STORY TIME: What's the most interesting thing that ever happened to you?

[Bossy Monkey]

Of course I should kick this off with a barnburner myself, but I have two and just can't decide. So give me 10 replies and I'll tell a story (or two) myself.

[underpants]

1. This one time at band camp................

I once dropped my wallet on the way back to college and my mother got a phone call from the county's Sherriff sayingthey were doing everything they could to find me. Of course there was never a call TO the sherriff or FROM the sherriff at the outset. Apparently they did the whole blodhound thing and search parties.

[Birthmark]

2. I've had a ton of stuff.

Just to start: I once met Zsa Zsa Gabor outside a Montgomery Ward in Baltimore while having my brakes repaired. I was stoned (it *was* the 70's after all) and standing outside the mall having a cig when this big limo pulls up. "What the hell?!", I'm thinking. A huge guy gets out runs around the car, opens the door, and out pops Zsa Zsa not five feet from me. She looks at me and says, "Hello, Dahlink." I managed to say hi back without going into hysterical laughter -- until she went in the store. Damn, I miss the 70's!

[RandomKoolzip]

3. I had a real good steak last thursday.

My life is has been quite boring.


Nah, I'm kidding. Actually, I have a story that's more like a Harvey Pekar strip than a mindblower, but I think that in a way, the smallest moments are the most interesting sometimes:

I had been suffering panic attacks for a year, and they were getting worse. I was on the verge of agoraphobia. It was the summer of 2000. My then-girlfriend (now-wife) suggested we take a vacation via plane to San FRancisco. Reluctantly, I agreed. I went to my doctor and got a prescription for Xanax so that I could sleep throgh the plane ride, plane rides obviously being quite a panicky prospect.

The trip was pretty cool, although laced with low-level constant anxiety. Lotsa nausea, I remember.

On the plane ride back, which would be a five hour-or-so trip, my wife started acting sorta anxious herself. I guess it was my constant vocal worry over whether we were gonna crash into a mountain somewhere in Utah, or what happens if the engines fail, etc. that made her edgy. As we were taking off, and both of us are sweating bullets and gripping our armrests with white knuckles, I smell and see smoke coming out of a vent in the ceiling.

I scream, "Holy Shit! and say to Marie, "Look, smoke!" and we both start shreiking. I call a flight attendant, and the pilot comes over the intercom and says, "to the person who rang, we do not allow the fight attendants to attand to passengers until the plane is fully in the air." I scream, loudly.

A flight attendant, a not-at-all-butch gay dude, comes over and we explain about the smoke. He looks really worried, says, "that's not supposed to happen!" and runs to the cockpit.

At this point, I thought I was having a heart attack. I can't breathe, Marie is crying and jumping up and down, and no one else in the plane is looking at us or caring. Very strange.

So then, about five minutes later, smoke is still coming out of the ceiling, we're flying throgh turbulence, and the dude comes back and says, "Well, the wiring in this plane is pretty old and sometimes it catches on fire and produces smoke." Then walks away. That was supposed to make us feel better? We white knuckled-it all the way home, and I was popping Xanax like they was sweettarts. We got home safely, vowing never to fly again.

Please understand, this wasn't REALLY the most interesting thing to ever happen to me.

[SaveElmer]

4. Jesse Helms story

When I was in College I was an elevator operator in the Capitol. Sometimes when there were late sessions of the Senate we would have to stay until they ajourned. Well things can get kinda boring in the basement of the capitol that late at night, so when there was no one around we would play frisbee in the hall until we got called to make a pick up. So one night we were doing this and the Senator Only elevator gets called and the operator goes up to get whoever it is. We could see it coming back so we hid the frisbee and went back to our stations. The elevator door opened and no one came out for a second. Then all of a sudden Jesse Helms jumps out and yells "Give me the Frisbee, I want the frisbee." I had it at the time so I tossed it to him, and he spent the next 10 minutes playing frisbee in the hall with Jesse Helms. When we were done he went down to the snack shop and bought all of us an Ice Cream sandwich. He really was a nice guy.

Also once I was on the little tram between the capitol and office buildings and he was sitting across from me. I had just started and didn't know who he was so he started talking to me. He asked where I was from and I told hiuim Minnesota. He said the last time he had been in Minnesota was 1978 for Hubert Humphreys funeral. I told him HH was my hero, and he said that he thought Hubert Humphrey was one of the greatest Americans ever. When I found out later who he ws it I was kind of surprised by that statement.

hard to believe such a kind person could have had such neanderthal political beliefs!

[Bossy Monkey]

5. Ok, 4 down, 6 to go. I want 10!

Gimme your Dramas in Real Life. (Actually, I'm sure everybody'd prefer if you give your comedies in real life, but define "interesting" however you choose.) C'mon now!

[Nikia]

6. I don't know if this is interesting enough

It was a little over a year ago since I went to my first rock concert. Anyway, my husband and two of my friends all went togther. We got to the parking lot about an hour before they were letting people in so we would have a decent parking spot. Anyway, my friend lit up a joint and passed it to all of us. I hadn't been smoking very long and it was my first time smoking outside a private home. My friend offered some to the people in the next car. They turned him down, got out of their car, and talked to a security person who came walking over to my friend's van. I got really scared and paranoid. I thought for sure that he was going to take our tickets and detain us for the police. I was even more freaked out when he yelled "What's going on here?" My friend said "Nothing, we're just chilling out." The security guy yelled "No, you were smoking pot, weren't you." I was about ready to puke. Then he said "Can I have a hit?" He brought my friend a cd and some guitar picks for sharing with him.

[bleedingheart]

7. One Halloween in college

I was dressed as a bellydancer and I was pretty intoxicated. I went into a place called Primanti Bros in Oakland and the guy behind the counter dared me to dance on the bar.. (he thought I wouldn't)...but I did...
After I was done he fed my friends and me for free...

I have many stories I could tell but that is the tamest... I will wait to put the others in a very smutty book.

[XNASA]

8. I've got a few I can't decide on one.

1. Story Musgrave-Story was one of the greatest astronauts ever. He had been the oldest man in space before John Glenn went up on the Shuttle. Anyway, I was working on a voice-over project with Story at JSC the day of the 10th Anniversary of the Challenger disaster. There was a ceremony and a fly-by that Story and I attended together. I'll always remember that day.

2. I once mic'd up Walter Cronkite.

3. I performed in from of 35,000 people. That'll be etched in my memory until I die, I'm sure.

[felonious thunk]

9. A short one

Driving to visit my parents one day.
There's an area where 2 lanes merge into one.
I see a car racing, very very fast to beat me to the merge.
I get pissed, drive in the middle of the lanes.
All the while flipping off the car behind.
Car follows me all the way to my parents house.
Parks right behind me.
"Um, hey dad. So, um, I guess that's the new car."

felonious thunk

[Wcross]

19. ROTFLMAO!!!! n/t

[monkeyboy]

10. I won a car

I went to Disneyland for their 35th anniversary (I didn't even know it was their anniversary) and they were giving away a car a day. So these rude little bastards stepped in front of us at the ticket counter, and I was going to say something but decided not to. They got the next 2-3 tickets off of the stack, and the next one on the stack was given to my daughter. It was the grand prize winner, which we found out when we went to turn it in at Main Street where there was this huge birthday cake that came up out of the ground when we put the ticket into a big slot machine and pulled the handle. Lights, music blaring, pretty cool. Geo Tracker. Drove that baby until it had almost 200 grand on the odometer.

[AWD]

11. Having spent 15 years in radio....

....my stories can multiply, so I'll give you an old favorite.

I was late getting in from Chicago, and I had an interview set up with Courtney Love. Hole was in town with Lollapalooza, and I was speeding towards Cleveland, having spent a long weekend seeing the Thrill Kill Kult.

I got to the backstage area 15 minutes late, and was met in the hallway by Hole's road manager (who had the coolest Scottish accent). I was informed that Courtney was in no mood, and it would be a bad idea to interview her, since I'd kept her waiting. From the next room, I could hear her bitching about it too, loudly.

I'd heard enough, and I leaned into the next room and yelled "Settle down, Yoko!"

The look on her face told me to do one thing....run. So I ran. And ran.

Later that afternoon, I was interviewing Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth, and was looking over my shoulder frequently for fear of an ass-kicking. Kim Gordon noticed my distraction and asked about it. So I told the satory, and halfway into, I was met with a "THAT WAS YOU? COOL!

Apparently Courtney and Sonic Youth's manager had a little fight a couple of days earlier, and I became a semi-icon for the rest of the day.

See...I was a subversive element LONG ago.

[Bossy Monkey]

12. Jeff's new campaign slogan? "Settle down, Yoko!" (n/t)

[Aristus]

13. The First Gulf War.

You didn't say fun, or funny,or uplifting......just interesting. I was stationed at King Khalid Military City, this sprawling base in the middle of nowhere. We hosted British and Egyptian troops, as well as American troops. And we underwent a Scud missle attack. Well, it was interesting to me.

[GOPisEvil]

14. My friend, his C-5, his gun and the box of cookies. (2 stories)

A good friend of mine was a USAF Reservist, a C-5 crew chief. One fine night, he's parked on the runway at the airfield there in Saudi. The missile alarms start going off. He decides (in a sleep-deprived stupor) that he's closing up the aircraft to seal it from gas. Well, in doing so, he also turned on the navigational lights. Ooops. The SPs arrive, tell him to open up. He refuses, hiding in the dark with his side arm. Finally, his CO is called and he opens up. He was sent for a little R&R after that. :7

Next story. Same friend, same aircraft, same airfield. Crews were told to be on the lookout for suspicious packages. Well, after transporting troops, my friend was doing post-flight inspections and found a box, wrapped in unmarked, plain brown paper. He deicdes he doesn't want to be blown to bits, so he calls the OED (the bomb squad). They come out in their protective gear (in the HEAT), get the package, soak it and open it to find...chocolate chip cookies. They were not amused.

:-)

[Bossy Monkey]

15. Okee, that's ten. Here goes!

I was 17. I took French in high school entirely because the French teacher also owned a travel agency and took a group every year on a summer study tour of France. Fortunately, as junior year wound to a close, my folks agreed to pony up for the trip and I was set to spend much of a summer in France.

One of the special aspects of Mrs Palyok's study tour was a home stay of 8 or 10 days. I took mine in Mulhouse in Alsace with the Madignier family. They were good eggs, and as their English was even worse than my French, I learned about as much French as I ever did in class. They had five kids ranging from about 10 to about 18, and a little dachsund called Yaqui. They had a phenomenally lovely apartment that was either carved out of a mansion or part of an apartment building that looked convincingly like a mansion.

They took their meals together, and tended to show off regional specialities for me. That thing with the sausage and the sauerkraut? Alsatian, definitely. One night, Mme. Madignier served a meal where the main dish was a pleasantly seasoned meat. Naturally I asked what kind of meat it was and she shrugged and just said meat. At this point, unfortunately, the thought popped into my head: "Where's the dog?" I went completely into hysterics, just choking with laughter. I eventually just had to claim that a "blague americaine" had popped into my head, and generally was able to calm myself down.

My folks said when I told them later that I probably could have told my French parents "ou est le chien?" without creating an international incident, but I'm glad I didn't try it.

Sorry to take you all that way for such a weak payoff, and if it's a "You had to be there" kind of story. But damn it was funny at the time, and I still laugh almost a quarter century later.

[wickerwoman]

16. