Truth is stranger than fiction

[davidw]

I was watching the movie In America over the weekend (fantastic movie), and there's a part near the end that's based on something that actually happened to the director's family.

SPOILER:

the family has a $30,000 hospital bill, and they have nowhere near enough money to pay it. In the movie, the family's friend, who just died, arranged to pay their bill with what was left from his estate. According to the directors commentary, in real life, the hospital staff liked the family so much that they went into the computer system and marked the bill "paid." The director said he didn't use that in the story because he thought no one would believe it.

What are some true stories you've heard that you would have considered completely implausible if it happened in a fictional story?

[astorian]

My grandmother was cremated in Florida, and her ashes were shipped to New York for a memorial service.

There was supposed to be an urn, but they only sent the ashes in a sort of Ziploc bag, and the ashes arrived just hours before the service. My parents spent nearly two hours frantically racing around the neighborhood seeking a funeral home or store that had a suitable holder for the ashes.

That SOUNDS like something that would happen in a bad sitcom.

[ivylass]

Feb 14, 1967. My parents are getting married. Suddenly, a blood-curdling screech echoes through the church.

My mother had forgotten her petticoat or whatever that thing is that goes under her skirt. One of the groomsmen races back to the house to get it, and on the way back to the church, gets pulled over for speeding.

The groomsman explains the situation and the cop lets him go with a warning.

[Mahaloth]

One time(in my late teens), a friend of mine decided to play a stupid game. We decided to choose a car filled with annoying looking people and then "follow" them. Not casually, mind you. We decided to really obviously follow them, including driving right behind them and switching lanes with them. At stop lights, we decided to pull along side them and pretend nothing was going on. Then, we'd pull back behind them and follow them.

Anyway, we find a car filled with punk looking teenagers. Yes, we were teenagers ourselves, but these were the kind of teenagers even we could identify as pseudo-punkers. They were playing loud music with the windows down and they just looked lame to us.

Anyway, we followed them(I was driving). They noticed and would yell at us when we pulled along side of them at lights. We'd give them the cold shoulder, and then proceed to follow them closely when the light turned green.

Anyway, they eventually made a sudden left turn with not signal. I crossed three lanes(illegally) to keep up. Then, they pulled over.



So, I pulled over and just sat there. They got out of the car and came yelling at us. They were banging on my hood, roof, and pounding our windows. Mind you, this is all in a white, middle-class downtown, so it's pretty wimpy. Despite, this we were a bit intimidated.

Of course, they had gotten out of the car and I hadn't stopped mine. So I pulled away, watching them freak out as they realize I'm driving off. We watched the rear view mirror as they scrambled into their car, but we were already turning and we lost them.

Now, here's the kicker. A series of coincidences occurs here that I still can't believe.

The next day, I was about 10 miles away and decided to get some fast food. I stopped at Wendy's and ordered my standard #4(the Big Bacon classic). I was in the drive-through, and made my order.

I pulled up, got my food and paid. I then had a thought I usually don't have. I should pull forward and check my order. So I pulled up, looked in my bag to make sure everything was there.

Now, if you've eaten at Wendy's, you know they have glass walls in a majority of the dining area. I was on the outside, but pulled up to where those glass walls are. I look left.



The whole group of "punk teens" we chased are eating, sitting at the table right by the window. I'm literally 5 feet from them, with a glass wall and sidewalk between us.

This was the only triple take I've ever done in my life. Not only did I do a triple take, but they did one too. I know, because our triple takes were staggered.

They stand up, start yelling(I can't hear obviously). They are banging on the glass wall and yelling and acting all tough.

Me? I just smiled, waved, and drove away, leaving them screaming and scrambling for the door. I've never seen them again(this was 12 years ago).

I still can't believe this happened in real life.

One, I can't believe I chose to eat at the right restaurant. Two, I can't believe I stopped to check my order. Three, I can't believe they were eating right at the window by where I pulled up. Four, I can't believe they saw me and reacted as I would have hoped.

I know we were asses for playing our little prank, but these kids were just so "punkish", I laugh to this day thinking of it.

[AuntiePam]

It's 1964, before cell phones. I'm 17, miles from the nearest town, not even any farmhouses nearby, It's the middle of the night and my car dies. A nice man stops to help. He pops the hood and without a second's hesitation jiggles around with the distributor. The car starts.

Me: "How did you know to do that?"
Nice Man: "This car used to be mine. The dealer should have replaced the distributor before he sold it to you. Better get that fixed, little missy!"

