The "Share a Random Story From Your Life" Thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Hey-

You’d probably rather go with something a bit lighter or at least less bizarre. If you’d like to have one of the following let me know:

On Dope (though I have better/more recent versions)
Hacksaw the Musical
Spinning in the Sunlight
The Potato Head Bible Beating (which has a weird conclusion- a revelation that occurred when my mother was dying)
She came in through the Bathroom Window
and others on that thread (and again, I’ve got better versions)

Not on the Dope:
*My Brother’s Big Fat Non-Smoking Wedding- about my mother’s decision to boycott my brother’s wedding because the rehearsal dinner restaurant didn’t allow smoking, and the odd story of why my sister was late as well
*Tales of the Gelded Mustang- very long story but one of the more popular about my grandfather’s confessions in his last months following surgical castration
*Bicentennial Minutes- about a disastrous 1976 trip to Philadelphia
Lots of others. And some non-biographical stuff. Lemme know.

62

Apologies for above- somehow I meant to send it as a P.M… Tired am I.

63

Okay, this is my favorite thread ever. And in retrospective contrast to my new-Doper gushing, I say again, unequivocally, that you all are the finest group of people I have ever had the pleasure to know.

Bouv, this story is completely charming. It reminds me of my favorite all-time writer (next to Philip K. Dick!) who is known as Aaron Cometbus.

Here’s my story: A few summers ago, it was hot. Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. The kind of hot where a city block seems like a sleepless nightmare, shot entirely in tunnel-vision, of dessication and glare. I don’t know where my bicycle was, but I was walking down Dwight Way in Berkeley with my usual mien of random good cheer, when I happened to glance to the side. I was halted, stricken, by what I had spied in someone’s driveway, next to their drain pipe.

Oh, I must back up a bit to mention that, on this particular day, I had stopped momentarily to pick up a nearly-full bottle of fancy water that someone had put in their recycling bin. Now, I will stop at a freebox and rummage through if I feel like it. Sometimes I go to freeboxes on purpose. But I have never, ever, ever picked up anyone’s discarded food or beverage for my own consumption. I mean, yuk. I still have no idea why I did it that day. I know I had no intention of drinking it – some vague concept of it coming in handy I think.

So back to the sad sight. There, on the blazing hot cement of the driveway in the blazing hot sun, a miniature landscape not unlike the surface of Mercury, were two teeny little baby birdies. Mostly pink chicken-looking skin with that absurdly fluffy down, and those big, sightless baby bird eyes. Lying still in the stark hot noonday sun. I stood there a moment gazing in pity, and noticed a stream of ants going in and out of one of the birdies’ eyes. I’m squicking myself out here, but you have to understand the grim pathetic defeat of the whole scene.

And then…the other birdie moved! Ever so slightly, the weakest tiny twitch, but my brain went, OMYGODHE’SALIVE! and went into overdrive. I fished the bottle of water out of the load of useless junk I was carrying, and snatched the little birdie up and into the shade with my great big clumsy Giant fingers and more delicacy than I have ever mustered in my entire life. His little beak opened and closed soundlessly. Even without anthropomorphizing, I can only imagine what that poor creature was feeling. And I did it. I opened the bottle of God-knows-who’s former water, and took a big swig that I didn’t swallow. And when the bird opened its beak, I dribbled it in, a few drops at a time. I did this several more times.

After a while, the bird opened its beak, and a small croaky “cheep!” came out. He fluttered his wings once or twice. He cheeped again. His fluffy baby down waved absurdly when he moved. I loved him with a love of ridiculous proportions and crooned little goofy chick stuff at him. (takes one to know one!) Finally it occurred to me to look up into the tree overhead to see if I could locate a nest. It was a really large leafy tree, and I was kinda surprised to actually see the nest easily. But it was not within my reach.

I should mention here that I used to be not at all shy with strangers, but time and the modern world have made a lot of headway beating that out of me. I looked in the front yard next to the driveway, under the tree, and noticed a low fence enclosing it at about waist-height. I am not the sort of person to climb strangers’ fences in their front yards…it’s not polite…I went up to the front door with my little fluffy friend and knocked boldly anyway. Yaaaargh! No one answered.

Just then, their next-door neighbor drove up and got out of her car. I said, “Excuse me, but I’ve found this baby birdie and his nest’s up there and your neighbors aren’t home and do you think it would be okay if I climbed their fence to put him back?”

She said, “I don’t think they’d mind.” Not sure how I got up there one-handed, but I put him back. I half-expected to find some cuckoo chick in there; you know, the kind that push competing chicks of the host bird out of the nest to their deaths, but no, it was empty.

I know, his mama might have been dead. I know I was told as a child that if you touch a wild animal, you get “human-smell” on it, and its mother will reject it. But whenever I go by that particular house, I always hear birds singing.

