masterpiece. There were four anchors you must screw into the ground and some light cable tied to the anchors reaching over the roof to tie down and hold the shed in case of high wind or bad weather — similar to what you see on trailer houses. I finished this off and went back to work the next day.
When I got home the next evening my wife did not mention anything but said to look in the back yard. I could see a small pile of dirt next to the storage building. What the heck is that, I asked. She then proceeded to tell me about the telephone company coming by to ask if our phone was working and she said is was. They said nearly every phone in the neighborhood was out, as well as the hospital down the street and they needed to check the line in the back yard. They soon discovered I had cut the phone line when I screwed one of the anchors into the ground. So, after they spent the rest of the day digging and repairing the line, I received an additional $400 to my phone bill for the month.
How deep did the anchor go? I’d have though that phone lines would have to be buried a yard or more below ground.
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Since phonelines don’t have much power, they don’t need to be buried very deep. I’ve seen a phone line only a few inches deep. Cable TV too.
I wasn’t thinking of that — just an “obvious” precaution against this kind of thing!
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I think our cable was only about 1/2″ deep because the teenager my neighbors hired to aerate their lawn with one of those mechanical hole-punching thingies killed our cable on Friday. No cable till Monday night.
We cut through our phone line digging a post hole. Stupid how shallow and flimsy they are! Not to mention, unmarked.
Very low voltage cables, I don’t think there’s any ‘safety’ depth. And the cost of burying them deeper and/or marking them probably outweighs the cost of occasionally replacing one.
It had just stopped raining and I was eager to get outside. I was all of 8 years old at the time and already a budding naturalist. My personal collection consisted of a garter snake, 3 or 4 chubs from the local creek, and toad found in the rhubarb behind the garage, and an assortment of bugs. You could say I was animal crazy and dreamed of having a complete menagerie of all the world’s creatures.
I was out on safari, you could call it, along the unpaved road a block from home when I spotted an enormous, black bird, standing still in the ditch, and soaking wet. I got pretty close and it cawed a bit but did not fly. But, how could it? It was slicked down with rain water. Clearly in distress, a little shaky looking. My instinct for capture was alerted as was my desire to rescue the gleaming beast. I would take it home and dry it’s ruffled feathers and feed it back to health. Then I’d release it here on the road where I found it so it could rejoin its family who must at this very moment be perched in the trees at the other side of the field. They must be watching me now, I thought.
I’d have to make a trap to get hold of the bird for I sensed it would not let me get much closer. I raced home running, and grabbed a cardboard box and string and a few slices of bread. Back again to the road I went, hoping the sad, wet, bird was still there. It was. I propped the box on a stick and tied the string at its base ready to pull. With bread as bate, I placed the box as close as I dared to the shivering bird. I tucked myself down low in the ditch on the opposite side of the road with the string in my hand to wait. The bird must be starving I knew and would soon be tempted by the bread. I decided to just wait him out. Soon he’d see that I was his and friend and rescuer, and I’d have him in my collection, at least for a while.
I was greatly upset when I noticed a man at some distance strolling toward us along the rain soaked road. He’s going to pass right over my sting and frighten the bird away! As he drew nearer I saw he walked with a cane, had a white beard, and black coat and hat. A tramp I thought. I was going to be thwarted in my mission of mercy by this hobo. There was nothing I could do the send that fool back the way he’d come.
Just as the man reached my string, he looked down,…and at my box trap, and then at the bird. “Come on Sammy”, he said, and the bird squawked once and flew up straight to the man’s shoulder. With the black bird perched on the black coat, the man continued down the road and didn’t even look back.
That’s a wonderful story!
Indeed!
There are so many, it is hard to pick just one. At least I like retelling this one.
When I was a teenager, my Dad decided that sending me on a 3-week Outward Bound course would be a good experience for me. I wasn’t too keen, considering the course included 2 days of rock climbing (100 ft cliffs, and I was scared of heights); and a 16-day canoe expedition during which you might be 3 days travel from a communication point if you needed rescuing, plus you also had a ‘solo’ in which you were left alone for 3 days with only 2 cups of trail mix for food. Fun.
While we had many memorable moments throughout that course, including portaging 80 lb aluminum canoes for a mile and a half, up to our knees in muck, it is what happened at the end of the canoe trip I wish to recount.
We survived and had returned tired, hungry, and dirty to base camp. So we quickly dumped our packs, set up our tents, grabbed dinner, and went to bed. Now this was in the 80’s, so we still used the older-style triangular tents with a zipper on the base as well as the diagonal. We had had problems before, with mosquitoes and black fly getting in when someone forgot to completely close one of zippers. In any rate, I was not the last one into the tent, so what followed was not my responsibility.
I was sleeping in the middle, with one person by the tent door, and another on the other side of me. Not long after we went to bed, I was almost asleep when the person by the door said, in not more than a whisper, “Don’t move.”
Personally I thought he was just talking in his sleep, so I didn’t do anything other than continue trying to fall asleep.
A few minutes later, the person on my other side whined quietly, “There’s a skunk in the tent!”
You wake up like that!!!
Very carefully we checked the tent and found that fortunately it had left, after having nosed its way through the zippers. However I then learned that it had brushed the first person’s head with its tail (“Don’t move”), it must have gone by my feet since I was totally unaware of it, but it then had put its paws on the other person’s forehead, presumably to get a better look around!
A close call, although I understand they make good pets once they are descented, but obviously not as good as cats.
In retrospect, I was glad of the skills I learned on the course (kayaking, rock climbing, canoeing), but I can’t say I enjoyed the solo being a ravenous teenager and all, but luckily I had some blueberry bushes in my area.
Whew!
“A close call, although I understand they make good pets once they are descented, but obviously not as good as cats.”
The search function is failing me, but PCC has mentioned more than once having a pet skunk some years ago (grad school?). Good thing you put in a good word for them. 😀
Yes, I had a de-scented skunk for about 7 years and it was a great pet. And if you don’t startle the wild ones, they won’t spray you. I once fed about 30 wild skunks on an island in Florida: I sat at a picnic table and gave them peanuts. I didn’t even come close to getting sprayed.
Skunks are great animals and get a terrible rap.
30!
I had no idea they’d reach that density in a given area!
Cool! 🙂
Some number of years ago near the end of my senior high school year a group of about 15 of my friends decided to celebrate our impending graduation with a trip to a nearby amusement park that was about an hour’s drive away. We split up into separate cars and I drove my Dad’s LTD sedan with my good buddy riding ‘shotgun’ up front. Two girls in our group ended up riding in the back seat. The guys chit-chatted during the drive but the girls in back didn’t say much.
Well, about 45 minutes into the trip, having absent-mindedly forgotten the girls in back, I decided to ‘impress’ my buddy, as high school guys are known to do, with a dramatic show of flatulence. Volume and duration being key attributes.
I still clearly remember the terror in my soul as I realized my situation initially from the complete lack of expected response from my buddy and then from the suppressed giggles in back. The embarrassment was forced on me all day long – the initial terror, the remaining silent drive, the inevitable disclosure to the others in our group. My deed was the focal point of discussion for the entire day and is still occasionally mentioned to this day.
Perhaps not prize-worthy funny or embarrassing, but I’ll share it anyway:
At Mcdonald’s late one evening (I don’t regularly frequent, but my wife was having a very specific pregnancy-related craving), I ordered myself a chicken sandwich, and was sure to indicate that I did *not* want mayo.
I waited for my sandwich in what I thought was total solitude, and when the box appeared on the counter I spied some suspicious white glops on it. I opened the box and took the sandwich apart. I mean, I really manhandled it. I loudly complained that I had asked for no mayo. The attendant angrily replied “this isn’t yours. It’s hers.” He pointed to a very small, very elderly lady that had somehow sidled up to me without my knowing.
I could’ve sworn the place was deserted when I began my order.
At least McDonald’s didn’t say NO SUBSTITUTIONS!
That’s actually very funny! 😀
It’s like Doug Adams’ biscuit story, with less Englishness.
Yes! 😀
I immediately thought of the Adams story after it happened!
The funniest thing that ever happened to me is already public knowledge, so no need to go into it here.
I somehow don’t think that’s going to win you a book…
I’m not sure I remember what that is. . .
That makes two of us!
Hi all – can someone please explain if there is a way to submit emails to Jerry, or is adding a ‘comment’ the only way to contact him? There doesn’t appear to be any means to attach photos here, so how are folk submitting their wildlife pictures?
Thanks, Chris.
If you Google Jerry Coyne you will find his email address at the University of Chicago website.
Or follow the Research Interests link at the top right of the page.
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We own a small d*g, Hugo, a smallish, headstrong cairn terrier which is perhaps where the trouble starts. On a summer day we were walking Hugo at a local country park which features a modest pond on which invariably a few Mallard are to be found swimming. On this day Hugo entered the water and started to swim towards the ducks which rather than flying away chose to out-swim him instead. For a while it was quite amusing to watch as he would start to catch up with the ducks and they would then accelerate away from his reach but as the minutes stretched by it was time to move on and we called in vain for Hugo to return to dry land. Uttering a succession of manic ‘yips’, the dog swam grimly on after the ducks on whilst they kept just out of his reach.
After the umpteenth circuit of the pond my patience wore thin and I determined that the next time they passed close to the edge I would stride in and grab Hugo, never mind the wet shoes and trouser legs that would result. On putting this plan into action I immediately discovered that the pond deepens a lot more steeply than I’d reckoned and I was in up to my neck! “In for a penny,in for a pound”; I thought I’d swim after the dog and I set out across the pond. At this point the ducks decided the game was no longer worth playing and flew off and it was now me in pursuit of the dog who proved as adept at out-swimming me as the ducks had been at out-swimming him.
By the time I got to the centre of the pond and the weed got thicker and my woollen pullover got heavier, I started to doubt the wisdom of my actions and the purpose of my mission switched to simply reaching the other side. Fortunately the pond is not very wide and the small crowd that had gathered finally watched an insouciant Hugo and a rather less dignified man haul themselves out onto the shore.
The finally ignominy was having to make my way home in a torn (but dry!) paper boiler suit which scarcely covered my dignity.
Hugo and I are still friends but on that day he definitely pushed his luck!
Ha, ha, I totally enjoyed that!
