Stories

[8BitNinja]

The title says it all. Here is a thread to share with everyone random life stories.

Rules
1. It can be about anything, so long as the topic is forum appropriate.
2. Unless permission is given, keep any sensitive information about people anonymous
3. If the story is incredibly long, please spoiler it
4. Give your story a title

I'll start with one of mine

The Time I Ignored a Pseudo-Date

So once I went to a church summer camp. It lasted for a week and at the end they had a camp banquet. There, the boy and girl dorms of the same age pair off and escort each other and talk to each other at the banquet. In the girl dorm of the same age (which we referred to as our "sister dorm") there was a girl in there that we will call Celine Dion. Now Celine Dion and I were really good friends and we had a lot of the same interests, and when we were lining up (that's how it was chosen) I almost went to the banquet with her, but instead I ended up going with this one girl that we will call Johanna Quass. For some reason Johanna Quass would not talk to me at all. And sitting right next to me across the table was Celine Dion, but who she was escorted to the banquet was a guy we'll call John Browning. John Browning and I were also really good friends, and he and Celine Dion were talking about things that I was also interested in, so for about 3/4s of the banquet, I joined in on their conversation. I was having a grand old time until John Browning said to me between the end of the main course and beginning of the dessert "8Bit, why are you ignoring Johanna?" And for the rest of the banquet, I felt like a complete jerk.

[2D8HP]

I'll start with one of mine...

....And for the rest of the banquet, I felt like a complete jerk.

8BitNinja,

While perhaps not recent enough for "Random Banter", you could have fit that story in "Confessions", but it's a good start to a thread, and a place for "This happened to me, but not recently" posts is just up my alley, so I will infect contribute to this thread.

---

Welcome to America

In the 1990's I worked at a Honda and Kawasaki motorcycle shop in Oakland, California at the parts counter. An older gentleman came to the counter and loudly said with a thick European accent, "We are from Germany and we are here to buy parts for GL1100".

At first I could hardly understand what bike he was talking about, but after some questions I could follow (despite the thick accent his English was quite good).

However soon he could tell that I was distracted by something, and was looking over his shoulder, and he turned to see what caught my attention.

Out of the open door we could see passed the shop's parking lot to a house which several portly men with hand guns were storming (presumably plain-clothed policemen).

My German customer turned back to me with a shocked expression, and asked, "Does that happen all the time?!"

I had never seen something quite like that, but I deadpaned, "Oh yeah, wild west don't you know".

[Misereor]

The time I developed my phobia for sharks.

Back in 1989 I was 16 years old, and I was at a BBQ in Australia. A friend and I decided to go try out my newly bought surfski without bothering to tell anyone.
We were lying just outside the breakers, maybe 300 feet from the shore, when suddenly the water went dead around us. Just dead. There is no other way of describing it.
For some reason we simultaneously looked at each other, and my friend morbidly started humming the theme from Jaws. We never saw anything, but we had the sense of something that to our jumpy selves felt the size of a schoolbus passing underneath us, and we decided to head for the shore right then and there while staying close together. Nothing more happened. The dead feeling went away, and we reached shore without incident, where we were roundly lambasted for going into the water when the tide was coming in. You see, when the tide comes in, the fish come in, and that particular bay has a lot of sharks who come in after the fish. We didn't say anything, we just looked at each other and kept quiet.

Later I have read about divers describing that feeling of the water going dead just before Great White attacks.
Funny thing is that I didn't particularly care right after it happened, it was just a bit of excitement, and I was in the water again a couple of days later. But as the years have gone by, I can feel it affecting me. When I played Assassin Creed 4, I absolutely hated the part where you had to swim ashore to small islands, even though I knew there were no sharks in open world mode. When I'm on a plane, I don't have any irrational thoughts about crashing, only about crashing into the ocean, and only when flying over waters warm enough to have certain types of sharks.