Another car story (I think I've told this story before):

In the mid-80's we bought a used car, a 1969 Pontiac with only 39K miles on it. The owner was a 96-year-old man, and his family made him sell the car after he put a dent in it, pulling into his driveway. They were afraid it was getting too dangerous for him to drive.

Just a short time later we read in the paper that the man was out walking and was hit by a car and killed.

[gigi]

My friend's sister was pregnant and their father died. She went to get a checkup to make sure she was OK to travel and they found the baby had some sort of thing where it had lost 2/3 or 3/4 of its blood. She hadn't known anything was wrong and wasn't scheduled to go in for a check. So only because their dad died were they able to save the baby.

[Mahaloth]

Originally Posted by gigi

My friend's sister was pregnant and their father died. She went to get a checkup to make sure she was OK to travel and they found the baby had some sort of thing where it had lost 2/3 or 3/4 of its blood. She hadn't known anything was wrong and wasn't scheduled to go in for a check. So only because their dad died were they able to save the baby.

I know I'm probably dumb, but what happened? They took her Dad's blood for the baby? Or her Dad died, and she literally decided to go to the doctor because of that?

[Merijeek]

Two for me.

I lived in Milwaukee the first 25 years of my life, and while I'm not bothered by heights I would always get kind of nervous going over a certain stretch of I-94. It's just downtown, and it's a ways up - probably 80-100 feet if I had to judge. You pass right by these two large smokestacks that continue to tower over the interstate. One day in my teens I mentioned it to my mother, and she told me that when she was very pregnant with me she had a bad wreck up at that spot. Kinda weird, eh?

The second one involved a homeless skinny little black woman in Milwaukee. One time when I was a kid (under 10, for sure) my mother and I were walking downtown when out of nowhere this crazy old bat throws a cigarette at my mom. I was probably going to attack her, but mom drags me off.

Several times a year for the rest of my life in that city, I ran into that woman. All over the city. One time I was working in a Pizza Hut in the far north end of the city (Brown Deer Road) and there I am standing behind the counter running orders when I see her go walking past the front windows. A minute later she goes by again. And again and again. That wasn't a terribly small building - I can only imagine that as soon as she got out of sight she started sprinting.

-Joe

[emmaliminal]

Originally Posted by Mahaloth

I know I'm probably dumb, but what happened? They took her Dad's blood for the baby? Or her Dad died, and she literally decided to go to the doctor because of that?

Originally Posted by gigi

She went to get a checkup to make sure she was OK to travel

... presumably to Dad's funeral.

[Merijeek]

Originally Posted by Mahaloth

I know I'm probably dumb, but what happened? They took her Dad's blood for the baby? Or her Dad died, and she literally decided to go to the doctor because of that?

...psst....

She went to the doctor to make sure it was okay to travel. Presumably to the funeral.

-Joe

[gigi]

As noted, she wasn't scheduled for a check-up and went in only because she was going to have to travel for the funeral and wanted to make sure all was well with the baby before she went.

[AskNott]

About 20 years ago, I was looking for a nice old Buick. I wanted a '59 or '60, but they were out of my range. I bought a 1956 Buick 4-door. It had been the prize in a radio station sweepstakes, and I bought it from the winner. Within a year, the previous five owners looked me up to tell me they had owned the car. They all told me what they had done to it. One of them told me an illogical cure for its vapor-lock problem. "Clip half a dozen wooden clothespins to the fuel line between the fuel pump and the carb." For no good reason, it worked. One of them was the man who had bought it from a preacher in Tennessee and brought it here. I eventually sold it to a guy in Carmel, Indiana.

[Bill Door]

A woman I know had her wallet stolen out of her purse as it sat in the child seat of a supermarket cart. The thief took the ID and credit cards across the street to a car lot where she tried to rent a car from the salesman. The salesman asked her to wait while the car was prepped and while she was waiting the police showed up to arrest her. The salesman was the father of the woman who had her wallet stolen.

[AuntiePam]

Oooh, Bill Door, I have one similar to that. One of the lawyers I worked for in Seattle had a shopping bag stolen -- I think it was from her car, don't remember for sure.

Anyway, the thief tried to return the items to the store (Nordstrom) the same day for a cash refund. The sales clerk recognized the shoes and called security. The lawyer wore a size 5 and the thief had much bigger feet, or the clerk might not have caught on. (It also might have helped if the thief had waited awhile.) Dumb crooks!

[ITR champion]

My grandfather once wrote a book called American History Made Simple, or something along those lines. It was one of his first books and he didn't know very much about the publishing industry. The publishing company was a rather sleazy company, and they tricked Grandpa into signing a contract where he forfeited any right to the royalties after one year. His agent knew that this was a raw deal, but he helped them trick Grandpa into signing the contract because he feared that he'd lose his job otherwise.