I had a similar experience except a lab, geese, and I didn’t join in. But good for you! 😎
The lesson I learned: Avoid experimenting with your children. I was recently minted experimental psychologist specialising in developmental psycholinguistics, with a particular interest in bilingualism. My two children, ages 4 and 1, had approximately equal exposure to English and Dutch since birth. One day I was having breakfast with them, and the older child observed that her younger brother had a nasty looking rash on his cheek. “Papa, that spot that on Dylan’s cheek is looks bad.” I agreed with her about the rash, and then I couldn’t resist . . . “Erin, the way you said that sentence sounds more like the way we say it in Dutch. Here’s how I would say it in English: The spot that is on Dylan’s cheek looks bad.” She listened intently, nodding. So I asked her to say it again, as we would say it in English. “The spot that is on Dylan’s cheek looks bad.” Perfect. She formed the English relative clause correctly, placing the finite verb “is” after the relative particle “that” (in Dutch, the finite verb should go to the end of the clause). So I thought, hey, I’m on a roll here, and I playfully said: “Erin, when we say something like “that is on Dylan’s cheek” we call that a relative clause. Can you say relative clause?” And she repeated, “Relative clause.” We ate our breakfast for a minute, and then I said, “Erin, remember what you said about Dylan’s cheek? Can you say it again the way we do in English.” And she didn’t hesitate: “The relative clause that on Dylan’s cheek is looks bad.”
Ha, ha, that’s funny!
Reminded me of my daughter when she was maybe 3 or 4. U-Haul rental trucks at that time had various illustrations on their sides, relating to what state they were from. One day we passed one with a picture of a cowboy on its side–I believe it was from Wyoming. My daughter said, “look at the clown on that truck!”
Her older brother was quick to inform her, “that’s a cowboy.”
Daughter, without missing a beat: “Look at that clown on that cowboy!”
Love it!!
Kids.
One summer day when my daughter, Amy, was about 2, my wife and I took her on a hike with us. As we moved up the trail we encountered wet conditions and my wife took off her sandals for better traction. “Look. Mommy has bare feet”, I remarked.
“…and I have mouse feet”, said Amy.
Awwwww!
Which reminds me of when we were out for a long country walk on a very hot summer’s day and, looking forward to some refreshment, we pointed out the ice-cream van by the roadside some way ahead.
“It can’t be an ice-cream van,” my (maybe) eight-year-old daughter said, “or it would’ve melted.”
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😀
Most perspicacious of her!
Last year I traveled to Tanzania with my father and two friends for a bird watching trip. One day, we were staying at a monastery and we decided to go for a short walk before dinner. Suddenly, we noticed a large owl in a tree. But when we set up our equipment, the owl flew off. So, we grasped our stuff and tried to follow the bird. Running through fields of tall grass, climbing crooked fences and jumping over tree logs, we eventually lost track of the owl. Catching my breath, I suddenly felt something moving on my arm. I checked it and saw an ant crawling on my elbow. Our guide also started checking himself and suddenly cried:”Ants! Everyone take your clothes off!” Immediately, we started undressing and witnessed numerous ants crawling all over us. So there we were, half naked in the middle of an African forest, hitting ants of our bodies.
The next day, we again went for a walk and encountered an owl sitting in a tree. He kept quiet, so we were able to watch him peacefully. And while I had my binoculars pointed at his face, I could swear he winked at me…
Last spring I went to the Zoo with my mother. We were touring the Wetland exhibit, which displayed an array of the diverse avifauna of Australia’s wetland ecosystems. We came across a male Blue-billed duck, and whilst males of this species has a brilliant blue beak, no doubt a product of sexual selection, our attention was drawn to what he was doing with his beak: he seemed intensely interested in using it to tamper with a long, pink, vermiform thing protruding from his rear end. “Ew, I think there’s some sort of worm coming out of it’s bottom!”, my mother loudly remarked, drawing the attention of other zoogoers. As a zoologist who has had the “privilege” of undertaking a lab in undergrad involving dissecting the various reproductive anatomy (aka “rude bits” as my Lab demonstrator would say) of a range of species, I knew that my mother’s interpretation was amiss and informed her, and incidentally the numerous people around us, that the long, coiled pink thing extruded from the duck’s cloaca he was so interested in was in fact his penis, which, unlike in most birds, is remarkable long and when used in the appropriate context, is eversed “explosively.” I think the couples around us got more than enough info on the birds and the bees that day!
After an academic conference in England, my wife and I spent a lovely week in St. Ives as vacation. Our first afternoon in town we walked down from our hotel to the village pier, and at the top of our agenda was noms! Famous Cornwall pasties! As we purchased two warm, and lovely pasties, the vendor warned us to keep them away from the gulls. I laughed, having grown up in New Jersey and protected many a hot dog from the Jonathan Livingston Seagulls that dive bomb tourists on the boardwalk.
I hadn’t gone ten feet away when the English variety of seagull demonstrated exactly why the British won the Battle of Britain in WWII. Two of them teamed up, and one dive bombed my head while the other went for the pasty that was clutched close to my chest.
KABAMM!
I sheepishly picked up my hat and asked my wife for a bite of her pasty.
EXACTLY the same thing happened to me, and in St. Ives, too! I think the gulls there are like pasty drones–they seek them out and remove them.
Did you meet a man with 20(?) wives? Kits, cats, sacks, wives…
We had a similar experience with the gulls on Lindisfarne and our sandwiches. We ended up eating them in the car, rather than picnicking on the grass.
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PS. The pasties are Cornish pasties.
Gulls learn well. I’ve seen the same behavior on beaches in St Maarten, Massachusetts and Florida.
Gulls on the beach at St Maarten? I hope there’s one beach they keep away from…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p03OWL2WMp4
During May of 2014, I agreed to write a piece for an Irish newspaper on the Irish blasphemy law. The copy that I submitted included the following passage:
“… the Catholic Church can tell atheists that some day an Iron Age Jew will return to earth (riding on a cloud, while blowing a trumpet) and resurrect their dead bodies, for the singular purpose of torturing them in fire for all eternity. However, if an atheist simply states what they might think about this doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus and the character of Jesus Christ who preached it, they can be prosecuted for blasphemy in the civil courts.”
The sub editor that I was dealing with refused to publish the full paragraph as he believed (probably correctly) that many of his Christian readers would be offended by the idea of Jesus riding on a cloud while blowing a trumpet. I pointed out that since in Matthew 24:30-31, Jesus prophesized his own return in exactly these terms, it would in fact be blasphemous to suggest that the second coming would not occur in this manner.
As you might imagine, the sub-editor had little interest in debating the theological or legal definition of blasphemy and simply wished to avoid any prospect of litigation. As such, the easiest thing for him to do was simply to censor these words. The Irish blasphemy law therefore caused the words of Jesus to be censored as they were perceived as too ridiculous to be tolerated by Christians.
True story.
There are six stalls in my office bathroom: five standard and one handicap. My business was urgent and not well-suited for a urinal. I solemnly swear that all five standard stalls were occupied; it was around 1:00pm, so the post-lunch rush was in full swing. The only available stall happened to be larger, better equipped handicap stall, which I entered without hesitation.
I’m not a monster. There really was no other option at the time, and there was exactly one handicapped man in my entire office, an elderly we’ll call Victor. Victor used a walker and had recently returned from retirement to work part time. I considered his arrival in the next three minutes a low probability worst-case scenario.
The moment I closed the stall door, flushes, jingling belts, and the clicks of locks signaled an exodus. It was eery, really, almost as though all five men synchronized their bowel movements. Within two or three minutes, hands were washed, and I was practically alone.
As I exited the stall, Victor was acting out my unlikely nightmare. He was struggling to back himself and his walker into a standard stall. And there I was, emerging from *his* stall like a buffoon. I deserved a citation. What I got was a good-natured smile from Victor, who then promptly lost his grip on his walker and stumbled backward onto the toilet with a grunt.
To seal my embarrassment, the universe conspired to send my boss around the corner just as Victor was taking his spill. My face was hot with shame as I asked whether Victor was OK, which he thankfully (for my own sake, I confess! I AM a monster after all!) was. I wound up apologizing to him later, but he seemed a little awkward and confused at my bringing it up. Needless to say, I will never, ever use a handicap stall ever again, ever.
Ha! That’s a good one.
Oh, you are a master of timing! 😀
FWIW, I don’t see that as a faux pas. Many places have just replaced a normal stall with a handicapped stall, which may mean there’s just one of each. Even at 5 to 1, I’ll bet that doesn’t begin to resemble the ratio of able-bodied to handicapped in the work-force (or public, or wherever the case may be, save certain particular venues like, say, rehab homes).
So I see the handicapped stall as being available for anyone who needs it and is there first. Obviously, when there is an able-bodied stall available manners would dictate that the able-bodied use that first. But if there’s a line, it should be that the next person takes the next available stall, handicapped or not. Just because someone is not able-bodied doesn’t necessarily mean they have more urgency than any other person.
It’s not the same as parking spaces, IMO.
A reasonable view.
Additionally, I often had to use the handicapped stall to change diapers, because that’s where the diaper-changing station usually is.
When my youngest son was about 10, he was trying to register at a website for kids, possibly related to a cartoon or toy or something, but every login name he came up with was rejected by the site as already having been taken. He asked me for help and, trying to be funny, I typed in a name I’d once heard his kindergarten teacher call him (which he didn’t particularly like): SweetPotato. “Sorry,” said the rejection screen, “you can’t sign up with a name that has ‘pot’ in it.” So next we asked my middle son, age 13, to help. He typed in “Crackhead.” Because that’s the kind of person he is. “Sorry,” said the rejection screen, “that name is already taken.”
“I know how to use the pay toilet without paying” I told my best friend Billy after we stopped into the mens room at the store my father managed at the mall. I didn’t have a dime, so I dropped down onto my belly and squeezed under the door of the locked stall. I realized something had gone horribly wrong when I came face to face with a pair of shoes sticking out from under a pair of pants that were draped around someones ankles. I looked up and was mortified to see my father’s assistant manager sitting on the pot, looking down at me and grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Amidst a flurry of apologies, I backed out of the stall only to encounter Billy laughing hysterically. For days afterwards I dreaded the thought of my father coming home from work, taking me aside and saying Son, my assistant manager shared something interesting with me today…”
Hilarious!
Reading my way thru these and there’s lot’s of good ones, but this is the first one to make me laugh out loud.
I was being trained for a technologist job at a critical-access hospital in central Colorado. The Microbiology supervisor was showing me how they wanted fluid smears set-up for cytospin. As we are both intently concentrating, bent over the bench top – I became aware of an odd buzzing noise: which turned out to be the bottom corner of my BORROWED lab coat disappearing into a paper shredder sitting beneath the counter. Not strong enough to recreate Whoopi Goldberg’s scene in “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, it still trashed that lab coat. The good thing about this episode was that her near-death with laughter was the closest I’ve ever come to a serious laboratory accident.
Oh, my, Jerry’s going to have to give out so many books! 😀
I.e., that’s hilarious too!
Oh, the arrogance of youth, especially the arrogance of a 12-year-old nascent intellectual snob! I was proud, so proud, of my academic achievement, my admission to the elite gifted program in my public junior high school and, in particular, I was proud of my extensive and often esoteric vocabulary, a vocabulary gleaned from years of reading way above my grade level. I couldn’t wait to impress my classmates with a new word I had recently learned, and a class discussion regarding spending habits presented the perfect opportunity; I stood up, I looked around the room, then turned to face my teacher and confidently (and loudly) proclaimed, “I need to be frugal because I am currently prostitute.”
Of course, I meant “destitute;” of course.
I was skiing for the first time with my schoolmates. As the chair lift was arriving at the top of the mountain, I tried to jump off of it, but my winter coat got stuck in the chair. Henceforth I had my two feet on the ground, but my coat was pulled up, along with my shirt, revealing my very first bra. It was beige. I was 13. I had to wait in that position for the attendant to stop the chair lift and come to rescue me, while the other kids were staring at me. I hid in the chalet for the rest of the day.
Leg story number two …
I got married in a church ( I was more conventional and less atheistic then ) and, as one did, we had a rehearsal a week before the big day. As we ran through the service, the vicar told us when to stand, kneel and sit. After being asked to kneel, I was aware of a grinding noise from my knee joint, which then promptly locked solid straight up and down. The priest looked at me, I hissed at my then fiancée ( and now my wife of almost 30 years ) “I can’t …. my knee joints gone….. I can’t kneel”. My fiancée promptly got the giggles, wrecking the decorum, the priest looked horrified and we virtually had to abandon the rehearsal …….
[ Following a rapid visit to the prosthetic centre , all went well the following week ….]
Remember, one story per person. Which do you wish to submit?
Uh errr .. “One story per person” … Just enjoy the second one!
To stay both within the letter and the spirit of the rules, the first one. I hope the second story, though, gave a smile ….
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is so large that the lab runs a taxi service to transport employees from site to site. You would call in and give your name, location and where you wanted to go. With a last name like Swartzendruber, there was occasionally a bit of confusion when I called for a ride. The drivers were often Spanish-speaking, and one time the driver showed up and asked if I was Swartz or Druber. I caught on quickly and just said “I am both, let’s go.” He paused a moment, and then headed out, no doubt thinking “loco gringo.”
As a 7 year old, the opportunity to play with my older brother and his friends for a Summer day presented an exciting prospect. On this occasion, we would be hanging out with the Lerners at their lake front home. The Lerners were a fun loving clan with Tom 9, Cidney 10, and Jan 8, they were kept in line by their stern and overly regimented military father. On this day, the excitement got the better of me, and I was unable to contain myself-so to speak. Rather than announce the accident I decided not to show my cards, in the hopes that no one would notice, or if they did, would not be able to pinpoint the culprit of the growing stench. Apparently my plan was not well thought out, because in very short order Mr. Lerner had assembled all of us kids in a neatly formed row, each of us toeing the line in equal distances from one another. Down the line Mr. Lerner slowly and methodically went, like a drill sergeant inspecting his new group of recruits. Only this inspection included a bend over and smell test at each recruits backside. When it was my turn I knew the gig was up. Mr. Lerner snapped upright with a adroitness that let us all know the answer- it was me.
I was in the jungles of Borneo at an orangutan feeding station, having the time of my life watching the orangutans come down from the trees, grab armfuls (and mouthfuls) of bananas and then try to climb back up without dropping any, continually snatching bunches from one another. The babies would all have white muzzles from drinking the milk our guides had put in buckets. Now, it rains a lot in Borneo, so when I felt the first drops I quickly whipped out my trusty little pink umbrella. But then I noticed no one else had an umbrella up. Nor was anyone else getting wet. Ooops…it wasn’t rain, an orangutan was peeing on me from her perch above! It turns out the wild orangs had moved in (as opposed to the apes who had previously had human contact, for example as having been kept as a pet…the two groups tend to hang out separately) and they wanted us humans gone. They also started throwing branches at us. They quickly got their wish, we left them in peace. I still have the pink umbrella.
Funny! 😀
And quite the experience!
The first year I moved to the U.S. (from Japan), I was taking a music class at a community college in CA. I was talking to a classmate about music, and he said he likes rap. So, I asked him “Who is your favorite “rappist”?” – what I meant was “rapper”. I thought “-ist” works for a person who plays music; such as guitarist, violinist, etc. (and I guess I didn’t think about “singer”).
Here’s my story:
I was a chemistry graduate student at UPenn in the mid 80’s. Attendance at physical chemistry seminar was required of all grad students. It was pretty near impossible to sneak into the room since the entrace was midway between the front and the back. So being late one day, I quietly opened the door and dashed in, hoping not to be noticed too much. It was unusually crowded that day, but as luck would have it, I spotted a vacant chair in the darkened room and went for it. Just as I was starting to pant my butt … I can remember it all in slow motion … I noticed the Dean of the Graduate school (also a professor in the department) wildy making hand gestures at me. Was the seat taken? It was too late, of course. As my weight came down, the chair gave way. Aparently the two front welds holding the seat to the flimsy metal frame were broken and, like a trap door, it let my rear fall all the way to the floor with a thump. My knees were tightly pressed against my chest and my feet were off the floor. There was literally nothing I could reach to pull myself out. As I stuggled and flailed, the chair fell over with a loud metalic clatter. To my horror, I still wasn’t free of it. I had one leg free, but somehow, like a bear trap, the seat had sprung closed again clamping firmly to my other thigh. All I could do was try to shake the cursed clanging thing off me. By this time I had achieved some notice. The speaker paused and I could hear stifled snickers from the audience. Was I really going to have to ask for help? I know what they were thinking: “he’s a theorist, isn’t he”? I did eventually get free of it, and I did evenutally get my degree. In Theory, of course.
Very funny! 😀
I don’t know if this qualifies because it’s not something that happened to me, but because of me.
My then-husband, daughter and I had spent the day at the beach in Biloxi MS.
On our way home to New Orleans, as we crossed state lines, then-husband wondered out loud why there was one roadside announcing that you’re exiting a state and a bit further down was another roadsign welcoming you to the entering state.
Spontaneously inspired, I said “it’s the geographic allowance for map lines.”
As I said this I looked at him and saw his furrowed brow as he was seriously processing my answer.
I was still folded over in laughter when we got home.
I have to say he was a good sport about my successful troll.
I was a second year medical student in a small group of second year medical students learning how to properly perform a pelvic examination on a volunteer woman. Everyone was already uncomfortable to one degree or another. The woman was lying on the table, knees bent, feet in stirrups, sheet covering her lower half. One by one, each of the students was supposed to glove up, lube up, and perform the exam. The volunteer (who had been doing this for years) did most of the teaching. One Orthodox Jewish student (non-married) who clearly had no experience in this area turned very red in the face and seemed to sort of go into a trance during his turn. The rest of us looked at each other with a knowing look, but of course no one laughed or even smiled. Still, we were all embarrassed for him and would give him hell later.
I was not nervous. I had had enough fun in college that there was no longer anything mysterious or intimidating to me about vaginas. I should have been less confident. A pelvic exam usually involves inserting two fingers of one hand into the vagina, feeling around for various things, and then, with the other hand, pushing down from above on the lower abdomen and pelvis (to feel the ovaries, uterus, etc.). I inserted two fingers and began to feel for what I was supposed to feel for.
“Excuse me,” said the volunteer, calmly but sternly.
“Yes?” I answered, genuinely confused, but not concerned.
“Where is your thumb?”
I could actually feel all the blood in body rush up into my face as I realized what I’d done. I had been concentrating so hard on trying to feel various anatomical structures with my two fingertips that the rest of my hand apparently went on autopilot and fell into a well rehearsed pattern of activity. My thumb had (of its own volition) migrated north, and began (shall we say) walking in circles.
A broken and desultory, “Oh,” was all I could manage to say as my brain retook control of my thumb and ordered an immediate retreat.
The rest of the students had by now figured out what happened and put forth a valiant effort not to laugh out loud. The noises coming from the group of students doing all in their power to hold back the laughter, but not quite succeeding, was probably the worst part. I knew I would never live this down.
Bonus related story (not for the prize): In anatomy lab during medical school, the professor had a very thick non-specific European accent (I don’t remember his name or ethnicity). Discussing the dissection of the female pelvis he said one day, “with this instrument you go to the introitus…” and he inserted the instrument into the vagina. But to me, with his heavy accent, it sounded like, “you go in to Detroit…” Not until I asked a classmate later why the professor was talking about Detroit, did I understand that I misheard him. For years after, the phrase “going to Detroit” was a wonderful euphemism among my close friends.
I also have a bonus related story #2 if anyone’s interested.
That poor volunteer must have seen – and felt – it all;-)
I gave birth 35½ years ago. That entire deal? Stunning. Also funny: it channels Ernestine such that I, by then myself already a BSN(ursing) of human patients .and. a practicing veterinarian, having never known her actual name nor, for that matter, any other thing about her, have also … … never forgotten her. Ernestine of Ms Lily Tomlin’s genre.
Two other, very, very wee kiddos of mine, only 13 months old and 37 months old at the time, needed to be looked after when, alone with only them beside me, I went in to labor with my and my belly’s third baby boy — then grown by me to bulldozing – maturity.
I telephoned my daddy. His line was busy. I tried again; the line was still busy. This was 1979, around noontime: lunch time for the two with the weer one longingly and so, so sorrowfully stating in to my eyeballs, “Mommy, I hungry.” At this plaintive plea of Jacob Thomas’ his two tiny hands gripping both of my kneecaps, I recall, at that time of the next pain, thinking how many women everywhere every hour registered in their ears and up in to their brains this same mewling: the World over, “Mommy, I hungry.”
