For example, I once saw a man throw his hat down in anger. He didn’t stomp on it which was kind of a let down.
On the lunch long time ago, I was complaining to my colleagues about surprisingly expensive pizza: “20 euros for the pizza! In some countries you would get a blowjob for that kind of money!” Few minutes later, another colleague joined us and I immediately told him: “This is 20 euro pizza!”. He answered: “What?? Did you get a blow job with it?” One female colleague noted: “I see you both visit similar kind of … restaurants”.
About 15 years ago I was giving a presentation at a technical conference. This was me giving a presentation in front of a room full of about 50 other engineers. At this point in my career this was still pretty new to me, so I was nervous. It was getting time for my presentation and I needed to do a last minute nervous pee before I did my presentation.
I went to the bathroom, peed in a urinal, and then went to wash my hands. I pushed down the bathroom faucet and it exploded sending up a geyser of water about air a foot or two into the air. Now had I really been on a TV show, my pants would have been soaked in the crotch area, but luckily in real life I stepped back and didn’t get wet. However, this was the perfect setup for a young nervous engineer giving a technical presentation to be thoroughly embarrassed. Luckily I’m either not on a TV show, or I’m not the main character.
We were in slow traffic and a car is trying to leave a parking lot. We give the other car some space to merge in, and they take it, but for the opposite way (passed us and entered going the opposite way we were going). It was a big infraction of the road rules. Right behind the guy was a cop car, I still remember his face, like “did I really just see this right in front of me?”. The cop turned on the lights and followed the rule breaker, we were laughing our asses off inside the car. The whole thing felt scripted out of a comedy schetch of something.
A less fun one was during the first lockout of the pandemic, I was standing at the window seeing a cop car slowly going by outside with big loudspeakers: “Stay at home. If you show simptoms of cough of fever call XXX. Stay at home. Mask use in public spaces is mandatory” Felt like the start sequence of a post apocaliptic movie or something.
Not a movie, but there was a period of time when my parents’ house had them living upstairs, my older brother, his wife, and their young son living in the converted basement, and me temporarily staying in a guest bedroom after I had just gotten out of the Army. And we all worked at the family pizza restaurant together.
It was the perfect TGIF sitcom scenario.
In college, rowing for state championship. Sitting in the bow position rowing against the best team in the state. You’re not supposed to look out of the boat because you need to keep your head inline so as not to upset the boat. But because I was at the front I could see the other boat peripherally. When the gun went off and we started rowing I expected to see the back of their boat disappear, but it didn’t. And after pulling for a couple hundred meters they were still there. We were IN this thing. We weren’t losing.
To explain a little about rowing. The coxswain basically communicates with the stroke, the person right in front of him, the strongest rower that the rest of us follow. But he has a bull horn, or at least back then that’s what we used. So he communicates with the whole boat. If he calls a “power 10,” that means we are supposed to take 10 harder strokes to pick up some speed. A good coxswain knows when to call these. Obviously you can’t pull harder 100% of the time or you’ll burn out. But this time he was calling them more often than usual sending a subtle message that we were in the race of our lives. You can also hear the other boat calling power 10’s and we were matching them. The boat started to have what we call “swing.” This is when the rowers are all in sync producing a sort of harmony. The boat feels like it’s going faster. Like it’s up on plane (not a real thing in an 8 man racing shell).
As the race proceeded, we were neck and neck. At one point the boats got close. Our oars, nearly made contact with their oars. But it wasn’t our boat that was off coarse. It was theirs. We held the line as they corrected. They were supposed to beat us, but we were right there. We could hear the excitement in the voice of our coxswain. The finish line was approaching. We were all fighting from hitting the wall. Pushing harder than we ever had, knowing we had a chance. We heard the call from the other boat for a power 10 but our coxswain did not call one. I could see the back of the other boat pull slightly ahead and I thought, this is where they play their trump card. Ten strokes passed by and still nothing from our coxswain, we knew the finish line was coming up but nothing. At this point there is nothing else going through you mind. It’s just raw focus. Like tunnel vision. Then it happened. Our coxswain called out, “Power to the finish!” And then something like, “Row like hell! We’ve got this!” In my peripheral vision that boat was still right there, just like we were still at the start line. They had one of those old timey metal flag things that would rotate 90 degrees making a ching sound, then again when the next boat passed. It had gone ching-ching rapidly almost like a cha-ching, because we had crossed the finish line so close to each other. Then the moment we had been waiting for. He called, “Let it run,” meaning we could stop rowing the race was over. He kept us going straight while we all collapsed, laying backward in the boat, oars spread on the water haphazard. I could hear a guy in the other boat dry heaving. After a moment, when it momentum was spent, we were all just sitting there looking at each other asking the rowers on the other team, who one. No one knew. It was a photo finish. We had to wait for the results. It felt like forever. Our teammates were on the shore yelling something to us. There was some chaos we didn’t understand and I realized then, this was just like being in the movies.
Well… Did you win?
As a matter of fact we did! I’m a state champion from like 30+years ago. It was a shirt race, meaning the loser had to turn over his team t-shirt to the other team. I was the proudest owner of the t-shirt of our arch nemesis.
It’s was also a requirement to win at State, to earn my own team’s t-shirt. So I finally had my team t-shirt too!
For about 30 minutes, because then I stroked a four man boat to a 4th place finish where I lost it to another team. I thought I had earned the shirt and coach would replace it, but nope that’s not the way it works. I was pissed. I never would have run that second race if I had understood that.
But I just have to give credit to our coxswain. He called the race perfectly and in no small way contributed to our win.
Coxswains are often looked upon like a kicker in American football. It doesn’t matter how bad the team messed up for the last three hours, if the kicker misses that crucial last kick, the whole game was lost due to him. This is because coxswains are dead weight. Since they don’t row, all they do is slow us down. This is why they are usually women, because woman are generally smaller and lighter. Ours just happened to be a small dude that earned his ride that day.
Maybe like 20 years ago, my partner and I were at a couple-friends’ apartment on a hot sweaty summer day. The four of us sitting in a small circle on the hardwood living room floor, smoking a bowl… Nothing but the sound of the flicking lighter, and the squeaky hum of the ceiling fan providing us with some margin of relief from the heat. Ahh…
Then boom. The ceiling fan’s loose screw squeaked its last squeak and the whole fixture fell, heavy-ass motor assembly and all, exactly in the middle of our circle. One of the wooden blades nicked my friend on the way down for a bloody eyebrow. But the heavy middle part, which could’ve killed any of us, landed right in the middle of our little arms-length bowl circle. This wasn’t one of those skinny modern fans you install by yourself… The thing was freakin’ heavy.
“Whoa.”
I saw a lady slip on a banana peel irl outside of the Disney store in Dublin, Ireland. I didn’t even know it was possible. I felt really bad bc I couldn’t go help her up because I was laughing so hard and had to go into the Disney store so it wouldn’t look like I was laughing at her. I was just more shocked that it actually happened.
Had a shotgun put to my head and marched into a house of gang members because I dared to try to pick my sister up from a party. Got yelled at and threatened, and left without her.
Came back a little while later to try once more and found ems/police/fire all over the place. That same person with the same shotgun blew someone elses head off after I left.
I had a friend with me, we elected not to stop the second time. A day later the police questioned us, we were subpoenaed to testify, and both got threatened by gang members for years.
Good times.
…and what about your sister (he asked, trepidatiously)?
She was fine. She left after the shooting and got a ride home. We don’t talk anymore. She accused me of raping her when we were kids while she was in a troubled teen facility (I got to fly to Utah and talk to a room full of shrinks as a teenager!) got my whole family believing and accusing me… Until 10 years later when she did the same to our dad.
I feel for her, she’s had it rough but I’ve almost died, been ostracized and demonized by my entire family and the emotional shit that came with it as a teen. But she can get fucked.
She later (several years) went on to get arrested and convicted of selling coke, as well as conspiracy to sell. Got out, invited the police in while she had meth out on the table after calling them about methallucinations.
Well, this wasn’t a fun story at all.
Hard agree, and what’s worse is that I didn’t then, and even now 30+ years later don’t see it as a traumatic. I know it is logically but I don’t feel it.
Things leading up to it were that much worse, and the later years didn’t start to get better until recently.
It sounds like you lived through some rough situations; it is a tough climb out but I am glad to hear things have gotten better for you. Keep climbing, friend!
Sorry, friend. I’m glad things have gotten better.
Had an emotionally painful, self-esteem crushing experience at the hands of a high school girl that left me bitter and angry. Reconnected with her 15 years later and set about trying to hurt her the way I hurt. Wound up falling in love and getting married.
That’s some Hollywood bullshit right there but we’ve been married going on 15 years.
Damn bro, all part of her plan, she’s going to let you down even harder this time! Jk
Already anticipating that deathbed “syke!” after decades of marital bliss.
I had sex once.
I had sex once.
Doesn’t count here, because the sex in the movies isn’t real.
That’s cool, she wasn’t real either.
Nice.
Nice.
