True Stories

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Here is one I just added to my website (The Gunman)

The Gunman
or ‘something is going down at the McDonalds’

Back in early '91 when I was still just dating my husband, I used to go to the McDonald’s where he worked to hang out. I’d order some fries or a Big Mac with no meat and sit and read, and when he had a few minutes I’d chat with him, and when he went on break to eat, we’d sit and talk. This particular evening, my friend Star was with me and we were talking about whatever mundane things came to mind as we munched on fries, when suddenly a loud voice breaks over the usual chatter of the restaurant.

We glanced up to see a man and his companion at the counter. He was a sort of pudgy, balding guy who didn’t look that impressive, yet he clearly felt that he was superior to everyone present as he berated the person behind the counter over some detail of his order. The woman with him was silent. Star and I exchanged looks and went back to our conversation.

Mr. Loudness apparently had ordered something special order, and was not happy that such things were not instantly ready. He stormed past our table to find a booth about 10 feet away, bellowing about the “stupid fucking McDonald’s people” and how he had to wait for his order.

Now, I knew all the employees there and while there were a few unsharpened tacks, most of them were just college kids doing a job. The restaurant was across the street from the University of Arizona campus. I looked over at the counter and saw the employee who was clearly irritated at the abuse collecting the guy’s order on a tray to bring it over to him. Despite the fairly busy nature of that particular McDonald’s, the guy had to wait maybe 2 whole minutes for his meal. He continued to bitch about the employees, in a very loud voice, as he ate. People all around kept looking up to see what his deal was.

Being the not very subtle person that I am, I turned around in my seat and stared at him, with a look of “what planet are you from” on my face. He saw this, and hollered “Do you have a PROBLEM??” at me. I looked at Star and back at him. “Yeah, I was just wondering the same thing about you actually,” I said… or something like that. At this point, his anger had a new focus. He started cussing me out, still at full volume. I was amazed that someone could be this worked up over something as minor as a 2 minute delay on a special ordered meal at McDonalds… Star and I started to laugh at the guy, and talk about what a freak he was (which he could no doubt hear).

The verbal abuse continued, and I got tired of it. I went up to the counter and told the manager that the customer in the red shirt was yelling profanities at my friend and me, and she told me she’d keep an eye on it and to tell her if he did it again. As I was on my way back to the booth, Star intercepted me. “Now we’re ‘dumb sorority bitches’ and he is going to kick our asses, he says,” she informed me. Oh lovely. Threats now. I turned around and went back to the manager and told her that the guy was now threatening us, and headed back to my table. I got several sympathetic looks from other diners who were getting quite irritated by this loudmouth as well.

Star and I continued to eat our fries and talk about whatever we were talking about, when suddenly the guy barges past our table, leaving his lady friend back at the booth, and announces loudly that he was going to his car to get his “badge and his gun.” He then marched out the door toward his car. I leapt out of my seat and ran to the counter. The manager was on the phone but she looked up at me so I told her that the psycho just said he was going out to get a gun. She turned back to the phone and said “he just said he was going to get a gun from his car.” Apparently she was on the phone with the police, whom she had called when he said he was going to kick our asses.

What happened next was the fastest response I’ve ever seen from any cops anywhere. It seemed like literally seconds before several squad cars pulled into the parking lot and a helicopter was circling overhead, shining a blinding light around the area. They stopped the guy who was trying to leave in his car and walked him over to the sidewalk and detained him while an officer came over to talk to Star and me. We told him what had happened as best we could remember, and said that the other patrons could probably back up our story. In fact, they got about 13 or 14 people’s written statements. People were actually lining up to talk to the cops. The policeman told me that this fell under the umbrella of “threats and intimidation” and asked if I wanted to press charges. I said I did.

While this was going on, some other police were searching the man’s car for a gun. They didn’t find one, but they did find drug paraphenelia. They arrested the guy and I didn’t see whether they actually took him in a car or anything. His friend stayed at her table the whole time.

Skip forward a month or so. I had received several pamphlets from different places about victim rights and such, which I guess happens when you’ve been the victim of a crime. I read them all. The day finally came for his hearing, and I made sure to show up. He saw me in the hallway and called me a “spoiled little bitch” which I found a bit amusing. In the courtroom, he kept scowling at me, but he was way over on his side of the room, and I was in a special seat over where a jury would sit if it were a trial. He got some kind of plea bargain and was given something very small like a day in jail, counted as time served, and a fine of around $500. Not earth shattering, but hopefully enough to make him realize that you don’t behave that way. Wishful thinking on my part, no doubt. He also had restraining orders keeping him away from me, Star, my husband (boyfriend at that time) and that McDonalds.

