After I graduated from college I lived at home for a few years, mainly because it was convenient for where I managed to get a job. One day I was cutting through the alley on my way home from work; a couple of the neighborhood kids were shooting hoops and one of them tossed me the ball as I approached. Now, I was (and still am) short, overweight, and not particularly athletic and I’m sure they thought it would be pretty funny to watch me try to sink a basketball. Despite that, I took a few running steps and made what would charitably be called an attempt at a layup shot; when I landed I just kept walking, as if I didn’t care whether I made the shot or not (which I didn’t). Instead of the expected laughter I heard a quiet “Damn!” from one of the kids. Glancing back I saw the two of them looking after me dumbstruck.
I can only assume that through some weird violation of the laws of chance and physics that the ball had actually gone through the basket.
When Mr. S was about a year old, he nearly drowned in a five-gallon bucket. (His much older brother gave him mouth-to-mouth on the drive to the hospital and revived him.) I think of that every time I see that graphic on the side of a bucket.
I’ve had someone say, without any sense of irony, that she cheated on me because she “has needs”. I honestly didn’t think people actually said that.
The very first time I stood on a skateboard I fell off and broke my ankle, requiring two operations.
Fairly tame and run of the mill but it really took me by surprise, but a few months back I was out with someone and she missed her last train home. I said she could sleep on my couch. We got a taxi back to mine and it was all very polite, no different to taking a cab with a workmate or a male friend. I had genuinely meant she could sleep on my couch (well, I was going to offer her the bed and me sleep on the couch). I now know that these situations actually do, in reality, sometimes end up in naughtiness and no one sleeping on the couch.
I lost my virginity to the sound of “Something Stupid”.
Oh, I have also walked into an ER/A&E/Casualty/Akuten and told the first medical person that came up to me that I thought I was about to have a heart attack.
I took my foreign girlfriend for a walk in the forested Chiltern hills on a beautiful sunny spring day. As we emerged into a clearing and looked over the Oxford Plain, way below us a cricket match was in full swing. I started to get patriotic: “Isn’t England beautiful! This is wonderful. It’s like we’re in the 1930s. All we need now is a steam train coming past.”
And just as I said that, we heard a chuff-chuff and a whistle, and an antique train passed below us. We were transported into Brief Encounter.
Aw jeez, I was reading through this and it made me miss lobstermobster. She posted twice in May of this year apparently though. Sad!
ETA: Oh, and I guess the biggest cliche I can think of right now is getting to my placement in rural Japan on no sleep, and getting dragged to a ridiculously awesome festival with 25 meter paper and bamboo floats that I could barely comprehend in my stupor. It was one of those “I’m in a completely different place and WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW THIS IS SO AWESOME” moments.
Not me, but my cousin, who lived next door. She dated a man for almost five years, and they were as good as married. Only, marriage was off the table as he was ferociously anti-marriage and even more anti-kids. Never wanted to be tied down! Marriage and kids were traps! He loved my cousin, they were going to lead a life of selfish, hedonistic pleasure, travel, the good life! A swingin’ single he was and would forevermore be. Cousin was OK with this for some time. She, of course, was going to just wait it out, because he would come to his senses eventually, right? (See where this is going?) She finally lost patience, waiting for marriage n’ babies with him, and broke up with him, much to HIS distress. He leaves town in a huff. (Still going…) Six months later, she runs into him at the wedding of a mutual friend, and, yes, he gave her a big hug, they chat, and then he introduces her to his date - yes, his brand new pregnant wife. :rolleyes: Why do they DO that? What causes that big turn-around in a life? Right person at the right time, I guess.
I had one of those in gym class once. It was Danish Longball - basically like baseball inside, and you’re got out if someone hits you with the ball, about the size of a volleyball.
I was running to the base, and I saw the ball coming right for my head. I lean back too far, one foot slides out, and I stop myself from falling by putting my hand out behind my head. The ball flies safely over my head, I push myself upright, and run to home.
According to onlookers, it was like something from The Matrix.
I once lived the punchline to a bad joke. Many years ago when I was about 18, I was heading to my car and a door-to-door salesman approached me on the sidewalk. He asked if my parents were home and I said yes. He knocked and knocked and as I was driving off he asked again if they were home, and I replied “Yes…but I don’t live here.”
(I was watching a friends house while they were out of town)
A long time ago, I was driving from Vermont to my new home in Tennessee. I was greeted on the Va/Tn border by a couple of Tennessee’s finest (I was not pulled over) but I had a little extra time, so I decided to take the mountain roads to my home near Chattanooga. I had very little sleep and was surviving on “No-Doz” and other forms of Caffeine.
Well I got lost and took a wrong turn and found myself in Pigeon Forge and Dollywood. (I had no idea that this place existed in the middle of the mountains of Eastern Tennessee). There was an extreme amount of traffic, tourist traps, hotels, etc. I thought I was hallucinating as I thought I was hundred miles from any major city. It was like I had just entered the twilight zone.
I was once in the middle of one of those scenes where everything goes silent right as someone says something really embarrassing…
My good friends and I shared a house in college, and we threw some epic parties. Usually there would be groups of people doing various things–music playing with some dancing, some drinking games, and people hanging out in the living room talking. During one particularly rowdy party, I was playing “I Never” with a large group of friends, while others were in the adjacent room chatting. If you’ve never played this game, basically you sit around in a circle, and one person says something they’ve never done, and everyone who has done that thing has to take a drink.
I lived in a house full of virgins, so I ALWAYS lost this game. I’d pull out my standard “I’ve never been fishing,” and “I’ve never been further west than Indianapolis” (which has since changed, but at the time was still accurate), but by round 3 all the virgins had me pretty wasted. But 19-year-old me realized I could still maybe get the gay guys with “I’ve never had anal sex.”
Right after I said that, two things happened. The CD that had been playing ended, so the room suddenly got very quiet. And from the adjacent room, my friend Kay, who had until that moment been engaged in a completely unrelated conversation, turned around, pointed in the general direction of our game, and screamed “BULLSHIT!” at the top of her lungs.
To this day I can’t explain the timing of what she did, or even why she said it. But everyone playing the game laughed so hard that they cried.