Grandpa signed the contract and got screwed out of the money. That was way back in the 40's. He and his wife soon forgot about it.

Almost forty years later they chose to rent a summer home on Long Island. When they arrived, they were met by the caretaker of the property, who was the former literary agent. He was standing on the porch and the first thing he said was, "I want to explain about American History Made Simple."

[Sampiro]

I mentioned the West Memphis Three murder case in a thread earlier today. This case is filled with "if you put this in a novel nobody would believe it" aspects. A few:

On May 5, 1993, the bodies of three 8 year old boys were found naked and murdered- one of them sexually mutilated- in a creek in the woods of West Memphis, Arkansas. Obviously this was not a common even in a small town and was the top pri crime.
That night, while the murders were being investigated, a man walked into a local Bojangles fried chicken covered in blood, crying, agitated, and talking to himself, and he entered the women's restroom. The staff, understandably, freaked and called the cops.
Consider again: three boys, bloody murder- unknown bloodcovered stranger in the bathroom of the opposite gender (and one of the kids had been emasculated- coincidence?)
The cops drove through the parking lot of Bojangles but never went inside.

Two days later they did send a forensics team to collect the blood samples left in the ladies room by the bloody male stranger.

And lost them.

Then they charged three teens who had absolutely no known link to the boys, a couple of whom had been in trouble with the law but never for anything like this and who had no motives, with the murders. The key evidence against them was
1- the confession of one of the boys- a retarded kid (IQ of 70) questioned for hours without an attorney and with a baseball bat present in the room and who got key data wrong in the details (including when the murders took place [the retarded boy said daytime, the coroner said night] and whether the boys were raped [the retarded kid said they were and the coroner said they weren't])
2- the testimony of an expert on the occult who was billed as the author of 40 books on the subject (which may be true, but none published) who had a Ph.D. from an unaccredited mail order diploma mill, who incorrectly identified the date the boys was killed as a satanic holy day due to being spring solstice (off by more than a month) and a full moon (it wasn't)
The boys were convicted because the jury could not find reasonable doubt even though there was no hard evidence connecting them to the crime, there was abundant inconsistency in the testimony against them, they had not known the boys and had no motive, and there was no motive. Since the trial DNA evidence has implicated the stepfather of one of the boys and a friend of his in the murder, a leading witness for the prosecution has recanted her testimony completely (she said she was told if she perjured herself charges against her on another matter would be dropped), members of the law enforcement of West Memphis have been fired and prosecuted for corruption and one of the defense attorneys has been disbarred- and the State of Arkansas has seen no reason to grant a new trial even though one of the boys (now men) is on death row and the other two are facing life without parole.

[Sampiro]

Two very famous "stranger than fiction" coincidences I'll mention just in case anyone doesn't know them:

Frank Morgan played the title character in the Wizard of Oz and wore a rumpled old frock coat supplied by wardrobe. The old frock coat came from a thrift store and it turned out it had been donated by the widow of its owner, Frank Baum (owner of the Oz novels).

Sam Clemens/Mark Twain took great pride in having been born while Halley's Comet was in the skies and said repeatedly he wanted to die under it as well. "I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It's coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. The Almighty has said no doubt, 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'" He got his wish, dying at the age of 74 years, 4 months, 21 days, while Halley's Comet was again visible.

[StGermain]

In the early 50's my mother was a young, single schoolteacher who was carpooling with two other women to the school where they all taught. There was an accident and she was thrown through the windshield, through a wire farm fence and into a field. She was the last to be found and only because someone heard her moaning. She got to the hospital with two badly broken legs and a foot just hanging by the tendons. They asked her in the ER if she wanted to wear heels or flats for the rest of her life, because they would be bolting the foot on and needed to know what angle. Many, many surgeries later and she goes back to teaching, while still in two casts and on crutches. She loses her balance and falls and rebreaks both legs. More surgery. Finally she's finished her treatment. Her surgeon is checking her over before he released her and asked her to walk across the room. She does, and he says "That's all the payment I need. I never thought you'd walk again."

Doctors just don't do stuff like that anymore.

StG

[Beadalin]

This isn't quite like these other stories (great stuff!), but I'll tell it anyway.

One day, my grandfather Paul was walking down the street in downtown Seattle. Another man came up to him and said, "Hi, Paul! How are you?"

Paul: "Just fine, thank you. And you?"

Man: "Great! It's so nice to see you! And how is Fran [my grandmother]?"

Paul: "Oh, she's doing great."

Man: "And [my mom by name] and [my aunt by name]?"

Paul: [Further pleasantries about his family]

Man (with a somewhat hurt look): "You don't know who I am, do you?"

Paul: "Gosh, I am so very sorry, I've been trying to place how I know you this whole time, and I just can't come up with it. I'm so sorry."

Man: "Well, if you don't know, I'm certainly not going to tell you."

And he stalked off, and Paul never did figure out who it was.

[Hello Again]

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson within hours of each other, on the 50th anniversay of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (July 4, 1826).

[Euryphaessa]

Originally Posted by Hello Again

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson within hours of each other, on the 50th anniversay of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (July 4, 1826).

They WHAT within hours of each other?!

[Merhouse]

Originally Posted by Queen of Town

They WHAT within hours of each other?!

Died, IIRC

[Bricker]

My uncle related this one:

Many years ago, when he was young, they lived in a small town. He did a party trick/magic trick one evening for a group of friends. He asked one of them to open a deck of cards, pick any card, and lay it on the table. Then another party-goer was to open the telephone book, and randomly pick any name there. My uncle then picked up the phone and called that number:

"Hello, is Joseph Small there?"

(a pause)

"Yes, this is Bricker's Future Uncle. Hold on."

He then passed the phone to the card-picker, and the guy was astonished to hear the person on the other end say, "It's the three of hearts."

Now, at this party there was a know-it-all who delighted in... well... knowing it all. So after the phone was hung up, he stood up and said: "And now, let's call the REAL Joseph Small and see what he says!"

"What are you talking about?" asks my uncle.

"I know exactly how this trick works. You call a friend who's in on the trick. You hang up the phone but he doesn't, so he's still on the line." (Note: obviously no longer true, but apparently for the phone system in the fifties in their little town, both people had to hang up or the connection stayed live for several minutes. "So when we picked 'Joseph Small' and you started dialing, there was no dial tone; your confederate was already on the line! When you finished dialing, he started counting: 'Ace - Two - Three - Four...' When he got to the right rank, you said 'Is Joseph Small there?' and he started counting 'Hearts - DIamonds - Clubs - Spades.' When he got to the right suit, you said, 'Hold on' and handed the phone over. I know all about this stuff!"

At which point my uncle said, calmly, "Go ahead, then."

The guy makes sure he has a dial tone, calls Joseph Small, and says, "I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but we were just playing a party game; you don't know by chance what card we picked...Oh.... er.... thank you." He hung up, and said in tones of wondermont: "Uh... he knew the card."

Know-it-all's explanation was exactly right: that WAS the trick.

But in the truth-is-stranger department, the partygoers that night had picked Joseph Small, who was actually my uncle's confederate, as the random name in the phonebook.

[Don't Call Me Shirley]

My uncle's sister swam in the 1952 Olympics. That fall she started college and enrolled in a swimming class so she could get some pool time. The swimming coach did not think women should be swimmers, probably because they couldn't do it while pregnant and cooking his dinner. At the end of the semester, he gave her a C. She protested, pointing out that she was the fastest swimmer in the class. He responded that he graded the class on improvement, and she had not improved at all during the semester.

[ivylass]

I read this in the Reader's Digest, but damned if I can find it online at their site.

A nurse was at a Little League baseball game when a boy got hurt (hit in the throat? Epipleptic seizure? Choked on a hot dog?) Anyway, she provides aid and the boy lives.

Fast forward 14 years...the nurse is eating at a restaurant and starts choking. A volunteer firefighter runs over, performs the Heimlich, and saves her.

Guess who the firefighter was? Yep, the Little Leaguer, all grown up.

[Kinthalis]

Sweet jesus! Bricker, I got chills from that one. I wish I had a story to tell, I'll ask around the family see if anyone else does.

This is officially one of my fave threads, keep 'em coming!

[KneadToKnow]

Originally Posted by Bricker

Know-it-all's explanation was exactly right: that WAS the trick.

I love it when a know-it-all gets his ass handed to him.

Unless it's me, of course. Those times suck.

[Lute Skywatcher]

I'm probably repeating myself but here goes anyway:

I was visiting my sister in Sugar Land for a week and one afternoon we drove into Houston. The car in front of us--a Colt Vista or something similar--suddenly vaulted into the air, did a complete 360° barrel roll, landed back on all fours, then pulled into the nearest parking lot.

Then there was the time that Dad was driving us from our home outside New Orleans to spend Christmas at another sister's house in northern Illinois. My sister from Texas and her husband were also driving up for Christmas, somehow ending up on the same stretch of highway at the same time as us! We all pulled into the nearest rest area and exchanged pleasantries.

We were known for bringing a bunch of stuff on trips, and a rather large dog. Sis & bro-in-law had been just driving along when BIL remarked that the car they were coming up upon was loaded down like her parents'. Then they noted the car looked like her parents' Chevy wagon. Sis was like, "It can't be! Could it?" As they came closer to investigate, they noticed the dog. Of course, Mom, Dad, and I had no idea anything unusual was going on--until a Chevy Blazer pulled alongside and started honking.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Oh, yeah, and one more with my Texan sister. Mom, Dad, and I were watching TV at home, a program talking about medical care in the Houston area; sis is an MD. The closing shot was of a figure in a lab coat and riding a bicycle...

[Corner Case]

I was a new teen driver in my volkswagen bug on a three lane highway/road. There was a long 1/4 mile section bordered on the right by a side walk and an eight-foor brick wall. I was in the center lane going around the shallow curve with traffic all around. A car cut in front of me too close and I slammed on my brakes. I started to spin and was sure I'd hit the 50mph traffic and then bouce off the curve into the wall. I stopped spinning to realize that I had done a perfect 270 while sliding right, and just slipped into the first driveway past the wall. No cars piled up, traffic kept moving, and I and everyone else were unharmed. The drive-n-run kept driving but someone else stopped to ask if I was alright. It was all like a dream and I just drove on to class.

[Yllaria]

Thirty-plus years ago, when I was living in Warren, Ohio, there was a convenience store robbery that made the news. It had happened in the dark early morning after the first light snowfall of the year. When the cops arrived, they saw one set of tire tracks leading out of the parking lot. But the store was located a block from two highways, and two blocks from a main arterial street, so they knew that following them would be pointless.

They went into the store and spent half an hour getting information. On the way out, they looked at the tire tracks again. It was light out, now, so they figured what the hell. Might as well be thourough. They followed the tracks down two blocks and over one block, and there were the robbers - sitting in the car at the end of the snow tracks, counting out the money and dividing it. It was convenient that the paperwork had already been done. The morning DJs loved the story.

-------------

A more serious convenience robbery happened here in Stockton. It was more serious because the owner was shot in the chest. He held up well as he was rushed to the hospital. When the surgeons went looking for the bullet, they found an aortic aneurism just about ready to pop. It was one of those bad news/good news situations. The last report was that he was recovering well.

[gigi]

Originally Posted by Bricker

"Yes, this is Bricker's Future Uncle. Hold on."

That's amazing, he knew he would be your uncle!!


What?

[Malthus]

A true fishing story, takes place when I was a kid ... I was fishing with my dad in a remote lake in Northern Quebec, when I hook a fish. I play him a bit, but then the line goes dead - the fish had managed to wind the line around something underwater, and break it.

So disheartened I pull up the line - only to find that it is still wound around something. I pull it up. It is a rope. I pull up the rope - and there is a heavy weight on the end. My dad and I pull up the weight - it is a 5 gallon bucket full of beer bottles.

Obviously some previous visitors had lowered their beer supply into the lake to cool it, and then somehow lost the rope. The wierd part was that this lake was really, really remote - it probably only gets one or two visitors a year, since you have to fly in or portage and travel a lot to just get get there.

[At the time neither of us drank, so the story was more wierd than rewarding]

[KneadToKnow]

Originally Posted by Malthus

[At the time neither of us drank, so the story was more wierd than rewarding]

What the hell did you need, an engraved invitation? That was clearly God saying, "Have a beer, dudes."

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by KneadToKnow

What the hell did you need, an engraved invitation? That was clearly God saying, "Have a beer, dudes."

Heh, God may have been saying "have a 10 year old beer. Get food poisioning, dudes".

[*Can* beer go bad? I have no clue - to this day, I'm not a beer drinker ... then again, it was pretty cold down there]

[Lute Skywatcher]

Originally Posted by Malthus

[*Can* beer go bad? I have no clue - to this day, I'm not a beer drinker ... then again, it was pretty cold down there]

Pretty dark as well.

[Saint Cad]

Three stories

1) It's the late 70's and my den is coming back from a Cub Scout field trip. The mother driving has a CB in her car. She explains to us all how it works and the different channels and how Ch 9 is the emergency channel.

We pass some people pulled over in the median. Nothing really serious; probably just a flat tire, but me being interested in the CB asks the mom to turn it to Ch 9. She says no but I keep insisting. Probably to shut me up, she turns it on and we hear a lady screaming for help.