Looking back it kind of freaks me out. He didn’t have a gun, but he could have. Assholes go on killing rampages over stupider things every day. The guy was clearly imballanced… I was lucky, really, that he was just an asshole and not a psychopath.
Ok, what are some of your true stories?

–
Teeming Millions: http://fathom.org/teemingmillions
“Meat flaps, yellow!” - DrainBead, naked co-ed Twister chat
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com

2

In 1985 (or was it 86) the USS Nimitz enjoyed a port visit in Naples, Italy. I was short on bucks, so I spent the 5 days of liberty I had basically hanging aroud the USO shooting pool, drinking free sodas watching the tube – everything was good 'cause it was off the ship.

Well, we pull anchor and sail off into the sunny Mediterranean and several days later the European edition of Stars and Stripes hits the ship.

The afternoon of the day we pulled out a terorist bomb leveled the USO. I would have been there if it had been a five-day visit vise a four-day.

3

December 1, 1992
I was working the cash register at the small neighborhood drug store. The only people in the store were me, the delivery boy, the stock boy and the pharmacist. Three young men stroll in, pull out guns and announce a robbery. My first instinct was to turn around and close my eyes. The leader of the bunch decides to pick me out of the four of us, and puts his arm around my neck, and the gun to my head. He then proceeded to call me a ‘white ho’ and some other choice names, and demanded that I take him to the safe. We didn’t have a safe. I was too scared to really speak, and they were getting angry. The pharmacist was yelling at them that there was no safe, and then the robber tells me ‘Open the register before I shoot you’. I opened the register, and they took the money, and they told us to lay on the floor all together. I was sure that I was about to be shot. Needless to say I wasn’t, none of us were. They ran out the door, laughing and hooting. I have never been so scared in my life.
It has been 6 years, but I still have nightmares about that day, and a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about it.
They were caught about 3 weeks later, after they shot and killed another register girl in another pharmacy. They had robbed something like 17 stores in a 2 month period, and shot a couple of people. The cops had enough witnesses, so I never had to testify.
Blue

4

December 4, 1997
I was working for Chase Bank, as a teller. I had just come back from lunch, and was preparing to open up my window. I saw the next guy on line, and had my very first premonition. I knew he was a robber. I made a quick note of his clothes, and I guess he saw me ‘giving him the eye’, so he walked up to my window without me calling ‘next’. He shoved a note in at me (in NYC, we have bandit barriers, which are bullet-reflecting plastic windows). The note read “Give me all the 50s and 100. If you give me the money that explodes, I’ll shoot you and everyone else”. At that point, I did as the bank instructed per teller training…if there was no weapon visible, duck under the desk and pull the alarm. So that’s what I did, and the guy goes beserk…screaming cursing, generally making a spectacle of himself. I guess he realized that he wasn’t getting anything, and now he has a whole bank full of people looking at him. He runs out, and the cops got there about 5 minutes later. I went through the whole process, looking at mugshots, talking to detectives, talking to bank security and even drove around with the cops looking for him. Lucky for us, the idiot passed by the ATM on the way out, and was caught on tape.
Eventually, he was caught for another robbery, and while he was in jail for that, I testified to the Grand Jury to tack a few more years on to his sentence.
You gotta love living in NYC.
Blue

5

Jeez Blue, I think its time for a career change for you, something less action packed. Glad to hear you made it through both times.

I opened the door, and look who I found. Damn I’m good

6

This doesn’t compare to Blue Twylight’s postings, but it is true.

I was about 8 and my sister was 11. My Mum was taking us out. She opened the front door to reveal an armed robbery taking place in the street. (It being England, they were using iron bars, not guns).
She got us back inside and phoned the police. My sister ran to the window and took the number of the getaway car.
I, on the other hand, opened my book and continued reading.
Later my Mum had to explain to me why my sister got her picture in the paper and I didn’t…

In the bathtub of history, the truth is harder to hold than the soap… (Pratchett)

7

I was a little kid, maybe a year after learning to ride my small bike without training wheels. I envied my brother who had this cool “grown-up” ten-speed, and I was determined to master it.

We lived on the end of a long, straight road that turned into a dirt road into some woods after the end of my block. Not much traffic came down the road except our neighbors and people who were lost.

So I’m on my bro’s bike, barely able to reach the pedals with my tip-toes. I’m was going down the sidewalk, turning down a driveway, then going back down the road in circles. Well, at one point, I think I hit a dip coming off the driveway onto the road and I was going slow enough to lose my balance. I definitely couldn’t reach the ground with my feet so I fell, with the bike landing on top of me.

It was at this precise moment that I heard this extremely cacophonous screeching and rumbling. I turned around on my side and looked up to see this huge 4x4 pickup skidding straight at me with smoke pouring out from the tires. With the bike on top of me and the speed that the truck came at me, I didn’t have a chance in hell to move out of the way. In that instant, I knew I was going to die. (Seriously, as I type this, the utter terror I felt is coming back to me)

Well, someone must have been looking out for me that day, because the truck came to a stop with its two front tires on top of the wheels of my bike, which was on top of me, effectively pinning me down until he reversed a bit. I wasn’t hurt at all, not even a scratch. I was more shocked then anything, so I didn’t really react at all, but the two hardened young rednecks who were about to speed onto the dirt road to go off-roading were crying like babies and apologizing up and down. They obviously sized up the situation the same way I had, they thought they were about to kill the little boy in the road.

By far the worst part of the whole thing, though, was when I went inside my house with my father and I saw my mother collapsed on the floor by the window that she looked out to see me underneath the truck after hearing the skidding. She too, had thought I was dead. I don’t think I had ever fully realized how much my mother loved me, until I saw her there on ground as she came to and realized that I was alive and well. It took her a lot of hugging and kissing me to recover from that one. :slight_smile:

The skid marks were there for years until the street was re-paved, standing as a testament to how fast that truck was going before it came to a stop on top of me. They started at the end of the block before mine and if I had to guess, they were about 80 yards long.

8

I once was backing up out of a diagonal parking space on the one-way exit out of my high school’s parking lot. I couldn’t see traffic, so I was backing up slowly. Suddenly my foot slipped off of the clutch (muddy shoe) and I zipped back and bashed the driver’s door of a passing truck. I pulled back in to the space.

Before I could get out, the driver was at my door, trying to open it. (I had locked it out of habit.) Then he started yelling, “Get the fuck out of there before I beat the crap out of you!” Now, I was a 115 lb weakling, so there was no way I was getting out right then.

He started karate-kicking my driver’s door, denting it. Then he got in the bed of my truck and started pounding on the roof of my cab. He pounded it in about 6 inches.

There was finally a crowd around, so I felt that if I did get out and get beat up, I’d at least have witnesses. He didn’t, but was still yelling at me. I told him to calm down, and I’d call the police.

The police took our statements, and asked if I wanted to press charges for assault. I didn’t. shrug

It turns out his dad did body work at his garage, so we had both our trucks fixed by him. He did a so-so job on mine, and his mom said that he couldn’t have done the damage to my door. (She thought he was punt-kicking, not karate-kicking.)

I saw him years later at a bar. He sneered at me. I asked him if he’s beat up any defenseless trucks lately. He ignored me.

9

My story happens durring the holiday season on 1974.
I was 14 years old at the time and working in my uncle’s service station in a bad neighborhood.
My uncle had left to go to the bank ond pick up supplys leaving me to run the station.
A young man walked into the office and stuck a gun in my face demanding all the money.
After I had opened the register and given him the money he shoved me in to the restroom and told me to wait 10 minutes before coming out.
I didn’t wait before coming back out and he was still on the property,when he saw me he fired 2 shoots in my direction that missed.
I was carrying the station pistol and had practiced with it enough to be a pretty good marksman and I did not miss.
He is spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair in prison.

Peace
t lion

" I Wonder What Happens When I push THIS Button? "

10

This was one of the most pathetic displays I’ve ever seen in my life. It was about 3 o’clock in the morning, in the small town where I grew up, I was hungry, so I went to the local truck stop–the only place to get food at the time.

I was by myself, sitting at a table, waiting on my order. There were a few other tables with people, one table had a couple of rednecks at it, along with their girlfriends, or sisters, (or both, I never figured it out). Anyway, one of the rednecks shouted out that “Ah bet Ah’ve got the biggest dick in here!”

There was another table of about four college students, one of them jokingly said, “I’ll take you up on that!”

Redneck: “Well, whup it out!”