64

The following column was published in the News-Democrat, the weekly community newspaper for which I served as humble editor, lo these 22 years ago. (Sigh! Half my life ago!)

It was the place I grew up, and this piece makes me a little misty when I think about how energetic and eager to take on the world I was at the age of 23. The demands of the job, a husband who needed to continue his college education, and a yearning to be out and about in the larger world (along with a difficult co-worker) caused me to leave the job after only about a year. But there’s a lot I am grateful for in that year, including becoming a colleague with my father, who held a position in local government.

Anyway, here’s the column.

All It Takes is One Little Voice
To Make Cover-Huggers of All

“Ellen … time to get up. Ellen, come on. Time to get up for school.”

As the snow piled up last week, I began to think back to when I was just a young thing, maybe eight years ago, and a student in the Carroll County school system. As I heard my mother’s insistent voice and felt that annoying little pat on my foot which signaled that it was time for the made dash to the bus, I would unconsciously cross my fingers and ask, “Is there any snow outside?”

As one in a long line of morning cover-huggers, there was nothing so sweet as the sound of a radio announcer’s voice saying authoritatively: “There will be no school in Carroll County today.”

And in the wintertime when I was growing up, there was a good chance that annoying little pat wouldn’t come and I could switch on my bedside radio and hear the soothing announcer’s voice speak those sweet words.

One of the most interesting things about my new job is that I continually find myself slipping back over the edge to my childhood when learning things about this community from an adult perspective. One such occasion came last Thursday evening, when, waiting for the school board to return from an executive session, I spoke with Dr. Del Jarman, the assistant superintendent of schools.

Last Thursday, a storm was gathering for the next day’s big snow, and we were within earshot of the board’s answering machine. The telephone would ring about every five minutes, presumably with a student on the other end hoping to hear school was canceled for Friday.

Somewhere inside me was the morning cover-hugger, and now I was ready to hear, from the official end, just how the information gets to that wonderful announcer who told me I could roll over and rest up for a day of sledding.

And, as a cover-hugger to this day, my eyes opened in surprise as Jarman told me of the terribly EARLY snowy-morning routine he performed with superintendent Harry Day and transportation director Dalton Garrett.

The three travel the most treacherous roads in this county: Highway 36 with its hair-raising “Searcy’s Curves;” Locust Road, King’s Ridge Road and Black Rock Road, among others. At 4 a.m., no less, the three are out there, with the eastern and western portions of the country equally divided between them, testing the roads for the icy spots that would play havoc with a lumbering school bus.

Once the route is complete, after about an hour and a half, they return to the bus garage to compare notes. It is then the Official Word comes down and hundreds of cover-huggers learn their fate for the day.

The safety of the county’s children notwithstanding, you can bet if I were out there at 4 a.m., it would have to be one icy road to allow me to give other snugglers the chance to revel in a morning’s snooze when I could not.

Having lived through my parents’ admonitions that if I didn’t get up I would grow to the bed, one would think I would accept my lot in life to work an 8:30 to 5 job where getting up and going was an absolute necessity.

But no. All through college, I avoided 8 a.m. classes like the plague, and groan and mumble when that nasty, high-pitched, self-righteous alarm clock goes off, which has replaced the annoying pat.

Maybe one of these days I’ll outgrow, finally, my cover-hugging ways. I guess I’ll have to, until the day comes when someone invents an announcer who will whisper lovingly into my ever-ready ear:

“There will be no work in Carroll County today.”

65

Yep. I was fourteen. Old enough to crap bigger than a kitten, young enough to share. :slight_smile:

Anyone whisper “theophanize” out loud in the last few minutes? raises hand

And thank you, brujaja, for the deed and the story.

66

I have been following this thread from the beginning, but I can’t seem to think of any stories that are good stories… but I have decided that this one is instructional at least, and it didn’t say we had to share strictly happy stories, so here goes. (WILL BE LONG AND SOMEWHAT GRUESOME… BUT FREE OF POOP)

My husband and I are avid animal lovers - not just dogs, animals of all kinds. When we met, he had a year old female dog, half lab, half chow, but she mostly looked like a lab. Bridget was very loving and sweet to us, but very distrustful of strangers. That dog had a bark that could scare even the bravest tough guy into soiling himself. Aside from that, she was a good, friendly dog. She wasn’t the brightest, but she could sit, lay down, roll over, the usual.

After we had known each other about a year, but we were still living separately, I got a puppy free from friends who had an “oops” litter - she was half chihuahua, half rat terrier. Molly went everywhere with me. She and Bridget got a long great. They would play - Molly running circles underneath Bridget, where Bridget couldn’t see what was going on. They played together, slept together, even ate together. Bridget would generally try to gulp it down as fast as possible so she didn’t have to share, but she didn’t seem to even have food aggression issues with Molly.