Yep, it was the car we passed a mile back. Her father had suffered a major heart attack and she was freaking out. We stopped at the next phone and called the ambulance. Why the daughter didn't do the same thing (drive to a phone) and whether or not Dad lived, I never found out.

2) My mom has a severe reaction to bee stings, in fact, she once went into cardiac arrest from a scratch test. We are driving in the car on the freeway with the windows rolled down. A bee flies in and scratches my mom in the cheek with the stinger at 55 mph. Almost immediately she goes into anaphalaxis.

Before you start thinking that it was a bizarre way to watch my mom die right in front of me. The next offramp (less than 1/4 away) was Overlake Hospital, right off the freeway. She survived.

3) Humorous. I saw a fish story so I have to add mine. My high school fishing club was casting lines off the boat ramp at Lake Castaic. A guy asks me if we saw his string of fish. I said no and he leaves. A half-hour later, I feel a tug and I start reeling in. There is some resistance, but it doesn't feel right. I see a strip of green on my hook and think, "Damn, I snagged a plant." Nope. It was a string of seven beautiful trout.





I have also been engaged to a woman before going my first date with her . . . but that has only happened to me twice.

[Turek]

Originally Posted by Malthus

[*Can* beer go bad? I have no clue - to this day, I'm not a beer drinker ... then again, it was pretty cold down there]

You ever read the Stephen King short story "Grey Matter"? <shudder>

[Derleth]

This happened to a relative of mine:

He was about to come home from Vietnam (well, actually he was stationed in Thailand, but it was in the Vietnam War timeframe) and he was supposed to board a given plane to get back to the world. He was in the airbase just waiting around for his plane to load up, and some people noticed him and asked him where he was going. He told them, and as luck would have it their helicopter was going in that direction and would leave sooner than the plane. So he got the door gunner's seat, strapped himself in, put on the helmet with the radio headset, and off he went.

On the trip, he heard distress calls from an aircraft coming under ground fire. He heard as the plane he was supposed to be on was hit and went down. When he landed, he didn't see any of his friends around to greet him, so he went looking. He found them commiserating and generally all down about his untimely demise; after all, there were no survivors from his plane, so he must have died. He's alive and in good health to this day.

[An Arky]

This is kind of mundane, but a man I worked for part-time when I was in college hit a hole in one at the local country club, then another one a year later to the day (not the same hole, though). He showed me the clipping from the local paper.

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by Turek

You ever read the Stephen King short story "Grey Matter"? <shudder>

Nope ... I assume it involves the grotesque, though.

[Paul in Qatar]

I can't say this one is true. I heard it on NPR's Car Talk.

Lady Caller: Something really strange happened the other night, my (Somewhat new used car) stalled out for no good reason on a dark country road. A man, dressed in black like a minister stopped to help. He took off the gas cap, blew into it and the car started right up.

Tom/Ray: Yeah, your car needs a new old gas cap. You car needs a hole in the gas cap that lets air in so the fuel can flow out. You have a modern replacement cap that is sealed for pollution control.

Still a creepy story.

[Rachael Rage]

This may be a bit too mundane/silly in comparison with the others but, heck, I thought it was cool.

A few years back I planned to join a friend in Chicago for a special weekend event he was organizing. Just after I booked my flight, I found out that my favorite rock band that I was totally obsessed with and had to see live every chance I got (substitute yours here) had announced their tour dates without my realizing it. As it happened, their New York date fell right at the time I would be in Chicago, and they were playing in Chicago the same night I was to arrive there. Not only that, but the Chicago show had sold out almost instantly.

Undaunted, I spent several minutes and $200 with Expedia Customer Service and changed my flight to arrive in Chicago a day earlier. I had hope there would be a scalper or some last-minute releases if I went early enough. Surely someone would have a ticket they couldn't use. I mean, it had been a good five years since the band's last substantial top-forty hit...

So I arrived in Chicago the night before the show, and the next day my friend dropped me off at the venue in the blazing 95+ Chicago midafternoon soul-sucking heat. Seeing the venue, and its lack of shade, I realized I was truly SOL - it was unbelievably tiny, holding only a scant couple hundred people, there were many miserable-looking people asking everyone in line for tickets, not a scalper to be found, and signage plastering every outside flat surface stating, in no uncertain terms, that if you didn't have a ticket you were. Not. Getting. In. Shut. Up. Go. Home.