Contractions were five minutes apart; membranes intact, but I was allegedly exactly three weeks past Dr Hesse’s oft – stated ‘due’ date so this was it: the real deal. O, and my father by the back road, the one that led right in to the university housing complex’s parking lot, was over 30 miles away. At least and fortunately, the blacktop wasn’t iced over; it was September in Iowa, not February. Again, his telephone line was still busy.
I pressed the ‘ 0 ‘ on my telephone’s pad; and when an actual voice came back in to my ear, stated to it — as if I were an amateur novitiate at all of this deal — thusly, “I don’t know if this is an emergency enough, ya’ know, enough of a reason to try to break in to my daddy’s line, Operator, I truly don’t. I am having labor pains every five minutes; I’m overdue, ‘nd it’s my third baby, and aaah, ah, well, my daddy needs to come to look after my other two little ones. No one else is here. He has to come, well, quite a ways actually. Um, it’s over a 30 – mile drive at least. Do ya’ think … … ? ”
“HELL YES, Woman ! Now ! I’ll do THAT right now ! What’s his phone number ? Now ! And you, you Woman, call your doctor right away. Do it now. Hang up and do it now ! I am breaking in to your father’s conversation right now. I’ll get ‘im there. Call your doctor. ”
Willard Albert William Maas drove, I know he did around that blacktop’s four S – curves and the rest of its length upwards the entire stretch of mileage at over 90 miles per hour, screamed his “baby” – blue Seville to a halt into the lot’s parking space at nearly a 45 – degree, askewed angle; and we three watched Daddy on those O – so spindly tibial pins of his and with that already thrice – attacked (at least once by that poliomyelitis virus of 1939 through 1941) heart – muscle actually .run. himself over to our itty – bitty apartment’s front door.
Knowing precisely two things: i) that Jacob Thomas and Zachary Adam would now not only both be heartily fed but also well looked after and ii) at where inside that building its labor and delivery suite was located, I did not wait for any wheelchair nor elevator – lift but, instead, climbed the four flights of back stairsteps from the hospital’s entrance to it. The crown of the head of Micah Abraham Zebulon was exiting as I listened to Dr Hesse’s wingtips clamoring down the hallway. He burst in to the delivery room and, with no time left at all to scrub in, grabbed off of the equipment table a sterilized towel, turned around from it to me; and, exhaling that last Lamaze – laboring breath of mine at 2:16pm that Indian Summer – afternoon, I finished … … this particular matter.
Blue
I am male. That’s important to the story.
Three decades ago, when I was in high school, I worked a summer in my father’s truck tire retread shop. Out of the mold, tire tread is kind of “hairy” — excess rubber is directed into spikes that must be scraped off. Shaving the tires was one of my duties. We had a machine that extended two small, parallel shafts, ending in knobs. I would rest the tire on the shafts and step on a peddle, which would rotate the shafts and the tire. The shaving tool was like a hand-held rake. The claws of the rake pointed backward (toward me). On one of my initial work days, the rake got clogged with tire spikes and was ripped from my hand. It made one revolution and slammed into my chin.
I learned my lesson. I positioned myself a step to the left while tire shaving. I also took care to hold on tighter.
This proved disastrous. The next time the rake clogged, it jerked me forward. Remember the knobs on the ends of the shafts? They were slightly lower than waist-high.
The swelling went down and normal skin color returned a few days later.
Epilogue: I have two grown children.
I see why male and epilogue matter here. 😎
I am really not a morning person, and many mornings I don’t fully wake up till I’m driving to work. On this occasion – the hands down stupidest thing I ever remember doing – I was living in Syracuse, a medium size city in central New York.
One winter morning, I stepped out of the house to a world of ice. A solid sheet of ice, no exaggeration, covering everything. It was so slippery that I snagged a trash can from next to the door and slid it along with me (like a giant hockey puck) just to keep my balance as I got to my car.
The driveway is flat, so I backed out carefully. But the house was on a hill and the moment I got out into the road, the car started sliding down. Because it was a residential area, there were cars parked on both sides of the fairly narrow street. This is where I really woke up.
Now the car wasn’t just sliding straight down the hill, and it seemed that my slightest touch on the steering was an over-correction. Two houses down the hill and I was into my 1st 360. That was unnerving; I was desperate. I decided to try a hot shot driver maneuver that I’d only seen on TV. So as the car came around the 2nd time, I whipped the steering around, trying to line up the wheels. It almost worked. The spin was greatly slowed, but now I was sliding down backwards.
Going into the 3rd, and now slower, 360, I got to thinking about the traffic at the bottom of the hill. Couldn’t tell if there was traffic, since I was facing the other way. Nothing for it but to lay on the horn and hope anyone down at the stop signs would figure it out and wait for me.
Well, I skated (ha, pun intended) on this one. Not a car was scratched; there was no traffic. But I still cringe to remember blowing that horn so that every neighbor would be sure to know what I was doing.
I think I would’ve needed a change of pants, had I been you.
Well, once on level ground, I pulled over and shook for quite a while.
♫ Like a good neighbor…JoanL is there ♫
It’s amazing what I’ll write online for a free book…
I live in the country. Hot water flow rates are too slow to expect a warm shower if water is being used elsewhere in the home.
Some years back I was in the shower when my wife turned on a faucet. She quickly realized I was in the shower & turned it off. She then yelled out “Ah! Sorry, Jeff!”.
But that is not what I heard.
I heard “AH! FIRE, JEFF!!!”
I immediately demonstrated my cat-like reflexes by leaping from the shower through the doorway in one quick burst. I ran naked to the kitchen to get the fire extinguisher. I wasn’t even very fast because wood floors are slippery when you’re wet.
Anyway, thinking back on this, the best memory is the look on my wife’s face. Thank goodness we didn’t have company over…
Funny thread, everyone!
Jeff
What? No pictures? 😎
No pictures. You’re welcome. 😉
I was 17 and a bottle-hardened drunkard. Family barbecue. Severe rhinitis, on heavy antihistamines. Noon. Had a few cans of beer when cousin offers a shot of a homemade golden cachaça (typical Brazilian spirit made of distilled sugarcane juice, close to 50% ABV). I drink it in one gulp, black out. I come to my senses in the shower, in my underpants, with uncle and cousin throwing cold water in my eyes. As I leave the bathroom in my cousin’s clothes, I notice the sun is setting. As I sober up, I’m told to my semi-letargic amezement that after that first shot of cachaça I actually kept drinking my beers, laughing and acting in my regular-when-torpid manner – until I sat down to eat and kept missing my mouth, smearing my face with a piece of beef. Then, they knew there was something wrong. I was laid down in bed when the pukefest(TM) started. When it ended, my clothes were bagged and I was thrown in shower. My cousin’s bedroom was quarantined for the week.
Lesson: If you want to be able to aim your fork right, to not wake up in your underpants as people throw water at your face and not having your grandmother remind you of your embarassing behavior for five years straight, never mix alcohol and antihistamines.
Once upon a time I was an aspiring mystic. As such, I attended the first – perhaps the last – Whole Earth Fair held on the campus of University of Colorado in Boulder in the summer of 1970.
There, while seated among thousands of other ambitious young grokkers, and wondering just how long this process of developing Cosmic Consciousness was going to take, I devoutly listened to the wise words of Swami whosit, or Yogi Hummahumma or Roshi whats-his-name as he spoke about egolessness and oneness with nature. Just then, as I sat quite motionless, crosslegged on the grass, a masterless dog – perhaps a ronin – wandered up behind me, lifted his leg, and urinated freely all over my back. Everyone behind me witnessed this and all found it enormously amusing.
Shocked, humiliated – exactly WHAT was the universe trying to tell me? – wishing I could disappear, I…did nothing. The dog was done, I was wet, angry, embarrassed beyond measure. The best I could hope for was for no one to know exactly who the pissee was. If I didn’t turn around to shake my fist fruitlessly at the dog, no one would know my face. This worked.
Let’s go back to when the T-Rex tissue sample had been discovered and some of the proteins partially sequenced. One of the conclusions was that the proteins were similar to what we see in chickens.
I was posting on an evolution forum, having back and forth with a creationist from West Virginia. He was saying it was ludicrous to think that chickens were descended from T-Rex.
I pointed out that the scientists weren’t saying chickens were descended from T-Rex, just that they were related. Just as the creationist was related to his uncle, but wasn’t descended from his uncle.
To this the creationist responded, in all seriousness, “How do you know I’m not descended from my uncle?”
At this point I was howling with laughter. Well, I thought, the guy IS from West Virginia so maybe… (Apologies to West Virginians)
Several years ago on a Friday morning I was teaching high school physics in a room that had a single door in the back of the classroom leading to the hall which I usually left open out of habit. I do a lot of acting in community theater (a necessary skill for being an effective classroom teacher) and at the time happened to have the lead in a production of Cyrano de Bergerac. One of my students, a lovely, vivacious young woman, had come to see the production the night before. Next morning I was in full flight before a class of 32 kids lecturing about Newtonian mechanics when this young woman, all flashing blue eyes and brilliant smile, swung around the door and in a breathless voice said, “Hey, Mr Czarny [all heads turn to her in the back of the room}, you were wonderful last night!” And then she was gone. Thirty-two heads slowly turn back to me, mouths agape and eyes wide in shock and amusement. “No, wait,” I stammered, “I was in a show last night, and she came to see it and…and…”, but I knew I was dead meat on a stick. Needless to say the rest of that hour (and that day, since word travels fast) was a lost cause.
Great story, but Newton would not have approved. 😎
In June of 1975 my wife and I were on vacation with our daughter born on Valentine’s Day that year. We liked to travel on our vacations but could not afford to stay in motels, so we camped in State or National parks. We visited the Grand Canyon then headed to a park on Lake Powell, Arizona. Most parks in the 70’s were primitive so we were thrilled to discover the park we stopped at had modern restrooms with running water and even hot showers. We both wanted to take advantage of the showers since we had been over a week only washing off in the spots we had gone swimming, but our daughter was tired and fussy. She didn’t like camping in the heat and we took turns trying to settle her down. Finally about 3 am both daughter and wife fell sound asleep. I woke up about 4:30 and decided to take advantage of the opportunity and grabbed clean clothes, my shaving gear and a towel and went to take a shower. I took my time happy to use a toilet that wasn’t just a wooden board over a hole. I took a long shower using way too much hot water, shaved and hopped in the shower again to shampoo and rinse off. I took my time drying and got completely dressed in clean clothes. By this time the sun had come up and I decided I better get back and give the wife the same opportunity. I walked out the door of the restroom and waiting patiently was a group of between 20 to 25 women and girls, mostly Brownies, Girl Scouts and their troop leaders ready for their turn in the Ladies restroom. When I exited they began to clap and cheer much to my embarrassment. I wasn’t going to say anything to my wife but finally had to explain after about the 4th Girl Scout waved at me during our stay at the park.
You forgot about the part where then your wife had to wait even longer…
😀
Good story!
Kudos to both of you for managing all that with a 4-month-old!
Way too many years ago I was working as a butcher in a North Carolina supermarket. One evening my colleague Wayne Garner and I were on duty when a man came in and perused the meat case, obviously undecided about what to buy. Wayne approached him and asked if he could help. I was eavesdropping. The man asked about an item, and Wayne said “that’s a beef tongue.” “Yuck,” said the man, “I’m not eating anything that comes from a cow’s mouth … where’s the eggs?”
Having gone all of my 37 years of life never reacting to ant bites, imagine my surprise to suddenly go into anaphylaxis when an ant bit me in my sleep. Having never experienced an allergic reaction before I could only guess why my tongue was swelling, throat closing, and I itched like I had been tied to a post over…an ant hill.
By the time my husband got us to the hospital (having nearly ended our lives several times in other creative and definitely interesting ways) my throat was nearly closed, my eyes were swollen shut, and my tongue would not fit in my mouth anymore, thus I couldn’t speak with any coherency.
My husband wheeled me into the ER, leaving me with a nurse while he rushed off to move his car from the emergency lane…without telling the nurse what my problem was. Being a nurse one would assume she didn’t really need to be told what was wrong with me, after all, it was written all over my face, but what do I know?
So there I am, sitting in a wheel chair, unable to catch a breath because my airway has swollen to the size of a pin head. I can’t see at all as my eyes are swollen closed like a boxer that lost the fight, and my tongue is sticking out of my mouth so I can’t talk beyond nah nah nah and other gutteral noises.
For a few seconds it’s absolutely quiet and I have no idea what the nurse is doing because I can’t see her when suddenly I hear her voice asking me sweetly, “now what brought you to the ER today?”
I would have face palmed but I was too busy clutching my throat because I COULDN’T BREATH.
Thankfully, my husband returned just then and started explaining my medical emergency to this lady (nurse?) who kept asking bizarre questions while taking an inordinate amount of time to do whatever it is you do when somebody CAN’T BREATH!
Just then a doctor walked by and took one look at me (I’m told) and jumped into action. He saved my life with a quick shot of adrenalin while berating the nurse the entire time.
I spent a few hours in the ER until things had calmed down and then was sent home. Here’s the real kicker. Less than 24 hours later I would be right back in that ER for the same exact reason. An allergic reaction. Treatment was a bit more prompt that time.
Thankfully, Nurse Betty was nowhere to be found. The incident itself was scary as anything I have ever been through but now that the danger is past and it is just a memory, I literally laugh out loud when I remember it. It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life.
“Well, my wife died last night – but at least my car wasn’t towed!”
Oh my gosh it’s great that you can laugh at that story because it’s horrifying! So glad you lived to tell the tale and I hope you keep an epi-pen close by at all times.
I sense this behavior is rather common. In a panic situation people often resort to the wrong action. The illegally parked car would have been high priority in a non-panic situation. Stress may cause us to seize on secondary issues we know how to deal with rather than focus on the urgency of the moment which may have no ready solution. I wonder if there is a name for this phenomenon.
“Non-adaptive.”
The emergency lane at this particular hosp was quite narrow. His car literally was blocking the way for any other cars to get through, or an ambulance.
I do keep an epi-pen near by but have never had a reason to use one.
Thanks for the details – and I hope you avoid future “funny” calamities!
Technically speaking, that was not an anaphylactic reaction, anaphylaxis dilates all blood vessels and you go into shock (circulatory collapse). What you had is called Quinke oedema, can be just as deadly as anaphylaxis, btw.
When I was five or six years old I was at a holiday party “for the kids” at my dad’s lodge, and he introduced me to our town’s mayor who happened to be a former Grand Exalted Poobah (or whatever the lodge called their Dear Leader) from back when my dad was a kid.
The mayor had a pretty bad stammer, and he told me “I knew your gran- gran- gran- grandfather [jerking his head back on every “gran-“], and you look just like him!”
I replied “Wow! You must be really old! My gran- gran- gran- grandfather [jerking my head back on every “gran-“] would be my father’s father’s father’s …”
Normal people (like my mom, for example) would be embarrassed if their kid said something like that – to the mayor! – but of course those old drunks thought it was wildly hilarious. I was ashamed though because I innocently thought he was saying he knew my great-great-great-grandfather, and, as kids will, assumed they were laughing “at” me.
It took years of that story being retold for me to “get” the joke, at which point I was mortified that people would mock a person’s disability like that. My dad insisted it was an endearment, as were the racial epithets thrown at the non-WASP members, as well the rest of the nicknames based on physical features: everyone was “Shorty,” “Chubby,” “Stretch,” “Pumpkin-Head,” etc. One man was called “Pear-Shape,” which was kind of a clumsy name, I thought. My dad was “Red” because of his hair.
My older brother called me “Woozie” because I was hospitalized for asthma when I was a toddler.
The 1960’s were not a “safe space” … !
My grandfather has similarly “endearing” terms for acquaintances.
He always referred to a certain handyman he often hired as Krakschauer. I was talking to my mom (his daughter) and mentioned “that handyman grandpa knows, what was his name? I think it’s Polish or something.”
She laughed. No. It was Crack-shower. Because of how low his pants sat. When he’d squat or bend to fix something, he’d show crack.
“The 1960’s were not a “safe space” … !”
No, and you evoke them perfectly! What a good time was had by all.
My father & his maritime cronies were merciless with the ethnic jokes, many of which they told on themselves, all to great hilarity & usually fondness.
“At 21 my english was pretty bad – possibly still is. I had just landed in London. 21, eager to imbibe the city. One night I went downtown and ate at an Italian restaurant. I still remember the red tomato sauce intercalating the linguini. The night was cold, and I had to take the train to go far, zone 5 I think. I walked to the tube station. So many people, so little I understood – of everything. In the pendular car I felt sick. But I had never been underneath the earth traveling at 80 km/h. I walked through the closest doors to the next wagon. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and breathed heavily again. We were out. The night was scintillating, moving fast in front of my eyes. My gut hurt. I needed to get off the train. I stepped out of the train and as a limping dog walked my way to the end of the platform. There, next to the rocks on the ground I vomited really hard. From the distance I saw a couple of policemen walking towards me. I was afraid (my first vomit abroad). I was cleaning my mouth when they must have asked – “Are you alright?” -“No, I feel terrible.” -“What happened to you?” And I blurted out -“I am intoxicated.” The policemen were taken aback by my confession. They immediate said with caution: -“What sort of drugs did you take?” Drugs? I was confused. And then, with much fear in my eyes I said: -“Drugs, no! I just ate a lot of pasta/” That day I learned the expression “food poisoning.” — Daniel”
Intercalating the linguine? Scintillating? Pendular car? Wow, there is nothing at all wrong with your English, mate: it’s more like poetry!
Your first day in London may have been awful, but it does make a great story! Thanks!
About 20 years ago, I was teaching a class in statistical thermodynamics. Stat thermo is very mathematical but very logical, and much of the lecture is devoted to derivations of important results that we then apply to real chemical systems. If you can stomach the derivations, the results and their applications can be quite beautiful (to a physical chemist, that is).
In the middle of one derivation, I noticed something unusual that I never noticed before. Do you know what a lecturer REALLY wants to hear? Not the scratching of pencils taking notes, not the rustling of paper, not the clearing of throats as a student prepares to ask a question. No, what we really want to hear is ABSOLUTE SILENCE. That means that each and every student is hanging on to every word, not even the sound of breathing interrupting that magical moment of pure, rapt attention to the instructor.
Well, in the middle of that derivation, I reached lecturer nirvana: absolute silence. As I paused to take a breath, there wasn’t a sound in the classroom of about 15 people, me and the students.
And then I broke wind. Rather loudly.
You know that joke that if there are two people in an elevator and one person farts, everyone knows who did it? Well, my particular elevator was rather crowded, and EVERYONE knew who did it. To my credit, I recovered immediately, turned back to the board, and continued the derivation. I don’t know how red I turned, nor did I try to meet anyone’s eyes, but to say that was my most embarrassing moment is rather understated.
And I never experienced that sort of lecturer nirvana again. Maybe word got out…
In 1982 I was working one afternoon in a video rental store on Chicago’s Gold Coast. The manager was in the back and I was all alone at the counter. Two men came in. One was sharply dressed and the other one looked like he had slept in a gutter and just woke up.
The well-dressed man approached me and asked in a very distinct English accent if the movies were for sale. I said yes and told him to pick out the boxes he wanted. (We kept the actual VHS tapes in the back). He then started to collect tons of movies! I worked my butt off trying to retrieve the tapes and put them in the right boxes.
Meanwhile the shabby-dressed man also selected some boxes but stayed near the rear of the store avoiding eye contact with me. Finally, the well-dressed man approached the counter and took out his wallet. It had an engraved “The Who” emblem in it. I asked if they were in town for the “Who” concert that was coming up in a few days. He laughed very hard but did not answer me. He paid and both men left.
I came in to work the following day and was immediately met with chides and laughter.
The well-dressed gentlemen I waited on the day before was the manager of “The Who”. And the shabby-dressed man? Well of course that was Pete Townsend.
A day earlier they had gone into a bookstore across the street (where they were identified) and asked the owner who was a friend of ours if he knew a place to buy some movies to take on the concert tour bus!
(Not an entry but…)
In the 80’s I was working in Rarotonga and we had a major flood control scheme that included enlarging a channel that ran down one side of the Catholic Cathedral grounds. I was deputed to go and ask them for their permission. So I knocked on the side door of the residence and a priest answered it, let me in and invited me to explain our proposal. Aware that this could have a major impact on their land, I said as politely as I could ‘Should I be talking to whoever is in charge of your property?’ and the priest said ‘That would be me, I think. I’m Bishop O’Brien’. Oh the embarrassment.
He was really pleasant about my gaffe and, though Catholic doctrine is anathema to me, I have to say he was absolutely public-spirited in giving permission for the works without any quibbles.
P.S. The Bishop’s name changed because… well just because
Historically, at least, you should have been talking to the dean (iirc).
In the middle ages there are instances of bishops being denied access to “their” cathedrals.
/@
Not sure about the Diocese of Rarotonga but it’s probably not big enough to have a major hierarchy. Quite possibly the bish doubles as the dean.
Would that make him a bean dish?
b&
I was sitting in a bank, across the desk from a loan officer as we were completing the paperwork for a loan. I saw on her desk name plate that her last name was Kekkonnen. “Is that Finnish?” I asked. She looked up and said “Yes, you can go now.”
🙂
Made me laugh out loud.
As a graduate student many years ago I attended a large (1000+ people) international behavior conference. The coffee breaks included excellent pastries, but there was never enough to go around and the pastries always ran out quickly. I was in a plenary talk and needed a bathroom break before the coffee break but this could mean no doughnuts during the break. I had a plan. I left the plenary talk as soon as the questions began and rushed to the bathroom, smugly thinking this ploy would put in the pastry line before anybody else. Once ensconced in the bathroom stall I heard a woman’s voice. Before I could call out to tell her she was in the wrong bathroom, a few more women came in the bathroom. Oops, in my rush to get the bathroom break out of the way quickly, I had entered the wrong bathroom. It got worse. A woman entered the stall next to mine. I looked down at my hairy-toed feet in my sandals and decided it would be prudent to yank my feet up out of sight. I sat there waiting for the coast to clear for what seemed like an eternity. It was not happening, partly because several women were chatting around the sinks. With my chances a getting a doughnut sinking I decided I had to act. I covered my face with my hands, rushed out of the stall mumbling “sorry, got in the wrong bathroom”. Through my hands I could see that one of the women by the sink was Linda Partridge, then president of the Society (and now Dame Partridge no less). The second I got out the bathroom door the bathroom erupted in laugher—they had enjoyed the incident more than I had. I can no longer recall if I made it to the doughnut line in time.
LOL!
I love it when we commit a faux pas and then try a cover-up which only makes it worse. 😀
(And by “we,” I mean everybody but me….)
I am a non-jew married to a cultural jew, living in Mexico City. When newly married, 30+ years ago, we were invited to a Yom Kipur dinner and I was asked to bring the salad. I chose the best recipe I could think of: my delicious Spinach Salad (recipe below). Dinner was served, and all of a sudden, the guest of honor, the Israeli Ambassador to Mexico, said: “What part of the veal is this?” I had forgotten to exclude the bacon! I was making 50 jews all eat bacon for Yom Kipur. I turned to my husband, who was looking at me with I-can-kill-you eyes, and all I could say was “Let’s get the hell out of here!”.
Spinach Salad (mind the date)
2 pounds of spinach, 1 small romaine lettuce, 2 sliced green peppers, ¼ pound of sliced fresh white mushrooms, ¼ pound fried bacon in small pieces, 5 oz toasted sesame seed for decoration.
Sauce. Mix in the blender the previous day: ¼ cup olive oil, ¼ cup corn oil, ¼ cup vinegar, ½ Tbsp black pepper, ½ Tbsp sugar, ½ Tbsp paprika, 3 Tbsp Catsup, a pinch of powdered mustard, 2 smashed garlic cloves, ½ Tbsp Worcestershire sauce, ½ Tbsp bouillon powder.
Hahahahaha!
Oh, boy. Tough to live that one down! So it occurs to me, if you did this on Yom Kipur, are you “atoning” for that by telling us now?
This is just idle non-Jew speculation, but is it so horrible to eat pork if you’re unaware of it? Apparently not so much.
OMG you poor thing!
I hate being invited to dinner and then being told to bring something…
Me too. I hate potluck too because I don’t cook and I don’t want to look like a jerk bringing only the buns.
We invite people over a lot, and for the people who do ask what they can bring, we’ve finally settled on telling everyone to bring dessert. It’s usually the part of the meal we forget about, and it’s something they can just pick up from a bakery or freezer section if they don’t feel like cooking.
Good idea!
But some of us women have been socialized to think that any item we bring must be home-made. It would be most welcome if you included the bakery option in your reply! 🙂
Not just women…I always feel guilty if asked to bring something and I don’t have a chance to make it.
b&
Well, you can Fake it until you make it
What, bring a bowl of plastic fruit?
b&
Well, you’re that kinda guy.
🙂
Probably genetic…Mom and Dad are in the middle of a ten-day vacation driving up and down California, starting with a reunion of a bunch of Dad’s high school classmates, and he was worried about what he could bring that would survive the flight, including security….
b&
You mean security might eat the noms?
That, I’m sure, Dad could deal with by bringing extra for the thugs.
Alas, they’re more likely to declare anything and everything a nuclear biochemical weapon of mass destruction and toss it in the garbage bin with all the other superbombs too dangerous for a plane. He thought, for example, of bringing coffee beans before thinking better of it….
b&
You have great parents.
Also–damnable TSA.
Yes, to both.
I still remember one of, if not the last time I flew, several years ago…my parents and I had flown to Missouri to spend a week with one of Dad’s cousins. We went to an amusement park, and there was a vendor there selling honey. They had buckwheat honey which I had never had before and turned out to be really quite wonderful, so I bought a small bottle.
Of course, the Stormtrooper back at the airport gave me a choice of throwing it in the garbage or being shot on sight for crimes against the Homeland.
b&
I don’t know whether you’re just unlucky or I’m just lucky. When we stayed one night at the Royal Palms in Phoenix for our anniversary. They gave us a jar of their own honey as a present, which I had in my bag at the airport for our flight back to the UK from San Diego. The TSA lady said it was technically prohibited by allowed us to take it through with a warning not to do it again.
Maybe it’s my winning smile…
/@
It’s your accent. While Hollywood tends to portray people with English accents as villains, in real life, Americans are transfixed by them.
Hollywood portrays people w English accents as villains – or ancient Romans…
@ Ben
Oh, for chrissakes!
On a night flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi, I was dying of thirst, I asked the stewardess if I could have some more water, and she produced a 1-litre bottle, 2/3rds full. She was an angel! That bottle (with refills as required) travelled with me on Air France to Paris, all round the Alps in the car, and back on Air France to Abu Dhabi, where it got through one security check no trouble, but then due to a stuff-up they re-routed us to the other end of the airport and checked us again and it was finally taken off me. I was most unimpressed and said so, though not so emphatically as to get myself arrested.
I was a first year resident in the first month of internal medicine. Although I was an ob/gyn resident I had to serve two months taking care of critically ill medical patients and part of that responsibility involved carrying the code beeper.
This entailed participating in code blues and performing life-saving CPR and ACLS under the direction of the chief ICU resident.
The hospital was catholic and although I had spent 12 years in Catholic grade school I was lapsed and had not been in church for almost ten years. The very first day at 0700 hours we were all in morning report about about 30 docs and med students and the code beepers all went off. I had to run down the hall and up three flights of stairs to the ICU.
Halfway down the first hall I could see a nun walking toward me about 50 yards away. I was in full sprint but cam to an abrupt stop when I saw her. My lizard brain kicked in and I was fully expecting some grievous physical insult for “running in the hallway.” I look down to make sure my shirt was tucked in and my shoes were clean.
As she came closer, the nun smiled and said, “Good morning, doctor.” I thought, oh yeah, I’m a doctor. Holy cow.
Then I resumed full sprint and left the mental scars to heal another day.
That’s cute. 🙂 I hope the scars are now sufficiently mitigated!
It was 1953 and I was thirteen years old and playing shortstop on the church altar-boy baseball team. Father McCue was the third base umpire. Suddenly the batter smacked a one-bounce line-drive straight to my position. My glove went up automatically in front of my face for protection. I waited for the impact, felt none, so removed my gloved hand to look… just as the baseball smashed into and broke my nose. “JEEEEZUZZZ CHRIST!!! I screamed. Father McCue came running over to me, put his arm around my shoulder and said “Don’t say that!!” “WELL THE SON OF A BITCH HURTS!! GOD DAMN IT!” I yelled. “Stop saying that and go to my car.” He drove me to the doctor where they set the bone and then sent me home. My career as a shortstop, altar-boy and Catholic, was washed up.
I did not intend to post as anonymous. I am Mike Houle and I live with my wife Karen in a town called Dewey-Humboldt, AZ. about a mile from the famed restroom squirrel signs. I enjoy this site very much ever since my daughter Kelly pointed it out to me. Thank you WEIT and Thank you one-hop line drive.
Ah, you must be Kelly’s dad. Congrats on raising such a nice and talented daughter!
Thank you very much sir. We are very proud of both of our daughters.
What a perfect anecdote for this site! Gotta love those Catholic priorities…
Too bad about the shortstop career, though. 😀
Well thanks! I do have an epilogue: A couple of years later, while hitchhiking to my High School, Father McCue stopped to pick me up. Hop in he said. We rode in silence for a while and then he asked: “where have you been? Why haven’t you been coming to church? I thought for a few seconds and then said, “I really can’t believe in all that stuff anymore.” With an astonished look on his face he swung the car sharply to the curb, stopped, and said, “I have to go a different way now. Get out. You can walk the rest of the way.” I then walked the last few blocks to school elated, jubilant, and free!
No wafer for you! One year!
Pretty snotty of the priest, you’d expect a bit more forgiveness from someone whose entire life is supposedly devoted to just that. I’m very glad for you that it was an occasion for growth and elation!
Soup nazi. Nice.
I was behind a person in line at a Subway restaurant (sub sandwiches custom made while you watch, for those that don’t know) who was not ready to order when she got to the front of the line, asked several inane questions while deciding, and made the “sandwich artist” start over a few times as she changed her mind. After the fourth or fifth restart, the guy behind the counter looked at the growing line (dinner time) and said “I can’t serve you. I don’t have time to play.”
A customer sitting and eating nearby laughed and said “no soup for you!”
Haha! I always did identify with The Soup Nazi a bit because I hate being behind someone that hums and haws because he or she didn’t think to consider what he or she wanted during the wait in line. It’s as if the person is shocked to be in a sub line all of a sudden.
Isn’t the etiquette to either not get in line until you’ve made your choice, or let people behind you go ahead of you if you still haven’t decided by the time you get to the front of the line?
At least, that’s the way I’ve always done it….
b&
That’s how I’ve done it too but there always seems to be one person shocked to realize it is now time to order. I’ve seen the same with paying. It is like some people suddenly realize money must now be exchanged for the food.
…or the people at the grocery store who chat up the cashier only to wait until the total is announced before digging in some cavernous bag for a checkbook….
b&
Or to look for cash in several different compartments in a pocket book, terminating in counting out the coins after digging, and still getting it wrong.
Oh so you’ve met my mother?
Oh, so sorry…and I hope she wasn’t like that when you were young enough to be embarrassed by being seen as her daughter!
b&
I was actually visiting my parents and I read your cavernous bag comment to my dad and he thought it was just like my mom.
The truth shall set you free.
How very Christian of the good Father.
😀
How exquisitely satisfying!
So sad when Christians like that show their true Christian colors. But at least he was kind enough to give you liberation! One wonders if he ever found it for himself….
b&
Lubrication? Oh, liberation. I need to clean my glasses 🙂
b&
O, I so can relate to your saga.
Yes, I do love ball; but I’m only the mama.
Nowhere nearly as wicked – bad as your ordeal, my weest @ his very first Little League practice had nearly the same thing occur.
That one specific “coach” of his was soooo less than, shall I say, “helpful” — we’re talking mean – spirited, hard – hearted and snotty thuggish — so out of a(nother) mouth spewed words of the same genre as had been yours.
Not out of weest kiddo’s … … but outta that mouth which was mine.
No regrets — neither.
Blue
Ok, this one is way back in the Cretaceous, otherwise known as “Middle School”. I dressed in a hurry that morning, wearing my favorite pants;the white ones with the zip pockets (Cretaceous, remember?). I threw on the only clean socks left, sneakers, and out the door.
As fate would have it, the physical ed/gym session that day was Square Dancing, and whose group got picked to stand up for the initial demo? Well, mine of course! What I hadn’t considered is that my white pants had shrunk into embarrassing “high water” pants, and my last pair of socks?
Why, fluorescent International Distress ORANGE, naturally! There was more laughter than a ton of Tickle Me Elmos falling down the steps of the Capitol Building.
Oddly enough, it didn’t occur to me until now why I didn’t have a girlfriend until the Tenth Grade.
Eddie and I were 20, Grenoble, the Land of the Dauphin, much older: and the 3 mountain chains which lumbered over France’s flattest city, inhumanly so.
Chamrousse, the nearby Alpine ski resort awoke, the jets’ cobwebs spinning in the big blue past a small, white sun. We had caught the bus from the parent resort to learn on the nursery slopes as the 4 and 5 year-olds, better skiers than walkers, whizzed around and between our legs. We were Bambi to their mountain goat.
Lunchtime. The woman in the chair-lift kiosk directed us to the main village.
“Take this chair-lift. At the top you can catch another down to Chamrousse.”
“Are you sure? We can’t ski.”
“Absolutely.”
Up and up the mountain the chair-lift creaked, the Rhône valley miles below, white as a corpse bride.
We jumped off at the terminus. A man sat in a shed reading.
“Where is the chair-lift down?”
“Up there.”
200 metres above us through the deep-drift snow was the second chair-lift. Unreachable.
“We can’t ski. Can we go down again on this chair-lift?”
“No, it upsets the balance. Nobody is allowed to go down.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
So we trekked. Down. Skis on our shoulders, in a straight line down the S-bend ski run. ‘Franz Klammer’ stopped. We explained our predicament: he sympathized. Expert skiers whizzed past us on the precipitous slope. Now we slid and tripped on the cliff-like ice-rink, now we waded, waist-deep, drenched, through loose-pack snow.
After an hour and a half we reached Chamrousse. Near the finish, a skilled skier drew up. It was Franz Klammer again.
“Congratulations!”
“Yeah.”
Eddie and I dumped our skis in the après-ski café. We sulked and slaked our thirst; and drank till drunk. Punk-style, down in our digs in the Olympic Village, we d-i-yed our badges. “Je déteste le ski.” Grenoble, the Mountain Hall of the Dauphin, endorphinned, snow-lit in the twilight, ignored our self-pity. x
A story my brother told me about his mate Nigel, ‘Niggah’ we called him innocently in the early 80s.
Motorhead were coming to town. The management of the Hilton was checking its insurance policies, the weight of their tellies and the strength of the double-glazing.
Lemmy and the crew sloped into the bar where Nigel was a waiter.
“Good evening, gentlemen. Would sirs be wanting a drink?”
“Yes, please. An orange juice if you have it.”
“And a sparkling mineral water for me, please.”
“And would Mr. Lemmy be requiring a drink?”
“No thank you, but could you tell me of a decent vegetarian restaurant nearby?”
Rahck ‘n’ roll! x
So…as Seamus Heaney translated the first word of ‘Beowulf’, for this is an Anglo-Irish story.
1966. Father Robertson summoned my dad to the presbytery.
“About your son, Frank, Mr. C. Going to a Protestant secondary school. The Church doesn’t look kindly on this. Have you considered St. Phillips?”
Dad was a lapsed Derry Catholic, the son of a gun-runner for de Valera. Who refused to attend my grand-dad’s funeral because it was held on British soil. In Derry. The anti-Catholic venom spewed out.
“I’m a teacher and a parent. How dare you, a virgin priest, order me about how to raise my child? You know nothing about what it is to be a parent and nothing about education. I will not sit here and be lectured by the likes of you.”
The interview ended. 5 years later my dad learned of Father Robertson’s back story.
As a young man he had been married: with 2 young children. One day on an excursion he crashed the car. And his wife and 2 children died. The young man found God, took holy orders, and several years later took all the invective my dad threw at him. And never said a word.
My dad made sure he never went near the church again. x
I have an odd one that happened just a couple of weeks ago that also passes the “nom” factor. Now, my “embarrassment factor” is very high, even by Norwegian standards, so I’ve been hysterically giggling about this ever since …
I’m a consultant (doing UX) living in Australia that some times do stints for clients at their site, and I had been invited to lunch by the boss and his team I was working with. We were happily chattering away in a proper Chinese restaurant that had trolleys in all directions with food weird and wonderful coming and going. I had no idea what was placed on our table, nor did I know why it happened; there were some unwritten rules about the comings and goings of this place, and the people I was with seemed to be in some degree of control. I wasn’t worried, though; I’d like to try all kinds of food, and I want to try everything at least once.
The guys next to me had a love affair with chicken feet, for some reason. He loved to eat them, and, of course, urged me and everyone to give it a go. Sure, why not? [They were ok] And so the topic of trying weird or different foods became the subject of conversation for the whole table.
People offered all kinds of stories about foods they’ve eaten, and mostly it was the usual suspects of crocodile, ostrich, emu, dog, snake, different kinds of birds, sea cucumber, maybe the odd fish. But I thought I had the best one of all. I waited for just the right moment.
“The best meat my mouth have ever tasted was … beaver. It was so delicious, so tender and moist.”
What kind of meat was it?
“Not red, but not white either, kind of a lush pink. Almost like a Barbie doll, you know?”
Where did this happen?
“We were at a special event, lots of people having a good time, like a fair for special people. [It was a medieval re-enactment camp] Me and a couple of friends got to share this beaver. We were all quite loudly agreeing on this, it was amazing! I still have the pelt!”
I thought the conversation had gone a bit silent and smirky, but it wasn’t until a bit later I realized that unlike us Norwegians who have native beavers in the woods – and hence could have made my story a perfectly normal conversation there – Aussies hardly know what a beaver is … except, of course, the sexually explicit metaphorically one.
Oh, my!
While living in Japan in my early twenties, I embarked on a trip with a group of friends across the rugged northern island of Hokkaido. We travelled on the cheap, camping, hosteling, and stopping daily to take full advantage of the numerous local volcanic hot springs. We especially liked the little, out-of-the-way places largely passed over by the tourist trade.
The Japanese patrons were sometimes apprehensive at first to see foreigners at their hot spring, but they quickly relaxed when they saw that we knew the proper protocol–wash first at the shower stations, rinse thoroughly, and remove all clothing before entering the hot spring. After the initial surprise at our presence, we were mostly ignored, apart from the inevitable side-long glances at our nether regions, to satisfy their curiosity about what Westerners really looked like “down there”.
One day we happened upon a glorious, family-friendly hot spring waterfall, where clothing was required. I wore a brand new pair of bright red shorts. By the end of the day I noticed with mild interest that my red shorts had faded to a dull pink. When I pulled them off, however, I was shocked to discover that the red dye had transferred to my skin, turning everything from my navel to my upper thighs an incandescent red. The overall effect, in contrast with my naturally pale skin, was quite alarming, as if that section of my body was critically inflamed, or tattooed in some bizarre sexual ritual. My shock turned to dismay, of course, when I realized that we would be visiting another hot spring that evening.
My only hope was to try to wash it off as discreetly as possible in the shower area and to slip into the hot spring without anyone noticing. Needless to say, it did not go as planned. In my determination to rub the dye off, I only succeeded in genuinely inflaming my skin, making it appear even worse, if that were possible, and my vigorous rubbing only served to attract unwanted attention. I looked up to find every head turned in my direction–not subtle, surreptitious glances, but full-on, wide-eyed, open-mouthed stares. I could not have drawn more attention to myself had I pulled my shorts down to a fanfare of trumpets. There I was, a pasty white foreigner amidst a group of 30-40 Japanese men, all of us naked, with my naughty bits the color of the lurid red barbecued pork-on-a-stick you find in Chinese restaurants. I tried my best to act nonchalant as I edged toward the pool, knowing my Japanese was not nearly good enough even to attempt an explanation. The stares diminished after I sank to my neck in the hot water, although it did seem to me that I had considerably more space around me than usual.
The dye stubbornly persisted, despite my increasingly desperate efforts to remove it, and I got to repeat the experience daily for several more days. I can only imagine the conversations that must have taken place in those hot springs after I left.
Now that’s original! 😀
Still chuckling…
Don’t I always say don’t put the reds in with the whites?!
That was an excellent story, wonderfully funny and lurid, bearing the hallmark of a winner.
I have to assume all that was filmed and will turn up on Youtube soon. 😎
Mercifully, no. It happened in 1990, many years before YouTube was even a concept. Nowadays, of course, someone probably would have had a cell phone handy.
1978. My mother’s funeral.
The driver of the hearse opened the door for my aunt.
“Were you the deceased’s sister, Madame?”
“Aye, how did you know?”
“I embalmed the body, Madame.”
