Truth is stranger than fiction

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
101

This is a story from a friend of mine. She was adopted at about age 4 or 5 in New York by her parents from Indiana. She knew she had a younger brother up for adoption, and that there were other older siblings, but that was about all she knew of her birth family.

She has spent her life in Indiana, near the same town, even going to college there (where I met her and her eventual husband) then living there after college. She occasionally thought about trying to find out about her birth family, but never got very far due to lack of information.

One day, her older sister (natural daughter of her adoptive parents) was talking about their family to her new assistant. The assistant says, that sounds like something from my mom’s family. It was.

My friend has 12 siblings, although they have not managed to find the youngest brother (or they found him and he isn’t interested in keeping in touch, I can’t keep track of who is who in the family) all of them born and raised less then 15 miles from where my friend has been living since getting adopted from a New York state agency. Her birth parents had gotten divorced and split the kids up among relatives, then moved to New York, gotten remarried, had my friend and the youngest brother, put them up for adoption and divorced again. The family had looked for my friend for years, but kept looking on the east coast, not the next county over.

Now my less incredible story.

Flying back from Australia in 1999, I got on my last flight, just over an hour from O’Hare to Ft. Wayne International. When my seatmate sat down, I noticed that not only was she attractive, she had an accent. I asked her if she was from down under and she said yes, she was originally from New Zealand, but had been living in Sydney for several years. She and some co-workers were flying to Ft. Wayne to get trained in some software.

I asked her when they had left Australia and she said they had left Sydney at 6 AM a day before. So I told her the flight numbers and layovers they had on the trip. She looked at me like I was some kind of stalker, so I told her I had been on the same flights, just in economy class, not business. That relieved her, so we spent the flight with me telling her some of the differences I had noticed between the countries, especially the monetary systems.

For my final, story, a small mystery.

While I was in college, the fine arts class would take a field trip to Chicago. (Something about an art museum there I think.) 3 friends and I were walking down the street, me in front, the 3 of them behind me, I had my head down since it was late fall and we were walking into the wind. I heard a female voice say “Hi Lok!” but when I looked up and around, no one was looking at me. 2 of my friends asked me who the hot blonde was. They said she was going the other way, looked straight at me, waved and said hi and kept right on going. They didn’t know her so she was no one from school and I still can’t think of anyone I know that would have been in Chicago then. One of those things I will never know the answer to. :stuck_out_tongue:

102

My grandmother’s best friend used to live with her adult daughter and pet dog. The dog eventually developed some kind of major medical problem that would have cost several thousand dollars to do the surgery for. After much thinking about whether to go through with the surgery or put the dog to sleep, they decided to go ahead with the surgery. Several years later, the daughter has a new born baby, who is sleeping upstairs. The dog comes down from upstairs and is agitated and barking. The daughter goes upstairs and finds the baby not breathing. The manage to save the baby and everything is ok. But if they had not saved the dog previously, they would not have known the baby was in trouble.

103

Creepy! But do people who hang themselves scream? You’re not going to scream beforehand, cause you’re doing it on purpose, and even if you change your mind after the chair’s kicked, seems like it would be hard to make much noise with your neck in the noose.

Of course, if it only looked like suicide…

104

And of course, if you open a door and unexpectedly find a hanged body, you might let out a scream yourself.

105

I took an automotive repair vocational-tech course once, and one day in the tune-up class towards the end of the day, as a throwaway bit of trivial info, the instructor mentioned a resistor in the wire that goes to the ignition coil, and that while the key is in the “start” position the snippet of wire containing the resistor is bypassed to let full voltage from the battery go to the coil, then when you release the key to the “run” position once it catches, the electricity (now coming off the alternator) goes through the curcuit with the resistor. And that every rare once in a while, those resistors will burn out, so you get a car that cranks, catches, and as soon as you let go of the key so it moved to the “run” position, the engine dies. So if that happens, a quick fix is to hot-wire the alternator’s + terminal right off the battery’s + terminal.

In the 5 or thereabouts years following the course, I must have rescued 20 otherwise-stranded people that I would happen to be walking past or driving past, would hear them starting their cars, car would catch momentarily then die as they let go of the key. “Oh hello, this is going to sound odd but I think I know what’s wrong with your car. Got an extra length of electrical wire handy?”
I’ve spoken with mechanics about it who say it’s not a very common ailment.

106

Good point.

107

Or alternatively you might go through their pockets just incase theres any money in there,plus if they have a decent wristwatch you can have that away before the ambulance comes.

Well it was just a thought.

108

My story is nothing compared to these great stories, but it is a thing for me personally so here goes:

Paternal grandfather, a first son of the family, passed away on March 3rd. My father, also first son, passed away on April 4th. I’m, also a first son, extremely careful every time May 5th comes around.

109

About two weeks after I’d met the future Mrs. Rocketeer, I gained godlike status by successfully diagnosing her car, over the phone, buying the parts on my way to where she was parked, and fixing it instantly. Her car had exactly the problem you describe–a failed “ballast resistor”.

…and then a couple months later I forfeited my godlike status by hooking up her alternator wrong, resulting in her battery going dead. But for two months there, I was a god walking among mortal men. :slight_smile:

110

They’re about a month away from finishing up a four year project there. Part of the new freeway is even higher then the high rise.

111

I had a great-aunt who was missing the big toe on one foot. According to her story, she was watching her brother chop wood one day. He said, jokingly, “Put your foot here on the chopping block and I’ll chop your toe off.” She did as he said, assuming he would stop the chop, or deliberately miss. At the same time, he thought she’d pull her foot away…

And he chopped her toe off.

112

Oooh, I got two more.
My aunt (15 years older then me, opposite sex) and I have sequential social security numbers. But I think it’s even stranger that we are aware of it. Really, does anyone else know their aunt’s SSN.

The second one, about a year ago there was an accident in Milwaukee. A tire flew off a semi truck and went through the front window of a car on the otherside of the road. The person it hit (and killed) was a very prominent doctor in the area. He was identified by the paramedic as the doctor who saved his life years earlier.

113

In the eighties, I was in the market for used VW bug. Found what seemed like a sweet deal at a used car lot: Black bug, nice paint, custom chain link steering wheel, groovy “bare footprint,” gas pedal, skull shifter. (I was 17, this was all very appealling.)

Unfortunately, when I looked at the undercarriage, I saw a less cool modification: A piece of 1" plywood cut to fit the entire underbody, and affixed thereto with about ten steel bolts, several of which protruded about four inches downwards. I guess it was rusted out to the point that that seemed like a good idea. I laughed my ass off and went on my way.

That same night, I went to vist some of by BBS nerd friends. The SYSOP of one of Vancouver’s cooler Blue Boards (The Crunchy Frog) was bragging about his cool new ride… skull shifter… chain wheel… barefoot gas-pedal…

“Andrew, did you look underneath that car?”

No, he hadn’t. The entire assembly went outside to marvel.