Jason and Bridget moved in with my son and me about 4 months later. Everyone got along famously. No issues. The dogs never fought, never seemed to be upset with each other. Another year later, we added a small purebred chihuahua male puppy. Again, everyone got along great - no issues whatsoever.

We usually kept the dogs penned in the kitchen together when we were not home. We had a large party so we set up the basement for them instead, because Bridget is just not good with that many people all at once. Their beds, food, water, and such was all relocated there from the kitchen. For the week after the party, we continued to put the dogs in the basement rather than the kitchen, for no particular reason. Mostly because we were too lazy to bring everything back up, I guess.

It was a Thursday night, almost bed time. I was just finishing up dishes and the kitchen sink was just a few feet from the door to the basement. I mentioned we were animal lovers. Well, we also keep reptiles. Snakes will occasionally escape their enclosures. We usually find them fairly quickly - it isn’t a big deal. When this happened once before, Molly found it, and made the weirdest scream noise. We kept the snakes in an oversized closet in the basement.

I heard this scream from the basement, which reminded me of the Molly-found-a-snake scream from the past, so I figured one of the snakes got loose, and I start over to the door with an amused type attitude, saying something inconsequential to the basement animals like “Ok, who is doing what now?”

As I got into full view of the basement, I could see Molly running towards me and the stairs, her nails scrambling and not finding purchase on the tile floor, horror in her eyes, and Bridget right behind her, having the same problem with her nails, with murder in her eyes. I screamed something like “Oh my God!” and practically fell down the stairs in my hurry. It was one of those moments where everything seems to be going in slow motion. I watched as I practically fell down the stairs as Bridget caught up to Molly at the bottom of the stairs. Bridget took Molly by the underside of the neck and shook her like a rag doll.

I made it to Bridget’s side by maybe the second head whip of the shake and managed to stop the shaking motion. I was screaming things like “No, Bad Dog! Let Go!!!” so loudly and continuously that I was hoarse for a week afterward. I picked up Bridget by the choke chain and had her front end at least two feet off the ground, but she wouldn’t let go. I was hitting her with my free hand, I was in panic mode, didn’t know what else to do. My fingers were bruised and sore from hitting her in the rib cage. I started looking around… there was a bag of recycling from the party nearby, maybe I could grab a beer bottle and whack her over the head with it?

Meanwhile, my husband had been in the living room, which is also not that far from the basement door, but he didn’t react until I yelled from the top of the stairs. When he heard the first scream, he figured something similar to me, and thought I would have it under control. Seconds felt like minutes. He made it down the stairs at about this point, while I was contemplating the bottle smashing, and put his hand inside Bridget’s mouth and pushed down on her tongue to make her let go. Molly slid to the floor, unmoving. Bridget went to snap at my husband, then seemed to wake up. She shook her head and walked away to the back of the basement, like “what the?? I must have been dreaming. What was I thinking?” I scooped up Molly and we scrambled up the stairs, shutting the door behind us, leaving Bridget down there. It was about 11pm at night and we had never needed the emergency vet before. We were trying to think straight which wasn’t easy. We needed to get her to the vet. But where? I think I had the sense to tell my husband to call my regular vet, knowing they would have an emergency number on the recording.

Molly was alive, but not really moving. She didn’t seem to be bleeding too badly, but she had a big gash in the underside of her neck. She was probably in shock. My husband talked to the emergency place and we headed over there. It was a 20 minute drive. As time wore on, Molly’s shock wore off, and she would cry very loudly and horribly with every turn and every bump in the road.

That vet took x-rays and said he couldn’t tell, but it looked as if her one of her vertebrae were broken. What really mattered was whether or not there was any spinal cord damage, and we needed a neurologist and an MRI to know that. Molly was refusing to use her front legs. We didn’t know how much of it might be injury versus just being unwilling. This clinic didn’t have MRI equipment. We had to go to another emergency clinic about 40 minutes away. So at 2am, we headed over there, with just as much anguish over turns and bumps.

I felt like we couldn’t give up on her without knowing if she had a chance at a normal life again. It was going to cost $2000 just to find that out. But we went ahead with it. The clinic sent us home about 5am, and the neurololgist was due to start his shift at 8am. We got home, and slept until 8am. We called into work. I had only been at my new job for 4 months, and my boss HATES animals, but he was kind nonetheless.

We had a difficult couple of weeks… Molly was in the hospital for about 10 days, but when they sent her home, she still couldn’t use her front legs, and they couldn’t tell us for sure that she would, but they thought so. My husband bought all the materials to make her a front end wheel chair. But she did gradually get the use of her legs back. It took quite some time for her to rebuild her strength. When it was all said and done, it cost us $5000 to bring Molly back to her old self. We had no idea what had caused Brigdet to flip out and we couldn’t take a chance that her next victim would be the smaller dog, the cats, or my son. We turned her over to animal control the next day. My husband had to do this terrible job… Bridget was so happy she was going for a ride. Little did she know where she was going… we didn’t know what else to do. And I could never look at her again without seeing that awful predator look on her face.