That was good to know. x
A few years ago, after we’d just moved into our new house in Wichita Falls, Texas, we decided to invite my wife’s family over for Memorial Day weekend. They all live down in the DFW area, so it’s about a 2 hour drive. She has a rather large immediate family, so we were already expecting a pretty full house. Well, some time Saturday afternoon, my wife was out front sweeping the driveway when a car drove by really slowly, then turned around at the street past our house and came back.
“Irma, is that you?”
My wife responded a little hesitantly that yes, it was her.
“You may not remember me, but I’m your cousin, Missy. Your brother Ralph said you were having a party and it’d be okay if we came. We brought a tent we can set up in the backyard.”
Well, what can you do when people have driven over two hours to get to your house? So, we told her to come on in, along with the carload of people that came with her, and all their camping and fishing gear (there’s a pond in our back yard). Then another car showed up. And another. All her long lost cousins just kept coming.
But we were all having a good time, sitting in the backyard drinking beer and margaritas. Then my brother in law got a call. It was their Tio Gabby. “Ralph – we’re almost there. We just crossed the state line.”
“State line? What state line? If you’re in Oklahoma you went too far.”
“No, the Kansas state line. We’ve only got a little bit to go to get to Wichita.”
“Wichita? They live in Wichita Falls.”
“Wichita Falls? We passed that a few hours ago.”
So they turned around and made their way back to our place some time after midnight, but we were all still up, anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal.
Then it started to rain. Hard. Remember all those people that brought tents? Yeah – that didn’t work out. We had a few inflatable mattresses that we set up. Everyone else just had blankets and sleeping bags. There were over 40 people. Every horizontal surface in the house had somebody sleeping on it, even the landing at the top of the stairs.
The next day in the pool, well after the storm had passed, you just saw heads bobbing up and down everywhere. You could barely see the water. When everyone got out, I think the water went down about half a foot.
Oh well, it was a fun weekend, and we managed to make room for everybody. But that was the last time when the extended family was invited – it was just too much. We’ve had the family back just about every Memorial Day since then, but now it’s limited to immediate family, only.
But what a great story! And memory. 🙂
It was a warm California spring day in 1956, the last day of my 8th grade science class before summer vacation. Several weeks earlier I brought my pet gopher snake to share with my classmates. It was time to remove it from my teacher’s cage and take it home. Alas, I forgot to bring a cloth bag to contain the 3-footer. Then I had a bright idea to just put it inside my shirt, where it would take a nap, all tucked in. I wore my knitted sweater over it to conceal any suspicious bulges. I only had one more 45-minute homeroom class left before the school buses arrived and I’d be going home.
I sat in the front row, next to the alluring Kathleen. Distracted by conflicting demands for my attention, I became oblivious to my stealthy stowaway’s wanderings. The escape artist crawled out my t-shirt sleeve and burrowed through the back of my coarse-weaved sweater to dangle and sway in front of my classmates. Suddenly, screams of SNAKE! catapulted me out of my complacency.
I reached around my back and pulled the snake out of the sweater. When I had it firmly in my grasp, I made a feeble attempt at reassuring the screamers and my teacher that they were in no danger. Failing to have compassion and a sense of situational humor, Mrs. Garlinghouse immediately sent me to the principal’s office. It happened to be empty, just like my chances with Kathleen.
Yours is just a darling saga, Mr Rasp.
I beg to differ, however, as re the brains of Ms Garlinghouse and Ms Kathleen! I wish I had been either — then (in 1956, I would have been 8 years old with very many chances in rural Iowa at snake – petting!) and soooo would have used this Outed Slither Moment as a teaching one OR as my immediately fortuitous opportunity with which to walk home with YOU!
So far, I have been happily successful with my two quite young granddaughters after instilling during their weest childhoods in each of their papas a precious love of All Things Herpetology (including for years and years Regina, Jacob Thomas’ loveliest Eastern Florida Kingsnake pet which, at his age nine, he just ‘knew’ was a she – snake so ‘king’ Latinized became for him her name) — here these days Ms Iris Genevieve and her Alluring Friend: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/506655026806174715.
Blue
Thank you, Blue. That’s a nice photo of Ms. Iris holding a snake. I developed several snake demonstrations for park visitors during my career as a national park ranger/naturalist in Arkansas, Florida, and California. My collecting passion as a boy turned into catch, photograph, and release as I matured.
Looks like a most intelligent and confident granddaughter, Blue–congrats!
My wife says this is both my funniest and most embarrassing story. I have a number to choose from, so I’ll trust her on this.
We were on a road trip through the south of Australia, driving the Great Ocean Road. We had started out in Adelaide and picked up a number of fun snacks from the Chinatown there (we always love buying things we which don’t exactly know what they are and experimenting). There was some kind of strange tofu curd stuff which I liked but she did not. At some point along the drive my wife begins to complain about the smell in the car, saying that the Asian foodstuffs we bought smelled like (is minor swearing allowed?) $hit. I hushedly assured her that it was not the food and to just ignore it. She continued pressing the matter and I continued to become more uncomfortable and brusque. She was confused and I just begged her to drop the subject and move on. Once we got to our stop for the night, I got out of the car and confessed that I had “sharted” myself… rather badly and that this was the smell she had been complaining about but that since I had no option to stop and clean up (we were in a fairly remote stretch), I was too embarrassed to let her know. She immediately started laughing so hard tears came out of her eyes and then apologized to me. After cleaning up in the motel room, we went to go get some stuff out of the car. Turns out that smell actually WAS the Asian food we had gotten!
OK, here’s the most embarrassing thing that has happened to me since I graduated from high school. The closed vault of my high school years shall not be re-opened. :->
I was at the dentist getting a routine cleaning. I had a bit of gum irritation in one spot. I wanted to ask the hygienist who was cleaning my teeth – a very attractive woman, as it happens – whether I needed to be careful not to use the same bit of dental floss between the irritated area and other parts of my mouth – whether there was some risk of transfer of infectious bacteria from spot to spot or something, which might cause the irritation to spread. (An idiotic question in and of itself, in hindsight, but I was feeling rather flustered by how attractive she was, and I was trying to think of things to say that sounded intelligent – a good way to end up saying things that sound very unintelligent!) In any case, what I actually asked her, in my nervousness, was “Is it OK to reuse a piece of dental floss?” She was unable to conceal her horror and disgust, and after a moment I realized that she thought I was asking whether it would be OK to clean off a piece of dental floss, perhaps hang it up to dry, and then use it again the next day! There was no recovering from it; I tried haltingly to explain myself, but she clearly thought I was simply revolting (not to mention staggeringly miserly), and she had no interest in my excuses. I blushed continuously through the rest of the visit, swimming in endless excruciating embarrassment, and I changed dentists as soon as I had escaped. I feel sure that she stills tells people her story of the most disgusting client she has ever had, and they shake their heads in wonder at the guy who wanted to reuse his dental floss.
Hmmm…now you got me thinkin’. How about using the dish washer? It would be just short of an autoclave, wouldn’t it?
Okay, okay!
Our cat, Gordo (short for Gordo Alcazar Tizon y Olinghouse–which spells gato) was having trouble breathing one night close to midnight.
The vet kindly offered to meet us at the “hospital,” and we rushed him the several miles to get there. Shortly before we arrived, Gordo stopped breathing. The vet, a beautiful young woman, immediately started artificial respiration. After a few puffs, the vet said, “Here, you take over while I get the oxygen.” I put my mouth over his mouth and nose and gave a puff; the next thing I knew I had a big, 19-pound, long-haired tuxedo hanging from my nose, clamped on tight. I yanked the ungrateful bastard (we found him in a garbage can in the Alcazar Garden in Balboa Park, San Diego, where we both worked) from my nose, whereupon he bit me through my right thumb.
“You were doing WHAT to your cat?” exclaimed the ER staff, laughing uncontrollably in in chorus.
The next day we were visiting a dear friend, and the conversation drifted to the cause of the large nose bandage, making me look like a white-nosed W. C. Fields that matched the great hitch-hiker’s thumb I was sporting. The story was dutifully related to the group, which included another dear friend, a diminutive lass, who, shall we say, was pleasingly fey.
In a few days, the version of the story that the dear fey one was circulating amongst our large community of friends:
Wayne’s cat bit him through the nose while he was giving it artificial insemination! The fey one’s mind was fixated on sex.
Ever since I saw pictures from my high school science teacher’s Alaskan cruise, I decided I would visit Alaska one day. My chance came about a dozen years later when I discovered a co-worker who also wanted to visit Alaska. She was already a world traveler, whereas I had never been anywhere, so this trip included many “firsts” for me: flying in an airplane, seeing an ocean, among many others. The excursions we planned were also all-new to me. While the helicopter ride onto a glacier was the most exhilarating, the snorkeling adventure was, by far, the most memorable.
The snorkeling brochure stated to bring either a bathing suit or a t-shirt and shorts to wear under the wetsuit. I chose to take a t-shirt and shorts, which turned out to be a big mistake. The tour operator informed us on the bus trip to the snorkeling spot that, if we didn’t have a bathing suit, then we would have to wear our birthday suit under the wetsuit. She explained a t-shirt and shorts would cause extreme chafing. I was terrified of the thought of getting naked in front of a bunch of strangers but I was determined to be adventurous on this trip and so decided to go for it.
When we reached the beach, the first hurdle was getting our wetsuits. The tour operators kept pushing me to the back of the line. I knew they were worried they wouldn’t have a suit that would fit me for I am very short and very fat. Finally, they found me a suit and I entered the women’s tent. I went to a corner and quickly undressed. Then I tried, with all my might to pull on the wetsuit, but could not get it up past my calves.
I was about to give up when four women came over to help me. They moved me and my nakedness out to the center of the tent, had me stand with my feet apart and proceeded to tug on my suit. Two women were bent down behind me with their heads level with my buttocks and two women were bent in front of me with their heads level with, well, you can guess. While they worked, I stared straight ahead and tried to go to my “happy-place.” My co-worker said later, though, that my face and neck were so red she thought I was going to stroke out.
Finally, those four very kind ladies got me into my suit and I went snorkeling. I stayed in the water the entire 45 minutes and saw sea stars, a sea cucumber and a pod of dolphins cavorting in the distance. It was wonderful and well worth the mortifying moments beforehand. I never got their names, as I was too embarrassed, but I am forever grateful to those ladies who helped me experience something amazing.
Good for you, Angela! I hope that doesn’t sound patronizing because I really mean it! Not sure I would have gotten over myself to go on the way you did.