Discouraged, I called my friend and told him that if nothing changed by 6:00, he could pick me up. Shortly after I hung up, I recognized the band's tour manager (I mentioned I was obsessed, no?) walking around the crowd. Nobody was paying much attention to him. He happened to look up as I was looking at him so I flashed a big smile. He asked me "are you a member of the fan club?" I responded in the affirmative, and he said "Ok, follow me" (please note: I was thirtyish, slightly dumpy, extremely sweaty, wearing an unflattering t-shirt-and-jeans combo and a full decade older than anyone else in the crowd. I was about as far from a hot groupie - in the sexy sense anyway - as you could get).

Moments later, I, along with about half a dozen young ladies, was whisked into the venue and up the stairs to the band's meet-and-greet. I met-and-greeted, exchanged pleasantries, shook hands, got my photo snapped, and then went directly down to the venue where I could leisurely grab a beer (and a free cupcake!), hit the restroom, and chat with a couple of the band members' girlfriends before they started letting everyone else in. I ended up with a plum position in the front row at the coolest, tiniest venue I think this band had ever played.

All without a ticket, or a snowball's chance of getting one.

Best $200 I ever spent.







OK, fine. It was Hanson. I know, stop laughing.

[Scarlett67]

Originally Posted by Rachael Rage

OK, fine. It was Hanson. I know, stop laughing.

Sorry, can't.

Great stories!

[Sampiro]

I hope it's alright that I repost this rather than just link to it. It's something I posted in a thread 3 eyars ago about a lady (now deceased) I used to know in Montgomery.

I used to work with an English born lady named Eve Gordon in Montgomery, AL. She died recently. She was one of the pioneers of the Hospice program and there was a reason. Her life would be an incredible story- a shame she's dead and can't be an advisor.

This is just an abstract treatment:

Dr. Gordon was a cross-country skier in her youth (1930s) who competed on the British Olympic team (unsuccessfully). She later became a nurse. One of her patients was the son of a German diplomat in London who was brought in with severe head injuries after a major car accident; he was essentially given up for dead. Attending doctors told her that he had no chance whatever if he lost consciousness as he would fall into a coma and die (I've no idea what the logic of this was, but I heard it from her own mouth and she was a completely reliable person). She talked to him through daybreak and was running out of things to say and exhausted herself and, struggling for something, she remembered the church down the street and told him "Oh, you have got to hear the bells? Have you ever been in London on a Sunday morning? The bells all over the city... they ring and they ring and it's deafening but it's glorious... there's nothing like the Sabbath morning in London! It's wonderful... it is something that you must hear! You cannot go to sleep until it is Sabbath morning and the bells are ringing!" and he stayed awake and he lived.

After World War 2 broke out she became increasingly active in the British secret service due to her medical knowledge and her skiing abilities. She was dropped behind enemy lines to perform medical rescue and later flat-out acts of espionage. She describes receiving a Dutch Jewish newborn so young that his navel was still bleeding and hearing his parents say Kaddish as she took him away (the baby lived). She told an incredible story about how she met her husband (I'll spare you because it's really long, but at one point they were hiding in the hollow altar of a church while Nazi PA systems offered food and money for anybody who would turn them in dead or alive). She told an incredible story about a man she stripped naked in the snow so that his many bullet wounds would kill him quickly and how for the rest of her life she began each morning by saying his name (and then later had her children and grandchildren do the same)- he had lost his entire family and even his friends in the war and their saying of his name was to commemorate the fact that he had lived.

As the war moved into Europe she became increasingly active as a battlefield nurse. Among her duties was a morbid form of triage: she actually assigned precedence to wounded soldiers awaiting surgeons based not on the extent of their injuries but on such factors as who would take the least amount of time. For example: soldier A is seriously wounded and will die without surgery, but surgery could probably save him- however, it would take two surgeons several hours to operate on him during which time Soldiers B and C would possibly die, Soldier D (who requires a two hour procedure) would almost certainly die, Soldiers E & F would lose limbs, and Soldiers G, H, I and J who arent' that seriously injured can be quickly patched up and sent back to the front in a few days where they can help their desperately outnumbered comrades. She literally sent men to their death who could have been saved in interest of "the greater good" and she felt tremendous guilt over it. This was why she vowed that when the war ended she would do all in her power to help everybody have as painless and peaceful a death as possible, and she founded hospices all over the world to achieve this purpose.

But her most incredible story:

She was in a village in Eastern Europe ruled by a Nazi official notorious even among other Nazis for his bararity. In the town square there were literally crosses on which resistance members had literally been crucified. Dr. Gordon was being sought for by the Nazis and she had equipment for a radio for the resistance on her person (that alone was punishable by death) when Nazi tanks sealed off each end of the street she was on. She took refuge in a house with a terrified family she didn't know. The gestapo officer in charge ordered the death of every man in every odd numbered house for starters and then the searching of the others.