It's funny how something like that can be of little import when it happens, but can fester over the years when undealt with. My grandpa had to pick up pieces of his father in law who got caught in a thresher, and he only experienced the trauma after he got old. My dad had to brick up the windows to the yard where it happened, because my grandpa would get such serious depressions every year around the time it happened, and it would help if he didn't have to look at the scene. Guess it's a lesson for dealing with trauma as soon as possible after it happens.

[Fri]

8BitNinja,

While perhaps not recent enough for "Random Banter", you could have fit that story in "Confessions", but it's a good start to a thread, and a place for "This happened to me, but not recently" posts is just up my alley, so I will infect contribute to this thread.

---

Welcome to America

In the 1990's I worked at a Honda and Kawasaki motorcycle shop in Oakland, California at the parts counter. An older gentleman came to the counter and loudly said with a thick European accent, "We are from Germany and we are here to buy parts for GL1100".

At first I could hardly understand what bike he was talking about, but after some questions I could follow (despite the thick accent his English was quite good).

However soon he could tell that I was distracted by something, and was looking over his shoulder, and he turned to see what caught my attention.

Out of the open door we could see passed the shop's parking lot to a house which several portly men with hand guns were storming (presumably plain-clothed policemen).

My German customer turned back to me with a shocked expression, and asked, "Does that happen all the time?!"

I had never seen something quite like that, but I deadpaned, "Oh yeah, wild west don't you know".

I read author notes at the back of manga (I forgot what), where apparently the author was offered by the editor to go to US to gather data for his book or something in that line, and the author's response was basically, "going to US? I'd get shot!" and he draw what he thought what America looks like, where it's gangster city where people pass by with guns and gangs do drive-by shooting randomly.

[8BitNinja]

The Time I Almost Accidentally Kidnapped Someone

So once I was visiting Mexico with my family. Every night, the hotel we were staying at would do something like Karaoke, Mechanical Bull, or some other event to entertain the guests. One night, the hotel had a dance. At the time, my sister (who we will call Ana because it's really easy to type) was around six years old. Another important fact to mention is that she was adopted and she is biracial (this will be important later). While I was there, I was talking with some people and then my brother (who is on the forum), Green Elf went up to me looking worried and said "Hey 8Bit, Where is Ana?" So I looked for my other brother, who we will call Pope Urban and asked where she was and he also told me that he didn't know where she was. So I decided to look in the crowd of people. While walking through, I saw a girl that had a similar hairstyle and was about the same height turned away and put my hand on her shoulder and looked at her like she just spilled hot coffee on me. When I saw her face and it wasn't her, I said to her mother a few times that I was really sorry and spent the rest of the night outside of the hall, feeling like a complete jerk.

I think that if this thread continues like this, this last phrase will continue.

[2D8HP]

On the 6th floor:

Sometimes between 2012 (when I first worked there) and 2014 (when they stopped having "overnight guests"), I heard an inmate shout out "I HATE THIS HOTEL", in San Francisco County Jail #3.

In the same Jail, in one of the "safety cells" (concrete walls with a 2" hole in the floor and nothing else), an inmate wrote in big letters on the wall, using his waste, "I'M SORRY". to which a guard said, "Wow, that literally is a &$/@*y apology".

[thorgrim29]

The time I sank a kayak

When I graduated from college we had a big party/ball near a lake a bit north of Montreal (Tremblant). Before the festivities really got started those of us who got there a bit earlier started drinking and playing volleyball. At some point a bunch of us realized that there were 10 or so kayaks at our disposal and we decided to go around the lake a bit since it was a beautiful day for it. They were cheap plastic things and I'm a big guy so when I tried a one place kayak it was just barely afloat. Therefore I took a 2 place alone. Maybe 10 or 15 minutes later, when we were in the middle of the lake, one of the guys asked me if I was taking in water because it looked like I was sinking. I didn't see any water in the boat so I just said no and after a bit we started to head back to shore. That's when I realized that since I, a 300-some pounds guy, was sitting alone in a 2 place kayak the little hole that's usually used to let water out was underwater and my boat had been filling up this whole time. I wasn't afraid of drowning since I had a jacket on but I didn't want to swim back or be the guy who sank at graduation so I rowed for all I was worth towards the shore, all the while taking in more and more water, until it looked like I was popping a wheelie in a kayak (there are a few photos). I ended up sinking 10 or 15 feet from the shore, dragged the boat the rest of the way, and looked up to see about 2/3 of my graduating class watching me. So I then proceeded to get very drunk.

