About twenty years ago, I went to a trade show in New Orleans with a group of co-workers. The first night we were there, we were going to an exhibitors-only party someplace. The woman in marketing who knew where the party was got in one taxi with half the group, while I got into another taxi with the rest of the group (and none of us knew where the party was to be held). So one guy in my taxi was able to tell the driver, “Follow that cab!”
(FYI, the party was at Mardi Gras World.)
My chorus has an occasional concert in which a fat lady joins us for the encore.
Once when I was driving along Iowa Avenue in West L.A., a couple of short blocks south of Santa Monica Boulevard, a chicken crossed the road in front of me.
I’m really curious about this one. Was it like a thorough scene-by-scene walk-through of your life from age zero up to the present? How long did it take or feel? Was it as vivid as a hallucination? How “movie-like” was it? I’ve wondered about this for a while.
I was fixing an electric stove at someone’s house: screwdrivers, wires, pliers and all.
Their eight(or so)-year-old son was watching me for a while then asked:
If I find a bomb what color wire should I cut to defuse it? Blue or Red?
My reply: cut the blue one .
I should have clarified that it would only work when one second is left on the timer.
I recently tried some really powerful psychedelic drugs and afterwards I went around telling everybody: “Man, everything IS connected. Life, nature and god, it’s all ONE, man. Wow”.
It’s true, too. Clichees are clichees for a reason. 
And everything IS connected. Life, nature and god, it’s all ONE, man. Wow !
Twenty years ago we were travelling in SAmerica, headed by bus out of Peru and into Bolivia. While we’d been away, unbeknownst to us, the rules for Canadians had changed to, ‘visa required’. When a soldier boarded the bus to check papers, once crossed into Bolivia, he informed us we were lacking a visa and directed us to get off the bus!
Where we were put into the back of an open jeep with a armed soldier in camo, wearing mirrored sunglasses and a severe attitude. We did as directed. The jeep tore off, high speed through a dusty and apparently deserted, squat village. We pulled up in front of a crumbling Spanish architecture structure and were ordered inside.
Into a large, high ceilinged, open room with ancient linoleum, a single metal desk and a General, with mirrored sunglasses and also a VERY severe attitude. The late afternoon light was streaming through the dirty windows and the ceiling fan was turning slowly.
It was just like every scene from such movies, that you’ve ever seen, I swear! It was well and truly surreal. And through it all, we could only look at each other, and wonder, “What the hell is happening?” Especially as we’d left home knowing we didn’t need a visa!
Until they sent us back to the jeep, (required visas purchased and stamped!), which promptly took us directly back to the waiting bus, we really weren’t sure if we were going to ever see that bus again! Once back onboard, and filled mostly with Bolivians and Peruvians, there was a Swiss couple who came and remarked, “Glad you made it back! We were worried for you!” No Shit! We were too!
I didn’t dare think of taking a picture, but neither of us will ever forget it! Whenever we see this in movies now, we high five each other and say, “Been there!”
Why?
Like he said, he still doesn’t know.
Yup. I’ve had a gun (seriously) pointed at me four times to date. Since the statute of limitations in Canada only applies to summary cases, I can’t talk about the other three.
Sadly, it’s just part of the job when you are involved in the sale of illegal drugs.
That part was tongue-in-cheek. I never met those dudes again, and I was totally OK with that.
It was over two decades ago, and I’m a moron who did a lot of strong drugs in those two decades, so my memory is a more than a bit fuzzy, but here’s what I can recall. It was more like a series of intense flashes than a movie. What the cliche got wrong in my case is that it wasn’t in order. The flashes jumped around in time, as if they where being sorted by intensity rather than date. It probably only lasted about 5-8 seconds, but it felt a lot longer on my end. It was intense, but not vivid, if that makes sense. Each flash wasn’t like a hallucination or LSD flashback, more like a smell bringing back a really intense memory, with the memories coming so fast you can’t really wrap your brain around them.
Hope that helps with the curiosity.
This happened to me. I’m in a running club so one Saturday morning I set trail for the group and very leisurely trotted/walked/ran, marking the path with drywall. I then ran the trail in the afternoon with the group and kept to the back to make sure no one was lost and to point out shortcuts as needed to stragglers. In all, I did about 9 miles total and none of it was racing or really hardcore running. My knee really hurt afterword so I went to the doctor and explained exactly what happened and she looked at me and said “Well don’t do that.”
It really rubbed me the wrong way too. I’m not a super runner but I can do longer jogs here and there and even did a 1/2 marathon about a year prior. I liked the doctor up until then and avoided going back to her because of her half assed analysis. It ended up being a torn meniscus that I just had scoped last week and it really frustrates me that wound up putting it off because I didn’t want to go back and have a doctor tell me “Don’t do that” again.
Did he explain himself?
I do not think I could have resisted rolling down my car window and screaming to the heavens, “Why, oh Lord, WHY??”
One of my good friends was roommates for a while with two exchange students from Taiwan, who spoke halting English. They had a friend named John, also of Asian racial extraction, who I met several times. I somehow had gotten it into my head that he was also an exchange student from Taiwan, and at one point I mentioned how well he spoke English, at which point he looked at me witheringly and said “I’m from New Jersey”.
Thing is, I grew up in Silicon Valley, 40% of my friends were always Asian-American. I want to somehow track him down and point out that I would never ever ever make that mistake or that assumption… except of course for the time that I did.
At an evening pool party, one of my guests was walking next to the pool when she suddenly went head first into the water and then floated facedown. Her fall was so graceful that it looked intentional, and everyone thought she was just fooling around. We yelled and laughed until her husband jumped in and hauled out her limp body. (She was quickly okay.)
Several people had seen her fall, but no one saw her trip or falter, and no one saw her hit her head, which she must have done.
Later she said that between the time she hit her head and the time she lost consciousness, she literally saw birds flying in circles around her head, like in a cartoon.
I once had a coworker named Roger, who would habitually lean back in his chair, balancing on its two rear legs. One day he leaned back a little too far and lost his balance. Roger wound up on the floor, hitting his head and momentarily losing consciousness. I couldn’t help commenting, “Roger, over and out.”
I did the banana-peel thing at a friend’s barbecue. I didn’t believe they could actually be that slippery, until my buttocks collided with the concrete.
I also actually slipped on a banana peel once—but I managed to catch my balance and didn’t fall, possibly just thanks to my steely determination to not become that guy who actually slipped on a banana peel. Still, though, I wouldn’t have guessed how accurate that cliche was!