I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories. May I hope your daughter is doing just peachy?
Me too.
My dad had wanted to watch the video, so I queued it up for him (on the Internet) and left the room.
I did not walk away far enough. It was horrible just to HEAR.
This whole thread is making my heart hurt 
Obviously this pales in comparison to the other events here, but
“I don’t think I ever really loved you.”
Thanks for the link! I forgot all about the “Omar” part.
OMG!!! I remember seeing that episode…the Arsonist’s comments sounded distinctly sexual. Completely creeped me out.
My mom having a seizure.
For Mr. Rilch: Me having a seizure.
For my dad: His co-worker going into diabetic shock (I think; by all means correct me).
FTR, everyone was okay. I turned my mom’s head to the side and waited it out; she’d told me not to call 911 unless she didn’t come to right away. My dad gave his co-worker one of the juice boxes that was always in his desk. Mr. Rilch also called 911. But there’s nothing like seeing and hearing the person who was smiling and talking normally a moment earlier, now flailing and making horrible, guttural sounds. My apologies to anyone who’s had to watch me have a seizure.
And of course, the obligatory YouTube clip. Is there nothing you can’t find on YouTube these days?
The sound of Nick Berg being killed. (Never did see or hear what happpened to Pearl.)
When I was in college, I was in another guy’s dorm room, and we were watching one of those “Faces of Death” tapes that were popular back then. In this segment a live pig was tied down, and some guy in a white lab coat took a blow torch to it.
I didn’t much feel like watching after that.
“I do,” from my now ex-wife.
I knew I was making the biggest mistake of my life during the ceremony, but for reasons that I won’t go into here, it was easier to do than leaving her at the altar.
I"ve heard that call, too. Horrifying. Another one that I found disturbing was a man calling 911 to report that he’d just stabbed two people to death. He was so calm and matter-of-fact about it, until he realized that he wasn’t getting the response he wanted from the operator; then he started getting agitated. I used to use it to demonstrate to trainees how they should act while taking calls - professional, calm, and in control, no matter what kind of freaking psycho you’re talking to - but unfortunately I’ve lost the link to it and have been unable to find it again.
I talked an elderly lady through CPR on her husband who’d just collapsed. I could hear his agonal breathing in the background, and in between rescue breaths she was crying and pleading with him not to leave her. I’ve been a 911 operator for almost 6 years and I’ve talked numerous people through CPR, delivered babies over the phone, talked to suicidal people, listened to husbands beat the crap out of wives and vice versa, and dealt with complete lunatics, but for some reason that one call really got to me.
Wow.
I’ve been through some things, but they’re about a 3 on this particular scale.
Right now I can hear a few spring birds chirping and calling, catch an occasional flutter going past my window. I hope all of you have something peaceful and hopeful in your present.
Can’t think of what the worst thing that I haven’t directly experienced would be.
For directly experienced - the guy on top of me telling me that he had a knife and a rope.
Fortunately the bombs I’ve heard going off in town were all small enough and had enough warnings given that nobody was injured in them.
Worst thing I’ve heard was when my Dad told me his own father had passed away. Dad’s pretty quiet anyway, but right then he was really quiet
And for a shitty thing, hearing (2nd hand) what my old cow-orker office manager had to say about my girlfriend when she was pregnant (was she a long term partner or someone I had knocked up on a night out) and about a co-worker who had suffered a miscarriage (told her straight to her face that it was “meant to be”)
Finally thought of something, from 1979. It was actually an absence of sound.
What happened was a Who concert in Cincinnati. It was “festival seating”, meaning they didn’t sell specific seats. Everyone was outside, waiting to be let in, and something went wrong. Eleven kids were smothered in the stampede.
Three of the kids were from my high school, I knew one of them slightly.
The next day, our school was silent.
I’d never realized that our feet were making a sound as we walked in the halls, because I’d never heard it before. But for a few days, that was the only noise we made.
That’s OK, thank you for asking. She is OK and doesn’t talk about “Tommy”. When the weather warms up and he is around, though, it might be harder for her. Fortunately, my son (“Tommy” was his best friend) has sworn to be her protector and will be the “border patrol” keeping “Tommy” from near our house.
I said that to my dad too, last year.
If you don’t mind a digression…Hello again. Are you back among us now?
In 1999 I witnessed an 89 year old man getting run over by an 18 wheel truck. It was at an intersection where there were 2 lanes in each direction. This intersection was in Lowell, MA in between the dormitories and the north campus of UMASS Lowell. I was stopped at a red light and in the right lane with an 18 wheeler in the lane to my left. I had been sitting at the red light for long enough to realize that it was about to change. An elderly man started crossing the street without even looking at the lights. He looked directly at me when he was crossing, which makes me the last person he ever saw. The light changed to green when the was exactly in front the 18 wheeler to my left. The truck slowly started to pull forward - the man was shorter than the grill of the truck and there was no chance the truck driver could have seen that there was a pedestrian directly in front of him. He put up his hands in a defensive reaction to the truck pulling forward.
The worst sound I ever heard was the screams I heard not from the man getting run over (he was eerily silent and accepting of his fate), but of the university students who were crossing the bridge between class and dorm who witnessed the event.
His torso was bent backward against his legs - he was folded in half at the waist, and was probably alive for a few seconds after the truck passed over him before he died from the trauma. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
This is going to sound trite, erie, but don’t hate him – he’s not worth the corrosion to your own spirit. Don’t hate him any more than you’d hate the dog turd you got on the bottom of your shoe. Just scrape it off and keep on walking. He’s going to screw up and you’ll be rid of him for those six months, then his bitch of a mother will screw up too and probably get thirty daus to think it over.
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, has a special Children’s Memorial in a seperate (much smaller) building. It’s dark and as you walk through it the funhouse mirrors create the illusion of floating through a void, or a black hole, the infinite expanse dotted with small, dimly-lit candles. An audio recording loops endlessly through the entire list of identified children who died in the Holocaust, stating their name, country of origin and age at the time of their death in their native language.
Now, I’m not an easy man to upset. In my time I’ve seen, even enjoyed, visual stimuli that would make some people lose their lunch. The museum itself was upsetting, as intended, and while I was moved I stayed stone-faced throughout. But the Children’s Memorial is where I lost it. I bawled uncontrollably for a long time. I couldn’t tell you how long now, but I remember completely losing my composure and breaking down into a distinct (long) crying session at least five separate times in quick succession. I’d never been affected so much by anything before, and I don’t think I ever will again. I only wish my grandfather, who died before my mother graduated from high school, had been there with me. All I know about his Army career is that he gave every ounce of his body and soul to Uncle Sam in North Africa, and that it took a Panzer running over him to send him back home (alive). I like to think he would’ve cried too.
A friend of mine who used to be a SHARP (Skinhead Against Racial Prejudice) told me last night that the worst thing he’s ever heard was the whimper of his puppy when five Nazis stole it from him after they beat him (the friend, not the dog) to within an inch of his life. Hearing the entire story from start to finish was chilling. I wouldn’t do it justice by retyping it here–looking into his eyes as he described what those slimy rats did to him told the story in a way that words never could. He said that if only it had happened a few months later, that dog would have had those Nazis for breakfast.
Your daughter was very brave to tell you what happened. She probably saved a bunch of other little girls. Tell her thank you, and I thank you and her older brother for taking what she said and running with it.