She sat holding a screaming child from the family whose house she was in- there was no real hiding place. She heard shots, doors being kicked in, people screaming, the wailing of a mother whose children had been killed in front of her a few doors down, breaking dishes and wanton destruction and cruelty and cursing in German, more gunshots, and finally the inevitable- the door of the house she was in being broken down. The family was taken away and she was held by German soldiers who found the radio equipment and began beating her, calling her every kind of b!tch and c*nt and wh*re as they did so and she knew that she was going to be tortured to death.

Her eyes were filled with blood and tears when the gestapo official who had ordered the killings and the crucifixions came into the house. He grabbed her face, looked at her, and reached for his gunbelt and she was relieved: he's going to shoot me in the head- I'm going to die fast.


He didn't reach for his gun but rather a kerchief which he used to wipe the blood and tears from her face. He examined her, pulled her to her feet, barked some orders to his men, and tossed her out the door saying "Get out of here! I'm giving you back your London Sunday morning bells." Needless to say, it was the German diplomat's son who she had saved and who had become a brutal bastard who saved her life.


Anyway, if I were a Spielberg or a Howard or a Scorcese, I would fly Eve's children first class to whereever I was and ask for any stories like these, and of course if the movie was a smash success I'd endow hospices with part of the profits.

[Sigmagirl]

OK, I'll play.

I've posted before that I used to work at a newspaper, where one of my jobs was editing obituaries. Checking spelling, punctuation, grammar, stuff that's going to get us sued.

I had a sister with whom I hadn't spoken in about 15 years, since just after our father died. We had never gotten along, and things had gotten much worse in ways I won't go into here. We got a "sibling divorce" and she lived in another state.

One day I was working, reading some notices. When you finish one, you click "next." "Next" came up one with my sister's name. I sat there stunned. My mouth was probably open. I read down through it, but it wasn't finished -- no funeral information, so I was sure it was a prank. Just like her, I thought, to screw with me. She knew what I did for a living.

I got up and went down the hall to the writer's office to bitch her out for colluding -- though how could she have known my sister's married name? and age? --- and though there were strangers in there, I demanded "Where did that come from?" Puzzled, she handed me a fax. I grabbed it and stomped back to my desk. It came from a funeral home in Florida, near where my sister lived. Or had lived.

Because I checked it out. With my job, I knew how to do that. One thing I know how to do, is verify a death. With a funeral home and a board of health and the other newspapers and the medical examiner.

And it was true. Her husband hadn't been planning to call me. There was no funeral. I might not have known for months -- or years.
And I learned about it by it coming up on my screen at work. "Next."

[SpazCat]

I had one of these just yesterday...BY A REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE!

One of my roommates quit his job because one of his co-workers kept threatening to beat him up, get his "boys" to beat him up, etc. etc. He's filing a hostile workplace grievance with the EEOC about this. He got a letter from them yesterday from a lady in corporate headquarters who got several key details of the grievance completely wrong and Roommate was angry because it was clear that the written statement he had made had not been sent to the higher ups. I suggested that he go back to his old store and get a copy of the statement and send it in himself. I volunteer to drive him because he's too upset to drive and I needed gas anyway.

We get to the store just as two police cars pull up. I do my thing while Roommate goes inside to talk to his old boss. Everyone who works at the store is there, including the district manager. They all tell Roommate, "You want to be at the meeting they're about to have." So he goes in.

The co-worker who had been harassing him was being arrested for stealing from the till. They started keeping a closer eye on him after Roommate left and caught him on tape.

[xizor]

Back in college, I worked as a short order cook in a restaurant. I found a co-worker quite attractive and flirted with and hit on her ruthlessly. Finally she agreed to go out with me, but we never seemed to have the same nights off. So one Sunday evening I convinced her that we should both call in sick and just go out that night. We did.

The next morning we learned that a tornado had come through around midnight and wiped out the entire shopping center where our workplace had been. If we had gone to work we probably would have died. The manager and a dishwasher had survived by diving into the walk-in cooler at the last second.

link

[AuntiePam]

A year or so ago I was asked to help a cousin locate his nephew, because the nephew's father was on his deathbed. Nephew had been estranged from his father since his parents' divorce.

Long story short, it took a few days but I found the nephew -- at his mother's home in Arkansas. He was there for her funeral. His parents died on the same day, one in Iowa and one in Arkansas.

[John DiFool]

Originally Posted by Hello Again

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson within hours of each other, on the 50th anniversay of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (July 4, 1826).

IIRC their last words both expressed hope that the other man was still in fine health (this despite an often strained relationship between the two for most of their lives).