I have since become something of an expert on dog on dog aggression. Both Bridget and Molly had alpha personalities. While dogs sexually mature at 6 months or so, they are not socially mature until 18 months to two years. Pack order is not definitive until social maturity. Female dogs are much more likely to fight each other to truly injure or kill than male dogs. Intact dogs are much more likely to fight than fixed dogs. Dogs are more likely to fight if they are fed together. Near as I can tell, they must have both gone to eat at the same time and Bridget just couldn’t take Molly’s cheekiness anymore since she was a grown up now, and not just some upstart puppy.

So, please, do not keep unaltered female dogs of greatly varying sizes, unless you are 100% sure at least one of them doesn’t have alpha tendencies, which won’t be obvious until social maturity. There are those who want to blame it all on Bridget’s Chow blood, but I don’t think so. I have heard too many stories - german shepherds killing poodles, labs killing pomeranians - it isn’t breed specific. People just seem to think it won’t happen to them. We had no warning… if there had been bickering, unrest of some kind, maybe it could have been avoided.

Molly is for the most part, no worse for the wear. One of her front legs buckles on her when she lands from jumping sometimes (like jumping off the bed or the couch), and her gait is a little off, but she is fine otherwise.

67

Back about 2 or 3 years ago I was not doin’ real well as far as having a meth habit and staying at one friends house to the next. I had to leave my homie Alex’s pad because his mom really started to trip out on Alex basically effing off everything his mom told him. So I left and had no choice but to wander the city until morning when I could call someone else I knew. Well, I go to a Chevron and buy a Red Bull, then start walking down a pretty well-traveled street. As I walk, I catch notice of a bunch of paperwork strewn about the road, along with a manila envelope, a small one, that was very bulgy. Effed up though it sounds of me for not attempting to find the owner, I very quickly stuffed the manila envelope in my pocket and made haste into a residential tract when I saw all the hundred dollar bills that were stuffed into this envelope. Upon investigation, I had just become $23,000 richer. I definitely would try to find the owner now, but at that time I was much less scrupulous (i.e., addicted to meth; read: “Scandalous Tweaker”).

68

In high school, I was in a lot of AP classes, and therefore, took a lot of AP tests. I was also a member of the theatre department, which produces an absurdly high number of shows each year. (At least 6, if you include Drama 1 and Drama 2’s yearly productions of This Is A Test and some Shakespeare plays cut down to 45 minutes, and usually more than that.)

On one fine early May day in my junior year, it came time for the AP Physics test. Luckily, one of my physics classmates was producing a show that I was designing the sound for, and between that and the approximately 15 other shows we’d worked on together over the past three years (not counting rentals of the theatre that we’d crewed together), he knew me well enough to offer a ride. Since I don’t drive, and the bus didn’t quite get to the test center, I took it gladly, cheerfully quizzing him on comparative politics on the way, which he would be tested on in a few days.

We went to the test, did our best, and came back to school, though it was now over, because it was either tech week or dress rehearsal for his show. We laughed and talked about absurd things on our way into the building, giddy from the post-test rush and glad that the AP tests were nearly over- for him, forever, since he was going to university in the fall, and for me, for a year, until next May.

Now we enter the part of the story I know only second-hand:
Across the very small parking lot, my AP US History TA was waiting for a ride or talking to a friend. She saw us getting out of the truck and walking joyously together into the building. She knew that my friend’s girlfriend had already gone home that day, and further more that my friend had not eaten lunch with the girlfriend as normal.

So the TA approaches my friend’s girlfriend the next morning:
(All names have been changed to protect the innocent, although I’ve used the names of characters they played in high school so it sounds a little silly.)
“Lina, who did you eat lunch with yesterday?”
“Well, just Don, because Tony and Maisy had an AP test so they couldn’t make it.”
“I have something horrible to tell you!”
“What?”
“I think Tony is cheating on you!”
“What? Why would you think such a thing?” (“Tony” would be voted least likely to cheat on a girl if such a vote was taken.)
“Well, yesterday, after school, I saw him come back to campus. There was this girl in his truck with him- she had brownish hair, glasses, a duct tape purse, and the BIGGEST boobs I’ve ever seen!”
“Oh! That’s just anna! She got a ride to the test with him.”
“Oh.”

The worst part about this is that NOT only had I told my desk mates in AP History, in the TA’s earshot, that “Tony” was giving me a ride since we had the same test and both needed to make rehearsal, and wondered out loud many times if he could remember how exactly buoyancy worked because I sure couldn’t*, I didn’t even have the biggest boobs of all the girls in my class, let alone the school. I wasn’t even wearing a low-cut top that day or anything!

That story was how I joined that great set that my friend Ellen (name not changed) is prone to tell, right up there with The Muffin Story, The Granola Bar Story, and the classic Hair Products Versus The Rectangularly-Headed Javert story. It is always called “The BIGGEST BOOBS I’VE EVER SEEN” when we talk about it.

*I still think that if I could make the physics textbook explanation of buoyancy stick in my head, I would have gotten a 4 instead of a 3.

69

For several years I was, in addition to a day job, resident manager of an apartment complex for the mentally ill- people who had just gotten out of mental hospitals and not quite ready for mainstream. Lots of stories for the time, but a short one for here:

We had a resident I’ll call Bobby because that’s not his name. If I were to cast him in a movie I’d use Giovanni Ribisi because he was that type- short, blonde, sort of wiry and obviously demented. He was way brighter than most of the other residents and way crazier whenever he went off his meds, which was frequently. (In his defense they had some major side effects, but nothing like not taking them had.)

Bobby was obsessed with Paula Abdul (this was in the early-mid 1990s long before AI was even a delusion in her tremens) and sent love letters to her, as well as (when he decompensated) audiotapes made on a cassette recorder of himself singing a song about her while masturbating. He heard from her people. They were not amused, but save for Bobby to the best of my knowledge nothing ever came of it.

So one night I drove home from dinner and from half a mile away I could hear the fire and smoke alarms and as I drove into the complex I saw the black smoke billowing from Bobby’s apartment signifying he hadn’t chosen a new pope. All over the complex (which was small- about 8 units with 2 MIs per) there were other residents sitting on lawn chairs and in the gazebo drinking tea and smoking with a “fire alarms…black smoke…Bobby singing loudly…nothing to see here… what’d you have for dinner?” attitude.

In the apartment Bobby was laughing and singing and dancing like (a crazy guy would interpret the dance of) an (American) Indian, and he was stark naked. The smoke was coming from his oven. I threw a sheet over him, got him to go outside, and took the extinguisher to the stove while a designated mental patient called 911. It wasn’t that serious, just smoky- nothing really for the firemedics to do other than write a report (they don’t deal with the mentally ill).

So in interviewing Bobby, who was (to quote John Astin from Night Court) “feeling much better now”, I found out what he’d done:

“Well, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve been masturbating like a damn monkey to Paula Abdul, and knew I was displeasin’ God so I got to reading the Bible and knew what I had to do so I decided to sacrifice Paula and Elvis.”

“Why Elvis?” I asked. “Were you masturbating about him too?”

“No man! I ain’t no goddam queer! I was sacrificin’ Paula cause she’s the object of my sin but Elvis was my penance cause next to Paula he’s my second favorite singer and I’m throwin’ him as a kind of interest tax, like.” (Bobby liked to end sentences with ‘like’, like.) “So I took my Elvis tapes and my Paula tapes and my pictures of Paula and Elvis and I put 'em all in the Sunday newspaper, and I put Carpet Fresh on it and covered it in water and stuck in the oven on broil, like.”

“Why the Carpet Fresh?”

“I wanted to have a pleasant aroma to the Lord, like.”

“Why’d you put the water on it?”

“Cause I didn’t want the place to burn down! I’m crazy not dumb!”

“So did God let you know if he accepted the sacrifice?”

“Well, I’ll find out later. He ain’t the one’s been asking for it or who let me know that’s what should do, like. The one who gave me the idea was Cadence.”

“Who’s Cadence?”

“You know, Cadence! The Archangel! The Keeper of Time!”

M-kayyyy

So, there’s a colorful story about how I got Bobby into a hospital that night even though it was a weekend and all the pscyh ward beds were full and all the on-call people weren’t really on-call, and a story about how he rose Hank Williams from the grave later that night, but more interesting is this: Bobby was bright but not well educated, having for obvious reasons been expelled from school when he was in 9th grade, and at the time I’d read quite a few books on odd beliefs and angelology and since that time I’ve not only read many more but I’ve specifically looked for entries on Cadence, the Archangel who’s keeper of time. None of them have a listing for it. To this day I don’t know if Bobby was repeating the story about Cadence from something he’d heard/read or if he just dreamt Cadence up himself; either way, it’s an incredibly appropriate and memorable name for a timekeeping Archangel.

Another quick Bobby story: Bobby decided later that I was his brother (literally- that God had planted my father’s sperm in his mother or his father’s sperm in mine because we were meant to be brothers), then later that I was somehow his father even though I was about 7 years older than he was, this being thanks to some time-space manipulation by Cadence (who controlled time’s flow, like, you see). In any case, long after Bobby was hospitalized and sent to live in other group homes he kept in touch with me and used to come see me. One time he brought his fiancee.
She was morbidly obese, never said a word, and had the most bovine expression you can imagine. She literally looked about as much like a cow as a woman can- the vacant eyes and expressionless expressions, even fuzz on her face. I’ll call her Ashley.
“Jon, this here is Ashley. I’ve asked her to be my bride and have my babies and she’s agreed. We’re gone be married like on the fifteenth of next month.”
“That’s… good… Bobby. I’m happy for you… I wish you every happiness!” I was smiling but I think he could see I wasn’t terribly sincere, so he reassured me, in normal speaking terms that everybody in the room including Ashley could here, “Oh, I know what you’re worried about, but don’t be. It’s gone be good like! See last time you saw me I was crazy as hell but I’m back on my meds now, and Ashley’s not anywhere near as retarded as she looks.”
Bobby was such a romantic that it can’t be lack of sentiment that caused the marriage to fail. Nevertheless, somehow it broke up. But then, another suitcase in another psychward later he met another woman and last I heard they have kids. Ah the Circle of Psychosis goes on.

70

ETA: A Bobby add-on: Several of the other residents hated Bobby, particularly one I’ll call Savannah. Savannah was from a socially prominent and privileged Mobile family, which she worked into pretty much every sentence; it was actually true, but other than occasionally tossing her a few dollars to keep her away her family had nothing to do with her because in addition to being crazy she was a self absorbed bitch. She was loathe to admit she was MI- she was just reeling from the sudden breakup of her marriage 20 years before- and considered herself way healthier than the others, which perhaps compared to Bobby she was but compared to most of the others she wasn’t (though she was a lot whiter, which was a whole other set of grievances she had).
Anyway, Savannah was afraid that because of his loud actions and stunts like the smoke, the neighbors, not so much those in the complex or in the Section 8 apartment complex that bordered us on one side or the large mental hospital that was across the street or even the hood that bordered us on another side but those in the middle class subdivision down the road [it was an odd socioeconomic crossroads- still is] would look down on us, and by us she meant her. She came to see me one day in a huff, flailing her arms and demanding Bobby’s eviction over some recetn stunt, and when he got wind of it he came down to defend himself.
Savannah started screaming at him. “IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO HOLD YOUR HEAD UP WHEN YOU ARE CUTTING UP AND ACTING THE FOOL THE WAY YOU DO! YOU ARE AN E-M-B-A-R-A-S-S-M-E-N-T TO THIS COMPLEX! YOU ARE A DISGRACE! WE CANNOT EVEN APPEAR REMOTELY NORMAL WITH YOU HERE!”
Bobby’s reply was completely calm and amazingly logical. “We’re a state supported apartment complex for schizoaffectives located betwixt a crazy hospital and a bunch of crackhouses. Just how fucking normal you think we’re supposed to look, like?”

71

Sampiro, I just have to ask: Did your parents actually speak that way? I believe you made a slight disclaimer at the beginning about having changed some dialog; but is that pretty much the way they talked? Because, I know that growing up with hard-drinking parents has a host of trouble that typically goes with it, but my God! Such an erudite exchange! Never once did (or does) conversation like that ever transpire in my parents’ house. It was never anything but relentlessly prosaic.

I think the story of that conversation about God is a brilliant, absolutely masterful piece of prose. I meant to say this last night, after I read it, but then I got detoured talking about birdies. Oh, and about “Drunkards & Dragons” – I just fell out when I read that!! You’re fast on your feet.
And thank you, Dung Beetle.

P.S. Leiko, I’m surprised that you don’t understand buoyancy, seeing as you have THE BIGGEST BOOBS I’VE EVER SEEN. :smiley:

72

“Tony” actually made that joke after hearing the story and my complaints about buoyancy. (I know why things float. I would recognize the formula for calculations if I’m shown it. I just can’t make the information go together in my head.)

I talked to a friend who knows the “Hair Products Versus The Rectangularly-Headed Javert”- she thinks that it’s called “Craig’s Hair Grows Straight Forward (So It’s Hard to Slick it Back)” although really all the story tellers of my friends need to hear is the sound effect, or see the hand motions, to know what story we all want to hear.

(It’s not a story one can really tell online; it’s mostly disgusting sound effects of hair gel, mousse, and hair spray, and pantomimed hand-smoothing of the hair to tell that Craig went through at least one large tub of gel and several cans of products over the one week dress, seven full performances, and 4-6 short versions for the elementary and middle schools, just to make his hair stay straight back.)

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Pretty much. It was largely one-upmanship by two very competitive (at least with each other) autodidacts. My father’s lobotomized aunt had the most grandiloquent and strange way of speaking: “What does the manchild withhold unto his bosom?” meant “What’s that kid got under his shirt?” [answer was a candy bar that I was hiding from her] or “I idolize my kittens in their adorability and timidity” meant “I love these cute kittens all these inbred stray cats keep dropping”.

I love that description. :slight_smile: (May require myspace registration to view if you don’t already have it, but a pic of me when I was appearing as Javert- a part of me loved that hairstyle.

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Sampiro Your hair looks much more authentic than our Javert; his was seriously just plastered backwards on his head with no augmentation other than a really silly hat.

(Not as silly as “Tony”'s ringlet curls; he played Marius looking like a brunette Harpo Marx. He knew this, and would play with it backstage, deliberately wearing his hat at a Harpo-esque angle when he knew people were paying attention.)

I feel that I should tell another story, since I’m posting in this thread so much.

So, the Muffin Story, and the Granola Bar story, with additional context for those not of my high school’s theatre department.

It was the end of my very first theatre retreat, an annual event that involves lots of trust exercises, silly games, and improv. Since this was the first retreat I was on, I was part of the freshman girls taken aside on the first evening to be warned of… let’s call him Cosmo, since “The Dentist” or “The Wolf” isn’t such a name-sounding name of a role. Cosmo was known as an egotist and a bit girl-crazy, though he’s greatly improved on both counts over the past six years. Sadly, no one thought to warn us about “Berenger,” who was much more dangerous as an object of affections, and whose psychological issues I am still dealing with to this very day. But that’s a sad story, and this is a happy story!

Several days passed, with Cosmo and another guy fighting for the affections of one of my fellow freshman, and many a game was played. But soon it was… dun dun dun… the final morning! It was nearly time to go home.

Each day we had cooked our own meals, using food donated by parents and Bob. (Bob is another story for another day, and his name is indeed Bob.) But on the last day, no one wanted to cook.

So we had muffins, brought fresh by one of the mothers who was driving us back but not acting as a chaperone, yogurt, and granola bars.

THE MUFFIN STORY
Berenger walked up to Cosmo and asked him, “What kind of muffins are these?”
Cosmo took up a muffin in his hand.
He wafted it under his nose, taking a deep breath.
Extending his palm, he pointed to it and declared,
“MUFFIN!”

(They were pumpkin.)

(It’s a very short story, but when you act it out, it’s totally worth it.)

THE GRANOLA BAR STORY
After much laughing, we all returned to our eating. Cosmo sat beside Javert, who is the kind of good Boy Scout who always make sure each meal is well balanced. Javert gently tapped his Nature Valley Oats ‘N’ Honey on the edge of the table, and crumbled it into his yogurt.

“What’re you doing?” asks Cosmo.
“Oh, just hitting the granola bar on the table so I can crumble it into the yogurt,” Javert says, intent on eating and making sure his bunk is perfectly cleaned well before anyone else. (I may be exaggerating his Boy Scout-ishness.)
“Oh! Awesome idea!”

Cosmo takes his granola bar and pulls his hand back so far you’d think he was doing the backstroke. He brings the granola bar down so hard the package splits open on the first impact, but he doesn’t notice. He brings his hand back and hits the granola bar to the table again. A quote from Javert:

“I could literally see the chunks of granola tumbling towards my face!”

Luckily, we managed to stop him before the third impact. He was sheepish the rest of the day, a state he is nearly incapable of being in, so it was a bit of an achievement for him- and it means he has a definite story that shall be passed on through the ages.

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I used to live in San Francisco, before The City pulled off the amazing feat of crossing the Rubicon and jumping the shark at the same time. It’s the city where my parents were born and in those days I loved it fiercely. As I had recently left the nearby suburb I grew up in and was exceedingly sheltered, I had a terrible sense of direction, and I used to get lost all the time and just wander around seeing things and meeting people and having experiences. It was a lot of fun.

One night, I was walking by one of the nightclubs south of Market Street, and I saw a very young girl in a skimpy dress sort of ambling down the sidewalk, crying. I could tell she wasn’t local, and I stopped and asked her if she was okay. She told me that she lived in, I think it was Fremont (a faraway suburb at the south end of the Bay), and had been at the nightclub dancing. It’s very hot in dance clubs, and she had gone out into the alley for some fresh air, where some bastard surmised that she was a little drunk, and raped her. She was seventeen. She had a boyfriend back home that she was genuinely in love with, and they were engaged to be married. The poor girl was hysterical with fear and emotional pain – because she had been a virgin, and she was afraid her sweetheart wouldn’t want to marry her now.

Oh, god, I can’t describe how my heart felt when she told me that. I wanted to fucking kill that predatory selfish waste of skin that had done that to her! And at the same time…well, this was the 80’s, before AIDS, and I was a musician. Let’s just say that I felt that strange sense of astonishment which hedonistic city-dwellers feel when presented with an actual “good girl”. Real Live Purity, volitional purity; and in the same way that I cherished my freedom to run wholeheartedly towards scandal and ribaldry, I cherished other girls’ freedom to be virgins on their wedding night. Hmm, a strange feeling.

I tried to be calming, reassuring, and yet convince her that the right thing to do was to call the cops and get to the hospital (to collect “evidence”; how heinous) before she did what she desperately wanted to do, which was clean up somewhere and get it OFF her. I said all the stuff listed in my mental files under “Rape, Personal Policy Regarding”. I told her that the only chance she would have to prove what the guy had done was to collect a sample and give a description. I thought it was a good bet that the creep was back in the nightclub, like nothing ever happened. I’m sure he expected her to do something girly and ineffectual, just run away wringing her hands or something.

I told her that it wasn’t her fault and – well, I’m sure you guys know the kind of things I said. I finally convinced her to call the police, and I promised not to leave her side until they came. In the meantime, because she was so upset and freaking out about her boyfriend, I asked her did she think perhaps she might call him? If he was repelled by the news, and didn’t want her anymore, at least she would know now. But, if he wasn’t, for her to talk to him would make her feel a lot better.

After much anticipatory anguish, she called him. I stood a little ways away, to give her some privacy. (we were at a payphone.) She talked quietly for awhile, and I prayed real hard for the guy to be a man, and act right.

He told her that he loved her; don’t be silly, of course he still wanted to marry her; and as soon as she called him from the hospital he would haul ass and get there and be with her through the whole rest of the ordeal.

Right around then, the police showed up. They had brought a female officer with them to ease her trauma, and they put her gently in the car and drove away. It’s stuff like that which has saved me from becoming embittered, or too cynical. A horrible thing happened to this girl; but she had placed her love and trust in a guy who was worth it. I hope they had a big happy wedding, got great jobs, and lived happily ever after. I’ll bet they did.

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Or, Cadence is completely real and actually spoke to Bobby, like. :eek:

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Sampiro: Here ya go.

78

I have two stories, both of which I’ve posted in the past, but which bear repeating.

Story #1. When I was a little boy, I had a tendency to wander off and get lost. And my parents had a tendency to take us to fine cultural events. One of these was an exhibit of artifacts from the reign of Alexander the Great. It was called The Search for Alexander. I, of course, wandered off and got lost.

Oh, and did I mention that my first name is Alexander?

So my poor mom had to go wandering through The Search for Alexander saying “Alexander? Alexander?”.
Story #2. A few years ago, I had a really dysfunctional relationship with a really crazy girlfriend. She had all sorts of baggage. So one evening, she was very upset, because she was experiencing really bad flashbacks to her childhood, when she had been molested by her uncle. I, being a sensitive friendly boyfriend, was doing my best to cheer her up, via sensitive support and/or low-key clowning. Anyhow, at one point I said something about how we had been promised punch and pie, and this caused her to smile. “Punch and pie” is, of course, a line from South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, which we had recently seen and enjoyed. So I racked my brain to think of another funny line from that movie which would also help raise her spirits, and (I swear this is true) the next words out of my mouth were:

No one fucks uncles quite like you

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I swear, I heard the “boo-woo-woo-woo-WOOP-WOOP” Pac-Man dying sound right after I read that.

80

Thought of a funny one!

My first job out of college with my general engineering degree required me to spend half of my time on industrial engineering and half of my time on facilities engineering. I had a fairly decent background in the IE, but not much in the facilities. My supervisor was aware of this but did not care - said I would pick up what I needed and he would help.

The company had a corporate engineering department about 30 people strong, and had hired 4 other straight out of college engineers. (I am a woman - the others were all guys.) The company had 9 plants scattered across the US. The five of us were sent to visit each site as part of our initial training. They did this every year - hired a group of engineers and made them tour the country together. It was a good bonding experience besides learning about the company.

We used to joke that the way they chose our manufacturing locations was that they took a map of the United States, blacked out a 3 hour radius around every major airport, and only those spaces left were viable locations. They wanted to be the only place in town for the locals to work, I guess, and figured labor would be cheap that way.

So, we were in the middle of nowhere Iowa, visiting the plant there. The maintenance manager was taking the 5 of us on a facilities tour. He was a very self-important sort, very proud of his position and his building - in his 50s, but also a bit of a farmer at heart still. Most of the people who worked in the plant also farmed. He took us up to the roof. He pointed out the air conditioning units, which were fairly new and very effective. He said they were unusual because they worked by sucking air in.

Now me, 22 years old fresh out of college with absolutely no background in heating and ventilation, but now tasked with helping spec out such things in the future, really wanted to understand why this mattered. So I asked our kind host, “So it is better when it sucks or when it blows?”

The other 4 male 22 year olds around me at first did their best to hold in their sniggers. My host tried to answer me, but got cut off by whoops of laughter. I don’t think our tour guide understood what was so funny. I don’t think I have ever blushed so hard in all my life. They never let me forget it, either.