The student declined, and the redneck started getting belligerent, “Well goddamn it, either put up or shut up!” I guess that kind of pissed the student off, and he started walking over there.

Redneck: “You, heard what Ah said–Either put up or shut up!” The student turned around and walked back to the table. The redneck gets up and jumps him, both tables clear out and a big fight starts. I’m just sitting there watching the whole thing, there was no way in hell I was going to jump out and get involved. One of the rednecks pulls out a big knife and stabs one of the students. The employees call the cops–they got there pretty fast, which impressed me (I grew up there, and they usually take their time). One of the redneck chicks comes over to me, whining, “That punk (student) over there exposed himself to me. You saw it, I KNOW you did!” (Never happened). I just shook my head and said I wasn’t going to say a thing.

Anyway, the cops arrested the right people, and that was that.

11

So Opal, did you eat McDonalds fries when they fried them in beef fat in the old days?

Back in the old country, drunks get violent in every town every night, in restaurants or in public. I nearly got in a fight as a tourist, when a drunk grabbed my taxi in front of me. It’s so common, that I just don’t even make eye contact with drunks anymore when visiting over there.

12

Rewind to my last year of college (and last official crappy job). I was working in a convenience store. There were usually two of us at a time in there but that day I was working alone. Around 11 am, a guy enters the store. I didn’t really pay attention to him since I was busy helping someone else. Once the store was empty, he came up to the cash register, pulled out a knife and stuck it to my throat. He asked for the money and I complied. I was so nervous I even asked him if he wanted change (the $1 coin). He didn’t. (Later, it occurred to me that he could have thought I was being a wiseass. Maybe I was.) I was glad he didn’t ask for the money in the safe since it took 10 minutes to open the safe. (I would have had to say, “Come back in ten minutes!”) He also wasn’t familiar with the store, otherwise he would have known there was also a post office counter in the store, therefore another cash register.

The only side-effect to this story was that I never wanted to work there alone again. Otherwise, it affected my parents a lot more than it affected me.

An old boyfriend was also held up a few times, once at gunpoint. A few years later, he was buying something in another store when he saw one of the kids who had held him up. The kid said, “Come outside, I have to talk to you.” Turns out the kid wanted to apologize to Marc for the holdup.

Some drink at the fountain of knowledge…others just gargle.

13

Back in 1991, me and my first husband get a call from one of his friends. He said his car broke down downtown and wanted to know if we could come get him. My hubby (now ex) didn’t have a driver’s license, so I was driving. We get down there and our friend jumps in real quick and says something like “Let’s go” kind of frantically. We gave him a funny look and then I started to pull away from the curb. Just then, some big black guy walks right in front of the car and yells at us to stop. I stop the car because I don’t want to hit the guy, and my friend in the back seat is yelling “Don’t stop…go go go”. This guy walks up to my side of the car, reaches through the window and grabs my hair with one hand, and places a gun to my temple, yelling incoherently about our friend “ripping him off” (this friend was a crack addict, although I didn’t know it at that time) and how he’s going to shoot me if our friend doesn’t give the stuff back. I’m sitting there, blubbering and crying, begging the guy not to kill me, while my friend is “playing dumb”, saying he doesn’t know what the guy is talking about. Finally, after what seemed like hours (was actually probably no more than 20 seconds), my friend throws the stuff out (stolen crack rocks, of course) of the window. When the guy reached down to pick it up off the ground, I floored the accelerator and got the hell out of there. He took a shot at the car, but missed. It took a couple of hours to calm down after that. I still have nightmares about that.

Shadowfox
“We are what we pretend to be.”

  • Kurt Vonnegut
14

This is nothing near the violence and ugliness of Shadowfox and Blue, but it still scared (and scarred) me and is indeed a true story.

A bit of background: I developed early. Rather cruel fate, I’d say, as I was a tomboy who hated girl clothes and especially the thought of a bra. I never wore a training bra–when I finally acquieced to one, I was a full B cup in fifth grade.

Around that age, I was visiting my grandparents in Ohio and had taken a walk to a nearby convenience store (I bought water balloons…I still remember that). All of the streets look more or less the same, and I accidentally took the wrong road back–I was lost and very confused. While walking around gathering my bearings, a greasy, unshaven man in an old beat up pea-green station wagon pulled over next to me and asked, “Do you need a ride, little girl?” “No!” I said. He circled the block, came around by me and again pulled over, now dangling bait: “I’ll give you a dollar if you get in my car.” “NO!” I shouted. He waved his hand dismissively and drove off; when I got home to my grandmother, I completely fell apart. I remember taking a bath that night, thinking I could be with that man instead of in my grandmother’s house that night. It terrified me, so much so that I made no mention of it in my diary, never wore the clothes I’d worn that day again, and never told my parents what had happened (my grandmother did tell them, but I didn’t discover that until 10+ years later).

Bastard.

I used to think the world was against me. Now I know better. Some of the smaller countries are neutral.

Laura’s Stuff and Things

15

We had the stalking thread, but I can’t find anything past a week old. Beatle had the interesting story.

16

Good idea Opal, post it in your own site first, then here. Then it’s clear who owns the story. I check, once in a while, one site that lists short stories in people’s own names, and it’s made clear the site is just allowed to use it, but the author holds all rights to the story.I’m planning to give them an interview I will do with a Kansas City musician.

17

Weird, how danger comes close and skims by. Truth to tell, I laughed and winced at Glee’s account. Real life is just so much more, well, real that when dramatic stuff happens it is hard to recognize it.

Real life account of Nerd escapes Danger by pure dumb luck:
I was a leggy young co-ed in the day of mini skirts. I was also a too-tall, introverted twerp who was hopelessly out of place anywhere outside of the pages of a book. So my roomie (a drop-dead gorgeous blonde goddess-and a great friend) fixes me up on a blind date w/ a pal of the latest male she had in thrall.

The blind date bored me to tears and I bored him to tears. He maneuvered us back to his place (my friend drifted off, reducing the male-of-the-moment to a panting puddle) and I was left w/ the Set Up–whose primary goal was to score.

Parenthetically, for those who say it was better “back when”, there was a rapist on and around campus. (Yep, CowGod, that campus.) He was uncaught and the campus cops were overworked, understaffed and pissed off at the whole student body. Hey, 'Nam was still going on, people were coming home in body bags and students were hating cops as “pigs”.

So the Blind Date drives us to his place and gets set to “score”. Not in this lifetime, pal, so after he passed out I had to make my way home with no money for cab fare and a mile across a wooded, dark campus.

I got about 3 blocks and heard footsteps behind me. No problem, no worries, just being worrisome and twitchy…but hurried up and so did the footsteps.

With no dignity and less atheltic ability, I broke into a run. (One advantage of being tall; you may look like a giraffe on ice skates but get the adreneline pumping and you can move.)

Panic instinct is our friend. I hated every gym class ever imposed on klutzes, but I’m here to tell you that you can run like a #&^%
gazelle if motivated.

I flat out outran the sucker until I got to a pizza joint; called for a cab and the tired cabbie gave me a ride home for free and waited until I woke up the dorm floor for the fare and the tip.

But I had a glimpse of “the follower”. It is one of the heaviest guilts of my life that I didn’t call the cops. (Distrust on both parts cause tragedies.) On the news the next day, another girl was raped off-campus. He was wearing exactly the distinctive clothes I’d seen over my shoulder, running flat out.

I still live with this. Some woman is living with a nightmare, and some of the guilt is mine. Being young, geeky, stupid, scared and lucky isn’t enough. No matter the paranoia of times, on both sides, if I had planted my feet and talked to “the enemy”, maybe she wouldn’t have endured hell while I collapsed into safety, courtesy of a tired black cabbie who trusted me for the fare.

Guilt can’t be answered; it can only be repaid.

Veb

18

… and when I opened the door, there was a naked guy standing there in the dark.
He was about my age (early twenties) and looked a little like Tommy Chong, so I liked him right away. Actually, he had on one sock, which struck me as funny, even though it was soaked in blood.

<can’t remember much for a while>

… so he just lay down on the porch.
I tried to drag him inside, because the concrete looked so cold and hard in contrast to his pale flesh. It just seemed too cruel to let him die there.
<?>
I could hear Jan and Margaret screaming and crying inside, and Ike was pleading with someone on the phone.
He was having to yell, because the music was so loud.
<?>
…but by that time, I was kneeling in a lake of blood, and it was so slippery that I kept falling on him, so I gave up on moving him.
It’s probably a good thing, because after the way that the land-lady had reacted to the boNg stained carpet, I expect that she would prolly have come totally unsproinged over this mess.
<?>
… and I remember thinking that Ike was getting his “just desserts” for hogging all the Mr. Natural, and leaving the stale, PuRpLe Microdot for me.
I guess that’s why he wouldn’t come outside.
<?>
My new pal was totally covered in blood. I mean, there wasn’t a dry molecule on him. That’s why I didn’t realize that he had three more gunshot wounds … besides the one in the throat.
That one was really easy to spot, because it was squirting a stream of blood about five feet high. It looked kinda’ like a fountain, the way it pulsed up and down with his heartbeat.
It was interesting, but I elected to try and stop it anyway.
<?>
… and Santana was just finishing with Soul Sacrifice, so that meant that Robin Trower was up next… I was looking forward to it.
<?>
He wanted me to drag him behind the hedge so the guy couldn’t find him and shoot him some more, but I couldn’t get traction in the blood.
<?>
… and the bitch of it was, that when I’d push his neck hard enough to stop the bleeding, he’d start choking. So I alternated between letting him breathe… and bleed, and trying to slow the stream.
<?>
We both enjoyed Bridge of Sighs, and he said that he wished he’d brought his guitar.
Seems he’d been a huge Trower fan, even during the Procol Harum days.
He also told me that Jimmi Hendrix played a right-handed guitar, upside down, left handed…I didn’t know that.
<?>
… so I turned him over on his side, lest he choke on the vomit.
<?>
He said that he was feeling a little better, and for me to quit worrying about the concrete, because he couldn’t feel it any more.
<?>
I’m not sure which song it was, but Rick Wakeman was really shining through, and I wondered if he would know what to do about all this blood.
<?>
He was getting a lot quieter, and wasn’t bleeding as much.
It was just a whisper, but I knew what he was singing,
“and you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but It’s sinking … racing around to come up behind you again”

<?>

The spotlight was blinding… and I could hear the cops screaming. I don’t know what they were saying, but the terror in their voices scared me.
<?>
… and it seemed like he was trying to crush my spine with his knee. My shoulders were hurting and I couldn’t breathe.
<?>
While they were taking me to the car, I told them that they should press on his neck, but not too hard.
But when I looked back at him, I could see that it didn’t matter… he wasn’t bleeding any more.

<?>

It was some sort of cop building downtown, where you had to push a buzzer before the chain-link doors would open.
<?>
A guy that had robbed a 7-11 asked me for a smoke, and he looked really scared, so I found him one with no blood on it.
<?>
The lady that took our statements was bitching about getting called in to work, because she had been giving her boyfriend a blowjob, with a mouth full of Spacedust (that carbonated candy that pops and sizzles in your mouth) and she was pissed off because she had to leave before her turn.
Ike asked her if you could get in trouble for getting a boNer in a police station.
<?>
… and she told us that they had found the “shooter” next door, just sitting by his wife’s body, waiting for them.
<?>
The sun was up when they let us out in front of our house.
There were a few hundred people there, looking at my friend’s blood. It looked like rasberry Jello in the daylight.
I was surprised that it was still there. I guess I thought that the crime scene fairies would tidy up before sunrise.
<?>
I went in the back way, to avoid the reporters, and because I didn’t want to see any more. I was already starting to miss the guy, and thinking that I might like to have known him.

I never did get to know him very well.
He limped up to me during the trial and said “you saved my life”… then he gave me a “lucky” guitar pick.
…but I never learned how to play.

19

I would like to say that I’ve led a dull life and until reading some of these stories, was never more grateful than this moment for mundania.

However, I live vicariously through my friends and their stupidity or sometimes, sheer brilliance and here is an all time classic.
**The Character:{/b]Our friend Ken is about 5’9 and very overweight. This was in 1993, so he was about 220, all around the middle. (He’s about 310 now)He likes to eat. He works as a sports reporter for a German Newspaper and is a very intelligent, quick witted guy who sometimes puts his foot into his mouth, but always manages to pull it out some how. He is 35 now. You do the math.

The Story
Lunch time at Pizza Hut. Ken is waiting (alone)to be seated. There is a Mother and her two kids ahead of him waiting for a seat. It’s a packed house. All-You-Can-Eat Pizza buffett.

In the door behind him comes several foul mouthed guys who are exceptionally tall. Like NBA tall.Guys about 18-20 in age. They looked like, to Ken, to be college basketball recruits for possibly the Pistons. Attracts the attention of everyone in the restaurant immediately. These guys are all swearing up a storm about having to wait to be seated. Short, husky little Ken turns to these guys and says politely, " Do you mind your language, there are kids present." ( Or something to that effect.) The guys quiet down a little, but mutter under their breaths how they could fuck him up. Ken turns back around and ignores them.