[Green Elf]

And for the rest of the banquet, I felt like a complete jerk.

My grandpa had to pick up pieces of his father in law who got caught in a thresher, and he only experienced the trauma after he got old. My dad had to brick up the windows to the yard where it happened, because my grandpa would get such serious depressions every year around the time it happened, and it would help if he didn't have to look at the scene. Guess it's a lesson for dealing with trauma as soon as possible after it happens.

I read author notes at the back of manga (I forgot what), where apparently the author was offered by the editor to go to US to gather data for his book or something in that line, and the author's response was basically, "going to US? I'd get shot!" and he draw what he thought what America looks like, where it's gangster city where people pass by with guns and gangs do drive-by shooting randomly.

spent the rest of the night outside of the hall, feeling like a complete jerk.

I ended up sinking 10 or 15 feet from the shore, dragged the boat the rest of the way, and looked up to see about 2/3 of my graduating class watching me. So I then proceeded to get very drunk.

I love happy endings!

[Sajiri]

I dont know why but I randomly remembered something that was frustrating when it happened but amuses me now in some strange way.

Many years ago when I was in high school, I had some assignment where I had to write a character profile. I cant remember who the character was, I think it was a girl from a book I had to read for class. This character happened to have an older sister who she didn't like, so in the 'family' section of the profile, I wrote about how she didn't really get along with her sister. This was saved on our family computer, in my personal folder where I saved all my homework and junk.

One day Im sitting in my room minding my own business when my younger sister comes in and asks me in confusion did I say anything about our older sister online, because she apparently just walked by saying something along the lines of "Well I know what Sajiri thinks of me now" in an angry tone. I was just as confused, as while I didnt really get along with her (we are just very different people) I had no reason to go saying anything about her, and I couldnt think of any situation recently where I had even brought her name up for anything good or bad. Another week goes by, and I open up my character profile to print it out for school. I do a quick readthrough to make sure there were no spelling mistakes I missed when..I get to the family section. And I find it has been completely rewritten.

The simple "She does not get along well with her sister" was suddenly a whole paragraph long praising this character's sister, talking about how much the character looks up to her and idolises her, how amazing she is, and so on. I suddenly realise that, despite the only similarities this character had to me were that we were both female and had an older sister, my own sister had for some reason gone searching through all my homework files and believed this one line was about her. Despite the character name was different, and had the title of the book at the top. She then rewrote it all to be an idealised version about herself.

That was when I discovered people are crazy.

[GolemsVoice]

Independence Day

The story takes place in English class (I'm from Germany) somewhere in the 6th grade, maybe? We were learning about The US, and I didn't pay all that much attention. But I overheard the teacher asking about "Independence Day", so I along with others, raised my hand. I was picked, and began telling how that's a movie with aliens. This was doubly embarassing since I hadn't actually seen the movie, and couldn't tell much more than the fact that it was a movie about aliens. Oh, the shame.

[AuthorGirl]

Here's a sweet one that I treasure.

Nerd Recruitment

I was at the library for Friday night D&D and our DM had skipped out without telling anybody. Now, I could just about talk (awkwardly, but even so) to the other members of my party. I couldn't talk to the people playing at other tables because they were Scary People and I was painfully shy. So I was sitting in the corner trying to write a book.

Then the nerds whose DM had actually shown up started randomly yelling stuff along the lines of "come play, this is a homebrew, wanna kill stuff?"

Eventually I wandered over and started whipping up a Shadownese destruction mage.

Now my friends and I play Heroes of Elementa (the homebrew game) every week.

[8BitNinja]

Here's something interesting

The Time I Almost Played D&D With My Non D&D Playing Friends

So about a month ago, I had a friend who we will call Mr. Bean. Now Mr. Bean came up to the rest of my friends and me and asked us if we wanted to play D&D, and that he would play as a Ranger. So after the day was over, since we had other responsibilities, we made a group chat and talked about when we could meet up and eventually decided to play it over Roll20. So our DM (who I will now refer to as the DM) waited for us to roll our characters. He then noticed that a lot of messages from all the other players asking what the stats or saving throws or AC or Alignment meant, which he then realized that him and I were the only ones who had ever played D&D. Then, around the end of rolling our characters, Mr. Bean told us all that he wasn't talking about "real" D&D, but D&D Online (the D&D MMO that came out a while ago). We were then incredibly confused and the group just disbanded and we never played D&D together.

[Fri]

I have one that I still remember fondly (?)

The Time When Fri Got Kicked Out Of The Dorm

It was first year of college, and I lived in some sort of a dorm, where students got individual room in the second floor and the landlord lived on first floor.

So it was past midnight, and IIRC I was just back from some college event. I then found out as I was trying to open the building's door that I misplaced my keys. Usually I'll just shrug it out and sleep in an internet cafe or whatever, but I was really tired, and I really want to sleep on a bed. Since I know I never locked my window (and also my room's door), I decided, what the heck, I'll climb.

It looks easy and short, but it turned out it's quite hard, and second floor is higher than what it looks like. I managed to climb and stand on the awning, but it turned out my room's window is further than I thought and I can't reach it. I thought, ****, I've went this far, and the ground is also kinda far away, so I decided to carefully walk on the roof to reach a reachable window. When I reached one, I checked inside, and thankfully the owner is there. So I knocked the window, woke him up (I never forget his face, he must've thought he'd been dreaming), and asked him to let me enter. Then I went to my room and sleep there.

But unbeknownst to me, when I said "I decided to carefully walk on the roof" it was actually just what I thought, and it actually made a lot of noise and actually woke up everyone (including the landlord, who I was hoping that she wouldn't know about any of this, hence my "carefully walk on the roof").

To make things short, I got kicked out of the dorm. The end.

To be fair that's not the first shenanigans I did. I also once broke a key inside the building's door because I forced an unrelated key to it (it turned out I misplaced the building's key, I did do it a lot back then) and made the door unusable for everyone, cut my finger when working on a project past midnight and try to find a band aid by waking everyone up (to be fair, it bleed a lot and I thought the cut was much deeper), leaving whole mess of my projects in the common room for days (I was art student), and so on.

[Jay R]

How Long Does a Personal Resolution Last?

I was getting ready to take a shower, and stopped to use the toilet. Then I walked over to the sink and started washing my hands, and I thought, “This is dumb. I am washing my hands immediately before getting in the shower, where the first thing I do will be to get soap on my hands. That’s clearly unnecessary."

So I resolved not to follow habits blindly in the future, and to avoid unnecessary or meaningless tasks.

Ten seconds later, I was drying my hands, immediately before getting in the shower.

[Tvtyrant]

How Long Does a Personal Resolution Last?

I was getting ready to take a shower, and stopped to use the toilet. Then I walked over to the sink and started washing my hands, and I thought, “This is dumb. I am washing my hands immediately before getting in the shower, where the first thing I do will be to get soap on my hands. That’s clearly unnecessary."

So I resolved not to follow habits blindly in the future, and to avoid unnecessary or meaningless tasks.

Ten seconds later, I was drying my hands, immediately before getting in the shower.

Now this one hits home. Like getting a new water glass everytime I need a drink, instead of juet prelabeling some glasses water and using those every time.

[kyoryu]

This was around '92 or so.

We were going around with a bunch of people in my old Caprice, because it could haul a bunch of people One of the people we were with (I was in my early 20s at the time) was a bit younger, and pretty naive. So, we were messing with him, because of course we were.

The big thing we were doing was the old "well, you're actually the only real person, and we're just figments of your imagination deal." Because it's fun. We went to Taco Bell, and he said "well, if that were true, I should be able to get this soda filled with just thinking about it." At which point I picked up the soda, refilled it, and put it in front of him. This disturbed him.

So, then he went to the bathroom, and we decided it would be super extra fun to bail on him for a few minutes like we never even existed. What we didn't know at that time was that they also cleaned off the table before he got back. Keep in mind - early 90s, no cell phones, no pagers, no nothing. We were just gone

So, we circle back in a few minutes (we're not that mean) and the dude is kind of freaking out. Like, starting to question reality. We stop at a 7-11, and I clean some crap out of my trunk. The guy picks up a Life In Hell book (which is what Groening did *before* the Simpsons, is twice as sharp, and everyone should check out).

He opens the book, and sees the comic: "What if you're the only real person in the world, and everyone else is just a figment of your imagination."

I'm pretty sure he needed therapy afterwards.

[Dienekes]

Dienekes is a Dumbass, Story 1 of around 10 or so.

Spoiler

Show

So, when I was in my last years as an undergrad, I moved out of the dorms to the cheap and sleazy part of the city. Now, a bit about me. When I was in High School, I was very active. I played football, wrestling, weight training. I kind of had the delusions that I was something of a badass. However, when I got to college I focused entirely on school work and study and let myself go. A lot. I gained around 80 lbs and lost what muscle I had.

But still, delusions of badassdom. I carried around a small pocketknife and a set of lockpicks and other crap, because of that delusion. Anyway, at near the end of the semester my roommate and his girlfriend were gone for a few weeks so I lived alone. And being a generally bored individual I went across the city to listen to a lecture. And then went to a movie, and by then it was around 2 in the morning when I actually took the various elevated trains home. As I was walking from the train station to my apartment I see someone following me. But I don't really think much of it, until he grabs my arm.

I turn to see the man and he looked like a homeless man who was high or something. Smelled horrible as well. But most importantly, he had a knife in his hand and said "Gimme your wallet."

Now, being a dumbass. My reaction to this was "Huh? What?"

To which the man repeated himself, louder this time.

At this point it finally reached my brain I was being mugged. So I reached into my pocket, and grabbed my pocketknife. I then said something profound: "Hahaaaa!" and tried to tackle the guy. He did sort of surprised skip thing out of the way and we started grabbing at each other. Now, I don't quite remember all the details. Somewhere amongst the grabbing at him and the knife in his hand, I managed to lose my own. But the years of football and wrestling came back to me, and I ended up just dropping the man. Then I may have hit him, for good measure. Honestly, still a bit of blur. I then shouted "You ain't... not taking... no!" Grabbed my knife and his (as a trophy) and went home. Thinking I was the most badass man who ever lived. Suck it, Chuck Norris.

So, I'm back at home. Still high on adrenaline, and no one is home so I'm pacing about and singing my own praises. I believe a lot of "Woo!"s were said. Then I felt that my arm kind of hurt, and I was wet. Apparently, the man stabbed me in my armpit. Or I stabbed myself. Honestly, both seem possible. But rather than go to the hospital, or call the police like a normal rational person. I just wrapped myself up in a towel and went to sleep. A nurse friend of mine has informed me I did everything I possibly could have wrong.

The kicker, I was a college student, my wallet had less than $20 in it. I risked my life to save spare change. And that is one of several reasons I am an idiot. But I got a cool looking scar out of it. You know, if anyone ever looks at my armpit.