I’m kinda sickly. My creative/magnificent brain hasn’t got ANYTHING to add the the universe. Sorry. (Don’t weep, you’re getting me all soggy)
So…Everyone tell ol’beck how bad, bad, bad you are. I need crazy, whacked out adventures you’ve had in your life. Elaborate, embellish, out and out lie. I don’t care. The weirder the better.
I want entertainment folks.
Lets go!!
(If you’re lazy you can write me a limerick:))
Okay, here goes: the time Carnut and her friends got a fountain turned off in downtown Detroit.
I was there for the Detroit Grand Prix. At the time, this was a Formula One event where the streets were closed off around the Renaissance Center so the race could be held in the city streets. (The even now features IndyCars and is held on an island so it doesn’t bother traffic so much.) It was a year of great heat and humidity at the event, something Detroit usually doesn’t experience until a bit later in the summer. We had been on our feet, sweating in the sun all day and then we headed to the party for the volunteers at Cobo Hall. This party involved more alcohol than food, not really a smart idea for those that might already be dehydrated, but let’s just say fun was had and soon it was time to head back to our digs to sleep because the big race day was tomorrow.
Outside of Cobo Hall (now TCF Center, I think), a free concert had been going on to entertain the race fans and the locals. It had finished about fifteen minutes before we came out to the plaza that fronts the hall and was also the entryway to the outdoor concert. The plaza had a beautiful, round fountain that was lit up and spraying a mist of cooling water on what had become a thick circle of people just enjoying the cool feel while waiting for the crowd to thin out. OMFG, did that cool water feel fantastic to our sunburned, sweaty, worn-out selves.
People were darting in to duck themselves in the heavy spray and then darting out again. Somebody mentioned that that looked really good. Oh yah. It was just too tempting. My friend and I grabbed one of our roommates and dragged him into the spray. He was protesting the whole way because he only had the one pair of shoes. It didn’t matter to us. We put him, and ourselves up against the inner wall of the fountain to get thoroughly soaked. Now, an aside, my friend and I are both about 5’10". The guy we dragged in is about 5’5" so it would have been difficult for him to break away. Back to story. We are wet, wet, wet. Suddenly, this tiny cop appears in front of us and she has her billy club right under my short friend’s chin and she yells, “Get the fuck outta the fountain.” OH CRAP!
We all three responded with “Yes, ma’am, yes ma’am.” and clambered out. As we did, the fountain was turned off and several cops appeared, telling us all to disperse. “Time to go home! Show’s over! Call it a night” they were yelling. We were bummed but we didn’t see why the police reaction was so strong. I thought for sure we’d be kicked outta town and leave our fellow volunteers shorthanded the next day, but that didn’t happen. The cops never even gave us a dressing down. But somewhere in my group of racing friends, there’s a picture of a tiny, black cop with her billy club and us climbing back out of the fountain.
To finish, we didn’t understand the extreme response to what we did because we were Minnesotans who hadn’t seen what the riots in Detroit had been like because we were children at the time. The cops knew though. It wasn’t the fountain that got us into trouble. It was the bodily dragging of someone into the water. The cops saw riot potential and good for them. I was young and thoughtless. Lesson learned over the next couple of weeks as the locals filled us in. Wow.
My life is so exciting right now I am counting the segments in each Clementine orange as I eat them to see if they have ten segments or not. Two in a row had ten - yeah! The one before that had eleven.
Dennis
Wowza! I can’t take excitement like that!!
Do you want to hear the story of when VOW was a bad bad bad, I mean, the very worst mother in the Universe?
~VOW
I have another Detroit cop story… although it starts far away from there. I had a job that involved riding with the State Police in Michigan for one summer. I wasn’t a LEO, I was a civilian, but I was riding with them nonetheless. I was riding with a friendly trooper in one of the rural corners of the state, and he turned to me and asked “What’s the fastest you’ve ever driven?” “I said about 110 mph, I guess…” and he responded “Well, we can do better than that!” Turned on his lights and his siren and proceeded to floor the pedal in his police cruiser. We went shooting down this rural highway, with no other traffic in sight. At about 125 mph, the acceleration began to slow, and by 130 mph, it seemed like it took ten seconds to gain another mph. He kept going until we got to 134 before he decided enough was enough. We slowed back to a normal speed and talked excitedly about how much fun it was.
Later that summer I was riding with a different trooper in downtown Detroit. Once again, he turned to me and asked “What’s the fastest you’ve ever driven?” I told him “A trooper in a little town outside Grand Rapids got up to 134.” He said “Well, this is Detroit, we can do better than that!”
Once again, the lights and siren went on, once again the pedal in the police cruiser got floored. But this time it was different - instead of a long, straight, empty rural highway, we were going down I-696 with a fair amount of traffic. By the time we got to 95 mph, we were going too fast for cars to get out of the way, they’d hear the siren at the same moment we were behind them. This didn’t dissuade the trooper, though - we screeched past cars on the shoulder, dodged slow trucks, roared through curves. By the time we got to 125mph, I told him that I was good, but he wasn’t having any - he wasn’t going to stop until we beat 134! His cruiser was the same model as the previous trooper, and when it hit 125, it acceleration decreased and it seemed to take forever to milk more speed out of the cruiser. Every time we had to slow down to get around someone, we shed a couple mph and had to go through the seconds to regaining speed.
The whole thing probably took no more than five minutes, but in my memory it seemed like it took about an hour. I was terrified, thrilled, wanted to tell the trooper to stop, didn’t want to tell the trooper what to do… it was really something. Finally we hit 135mph, and the trooper immediately slowed. It’s still the fastest I’ve ever gone outside of an airplane.
Those troopers were incredible guys. Any one of them would jump in front of a bullet to save a random civilian. I saw them get assaulted, peed on, had guns pointed at them, verbally abused constantly, and they were never anything but cool calm professionals. But yeah, once in a while they cut loose, and gave a kid like me a thrill.
OK here’s mine.
Back just a couple[sup]5.32[\sup] years ago, when my son was 3, we went to visit the Getty Museum. You have to climb up a set stone stairs. Little guy was struggling up them, and Daddy suggested he should be carried.
Three steps later, Daddy tripped and Little Guy got a nasty crack across his forehead and had stitches for the rest of the vacation. 
Spill it, girl!!
I nnew it!
Dennis
My son was about ten or so. He had ADD, and he was on medication and even had counseling for a while. I had left work early to take him to his medication evaluation appointment. I think we were supposed to meet at home, and I’d drive him from there.
Oh, there was great moaning, groaning, and complaining from him. He didn’t want to go (he never did) and he said he hurt his foot. Much limping and struggling ensued. I insisted he get in the car NOW, I wasn’t in the mood for nonsense.
The complaining continued to the doctor’s office, to the point where the doctor himself carried my son out to the car when he was finished.
I drove home, told The Son to get himself in the house. I went in and started dinner, and did the usual thousand-and-one things I had to do in the evening.
When Mr VOW came home, he listened to The Son’s sad story, and suggested he take the kid to the Extended Care Clinic.
I said, “Go ahead.”
The Son came home in a cast with crutches.
Oh. My. Freakin’. GAWD!!!
I took off early from work for the next six weeks, to pick the kid up from school and bring him home.
The Son is an ancient 34 years old now. And to this DAY, he still harps about how mean and evil and neglectful I was to him in his time of need!
Oh, but he has a son now. I’m just waiting…
~VOW
Oh, god ~VOW.
Mid-daughter hurt her foot jumping on the trampoline. I think it actually happened while jumping off the trampoline to chase her brother for one of their many wars. (Per day)
I, being of the ignore bad behaviour set, ignored it.
She griped and moaned a tiny bit. Took a shower and went to bed after eating.
She crawled to my bedroom the next morning, she couldn’t walk. Her foot looked like a giant Hulk foot. Broken in 2 places. Two surgerys and nearly 6 mos. in casts and boots. Man, I felt awful.
She still holds a grudge.
(I do think me and you live parallel lives)
My beloved sister!
~VOW
I’m lazy, so it’s Limerick Time. Two fer the price of one.
The tenant in 344
Won’t pee in the pool anymore.
Sounds silly to some,
But not when it’s done
From his balcony on the third floor!
There was an old man named Berthold
Who liked to drink beer in the cold.
As he lifted his cup,
He said…NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP!
Oh snap, you’ve just been limer-Rick Rolled!
Maybe not what you’re looking for, Beck, but I’ll join in.
I was in my early 20s, making this the early 1980s. We had a great weekend party at a buddy’s place north of Toronto, on the shores of Lake Simcoe. It started Friday and ended Sunday afternoon, with us all going home, mostly hungover, from a weekend of drinking. We were safe to drive, I should note; coffee being the preferred beverage of choice on that Sunday morning.
Well, we all smoked cigarettes also. I smoked my last one on the way home into Toronto, and dammit, I needed another. Nobody else in my car, and I needed a cigarette. What to do?
I spotted my buddy’s car, also taking the same expressway into town. I caught up, rolled down my window, and waved him to come alongside. He did.
His girlfriend was in the shotgun seat of his car, and she hollered out the window (remember, we were both going about 65 mph–this was before Canada went metric), “Whaddaya want?”
I said, “Smokes! I got none!”
She said, “Okay, hang on.”
She rummaged around, our cars stayed beside each other at 65 MPH, and finally she said, “Get closer! I’ve got smokes for you!”
So I moved my car closer. At 65 MPH, with our cars extremely close–like within a foot, on an expressway-- she laid a pack of smokes in my hand, at 65 MPH. “Pay me back later,” she said. And I did.
Looking back, it was dumb. But in another way, I say, “Damn! I was exciting in those days!” Like I said, I’m not sure if this is what you are looking for, Beck, but here you go.
I’ve been in a high-speed chase and a police ‘draw down’ incident. 2 separate events.
When I was about 9 or 10, my friend Agnes and I decided we didn’t like our names so we’d call each other by our preferred monikers. I don’t recall what she became, but I wanted to be Ruth.
We had to run to the local bakery to pick up something for her mother, and, of course, we used our new names. When she addressed me as Ruth in the bakery, the lady working there said “Oh, that’s my name too!”
I was so embarrassed, I never did that again. But if I’d had a second daughter, she’d have been named Ruth.
Yeah, I know, even too mundane for this thread…
I used to manage a rooming house full of crackheads and I was also friend of one of our city’s cops. One day when the cop was at my house, his radio reported a disturbance at the rooming house. So I went with him to see what was going on.
The incident was on the second floor, where a guy was attacking the bathroom door with a chainsaw. As we got there, we heard an amazing scream and a fountain of blood gushed out of the door. All at once, all three cops had their guns out and some said “Drop the chainsaw or I will shoot.” Chainsaw was dropped, my friend called for an ambulance STAT, one cop pushed the chainsaw holder to the ground and cuffed him, while the other one helped the victim.
Turned out the guy in the bath room had come into some money and chain saw crack guy was trying to get it. CSG is in prison and the guy who almost lost his arm has promised to kill him when he gets out.
FCM, I like it. Me and my best friend in 6th grade hated our names so we exchanged them. She became ‘Rebecca’ and I became ‘Melanie’, the School librarian and our Math teacher called us our exchanged names for most of the school year. I still say I got her B+ in math, and she got my C. 