The waitress comes up and ask “Who’s next”

The Tall Guys cut in front and say, " We are."

Ken immediately sticks up for the Mom with the two hungry and very patient kids and gets them seated, placating these pricks by saying he wasn’t nearly as hungry as they were and they could take his place in line. Fine by them, they mutter, they wanted to get to the pizza buffet before Fatso ate all the Pizza.

Ken eventually gets seated, right across from these guys. He reads his newspaper and eats his pizza ignoring the loud, foul mouthed blow hards that really were ruining the entire dining experience for everyone in the place. Every time he got up to get more pizza, he had to pass these Goons’ table.
They made foul mouth comments, to which Ken ignored. Then they decided to threaten him as he passed, saying that their smallest guy could beat the piss outta him,etc, in the parking lot. Ken just said, " How nice."

Meanwhile, back behind the sanctuary of his newspaper he was very worried. He couldn’t take these guys on and he thought frantically that perhaps he could sit there all afternoon and just eat, until they left from boredom or he killed everyone present when his stomach exploded. But, as he said, with his luck, they’d run out of pizza and he’d get the snot and crap kicked outta him anyways.

Some words between the two tables were exchanged and Ken was really starting to sweat. They would beat the crap outta him in the parking lot and he had to get himself out of the situation. His mind was blank, he said, but he felt an inner calmness that told him " Go get more pizza, something will inspire you."

Getting up, as he passed by the Goons’ table, (He says to this day he didn’t know where he got it from, but it was a Zen moment for him) he leaned down into the loudest, biggest, baddest assed goon’s ear and said in a loud whisper, " Tell me, son, have you ever assaulted an Oakland County Deputy before or will this be your first offense?"

The goons ( all black) turned lily white and didn’t make insomuch as a peep the rest of his meal.

When Ken told this story ( at our pre-wedding party) it brought down the house.

20

I used to work as a bouncer at a bar where everyone was really well-behaved. I was mainly there to check ID’s at the door to keep minors out, as this bar shared lobby space with a movie theater.

One of my unwritten rules was that anyone who walked in talking on a cell phone got carded. (I also automatically carded anyone who came in wearing a bridesmaid’s dress or a tuxedo, but that’s irrelevant to this story.) A group of women came in and one was loudly talking on a cell phone, so I carded them. One woman didn’t have her ID on her. they argued with me for a bit and then the woman said she lived nearby and got one of the other women to run her home for her ID. Okay fine. As they were turning to go, all of their husbands came in. the husband of the woman who didn’t have her ID got all belligerent on me despite the fact that his wife had already gone for her ID – he seemed to think I was calling his wife a liar by asking for her ID. He was getting angrier by the minute, and one of his friends was standing between us trying to calm the guy down. All of a sudden he lunges over his friend’s shoulder and locks both hands around my neck, trying to choke me.

I couldn’t do any of the normal bouncer things to disable him because his friend was in the way. All I could do was pull his hands off my throat and yell for the bartender to call the cops, which she did. the loon’s friends dragged him outside to wait for the women to return with the car so they could high-tail it out of there before the cops showed up. the bartender went out there too and sat on a bench nonchalantly until the women pulled up in a Suburban, whereupon they all piled in and left. However, the bartender got their license plate number and overheard the name of the bar they were going to next.

She came in and I rolled my eyes at her and said, “Full moon, huh?” the bartender was NOT amused and insisted I press charges when the cops showed up. She pointed out that if this nut-ball came in on a Monday, SHE would have been working the door and might have gotten hurt. I had to agree she was right.

The cops arrived and took our statements. They said, “This was a class-three assault, which means since we didn’t witness it we can’t arrest him for it.” Then the cop grinned and added, “Of course, if he gives us any OTHER reason to arrest him, we’ll be happy to oblige.” They went to the other bar to brace the guy, and sure enough he refused to show them his ID. So they cuffed him and brought him back so I could identify him. His buddies tried to talk me into dropping the charges but, of course, it was out of my hands at that point. He spent the night in the drunk tank, waiting for his wife to wake up the kids and haul them down to the police station to bail their dad out. I bet she was PISSED. (heeheehee)

I heard later that he was a lawyer, and his father-in-law was mayor of a very expensive neighborhood/town here in Dallas.

Live a Lush Life
Da Chef