This is a bragging thread. 
Here’s a few things that I have done that make my list:
#1. I’ve held a lecture at a university about city planning, even though I am the equivalent of a high school dropout with no formal education. (They never asked :rolleyes:)
#2. I once accidentally ate my own pubic hair. :smack:
#3. I once helped save a mans life.
This would be more strange than impressive. Sitting around with a couple of friends one morning, sipping coffee, listening to music and just generally yapping, I happened to notice a yellowjacket hovering about a foot or so away from me. Being in a somewhat…altered state…it didn’t occur to me to be uptight about having a stinging insect hanging around me. I was more…curious.
I observed how it would zip from point A to point B almost instantaneously, so it appeared, and got to thinking about the idea that bees technically shouldn’t be able to fly, owing to the small size of their wings relative to their body, etc. So anyway I stuck my fingertip in his face (about 8" away) to see what he would do. Blip! He shifts to the right. I follow suit. Blip! He shifts to the left. We do this a third time - and then he starts flying towards me.
Now it suddenly occurs to me to be uptight, what with a stinging, wingèd insect flying toward me and all. So i’m starting to get kind of nervous but then I think - wait a minute here - he’s just fucking with me like I’m fucking with him. I figured him out.
So we’re still facing off, fingertip against wasp, with wasp approaching, and I suddenly narrow the gap between us to less than 50%. He puts on the brakes! I press the advantage, approaching again, sharply. He backs off about a foot. I continue to press forward. He backs off again. I get up out of my chair, still leading with the fingertip, and he proceeds out of the room, heading for the door to outside. I follow. He flies out the door and I shut it, saying, “and don’t come back!”
I go back to my chair and sit down, and the two people with me said that if I told them I had done something like that they wouldn’t have believed me. Very funny, very weird.
As a part of a team, I won a NCAA championship when I was in college.
I won a nation-wide contest to perform as a soloist with a major symphony orchestra.
And for the weird…my skull is so large in circumference that I had to have a cap (of graduation cap and gown fame) custom made for my high school graduation. I held on to it and used it again at both my BA and MA graduation ceremonies.
I’ve helped save 2 peoples lives
I’ve drank my own urine. Accidentally. The fact it was mixed with Gatorade powder didn’t help much.
I’ve swallowed (reswallowed?) my own vomit. Purposely.
I was a dive bell explorer in middle school. How many of you other wankers have been at 20 feet with a 5 gallon bucket over your head?
Beer Grills can suck it.
#1: Care to elaborate?
#3: Omg… that is awesome.
The Wasp Whisperer! :o
Been there. On purpose and without Gatorade though. It had to be done. For those of you who haven’t and are worried that you may have to at some point in your life, it’s way less bad than you’d think.
I put out a carburetor fire by throwing snowballs at it, thereby probably saving the lives of [del]thousands hundreds scores[/del] maybe one of people, some of them innocent children!
When I was 18, I used to restring racquetball racquets when I worked at the YMCA here. At the beginning of one of our tournaments, our best player popped a string 20 minutes before his first match. I prepped and restrung his racquet in time for him to play, and he won. I was so good and so fast then, but I don’t think I’d be able to it at all now, I don’t know if I’d even remember how. Maybe once I had the machine in front of me, I’d remember.
I was also a lifeguard at that same YMCA, and I saved the lives of 2 children.
JFK Jr. was about 3 months younger than me. One day, when I was maybe 3-4, I was at the National Zoo with my parents (I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, DC), and I wanted a drink of water. So I went over to the water fountain, and there was a kid getting a drink at it already, so I pushed him out of the way so that I could get one. That kid was John John Kennedy, and I’m lucky to be alive with all the secret service there was around him (or so my parents say…).
I was part of a group of skydivers who set three state records (for largest formation) in one day- on three consecutive jumps. Never been done before or since.
Beowulff: Perhaps you can answer a question for me.
At a failed launch attempt shortly before the first Shuttle flight, I distinctly remember a young reporter asking Jim Lovell if, in the history of the space program, he ever remembered any failure as great as this launch being scrubbed. He was stunned into silence for a couple seconds, then said something similar to “Well, you’re obviously too young to remember, but I was on Apollo 13. We had an explosion on the way to the moon and we almost didn’t make it home. I think that was a bit worse than this computer glitch.”
My question is this. I’ve told this story many times and it seems so implausible to me, that I am starting to wonder if I am suffering from false memory syndrome. Were there really reporters there that day who were so ignorant?
Well, there were a LOT of reporters there - hundreds, certainly, and maybe thousands.
So, I’m sure there were more than a few boneheads (and I would put Apollo 1 before 13). Few reporters are subject matter experts - especially TV news reporters. The job requirements for covering the launch have a lot more to do with being well-spoken and photogenic then they do with being well-versed in the space program (although, forgetting Apollo 1 and 13 is pretty bad).
The launch hold (2 seconds before ignition, if I remember correctly) was one of the worst moments of my life (at that point). I driven for 20+ hours with a team of guys all the way for that moment, and now it was indefinitely delayed. We were extremely lucky that the lunch went off without a hitch 2 days later.
Beowullf, Thanks for the perspective. It was stunning for me, having grown up watching Walter Cronkite, Frank McGee, Jules Bergman and others covering Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. These guys were quite knowledgeable and had great respect for the engineers and astronauts. Many of this new breed of Geraldo inspired journalists were looking for dirt or mistakes that they could hype. I believe this particular reporter also asked someone if the Shuttle was going anywhere near Jupiter!
OP, End of hijack, please accept my apologies. I couldn’t resist asking someone who was there.
Strongbad responded to one of my emails(the skit is the one about the space peogram.)
I got tear gassed early on during the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square
I had a proxy server built for me to get Internet for just a bit longer when Mubarak shut the Internet. The kind friend who built the server for me is now doing time for bitcoin related felonies…
I memorized half of psalms over a couple of months (in Hebrew), and have forgotten most of it since.
Not necesarily strange or impressive, but kinda interesting:
My first semester at college, my roommate in the dorm was a total stranger. A pretty average kind of a guy-- nice enough, but we didn’t have much in common, so we didn’t become friends.
You see, he was a real fanatic baseball fan.
Now, me, I don’t care at all about baseball; I barely know how to play the game, and don’t even know the names of the biggest teams or the star players…
So how was I supposed to recognize that this guy was the son of one of the biggest names American sports, a multi-millionaire with flamboyent coverage in the press?
Though as a newly arrived student who had not yet found a social circle, for a while I was impressed by the number of people who kept dropping by our room, just wanting to say hi.
I’ve performed on stage in front of hundreds of people.
I spoke on the phone to Whoopi Goldberg.
I once “saved” a family from a stuck Elevator. The elevator I was in got stuck while myself and a mother and daughter were inside. They were getting scared. I was able to get my fingers in and pull the door open and then help us all get out. It really wasn’t that big of a deal but they looked at me like I was Superman which was one of the best feelings in the world
I ran a marathon at the age of 46 and about 50 lbs overweight.
I am mentioned (several times) by name in a non-fiction book.
I have been at the deathbed of somewhere between 50 and 100 people.
I once shot a man in Reno…well, probably lots of you have done that.
mmm
I saved a kid’s life (teen) who then tried to punch me because he thought I was trying to drown him (scuba panic where he tried to swim to the surface holding his breath and I grabbed him from behind and forced him to exhale).
You mean other than the thousands of tourists who went helmet Snuba-ing on vacation?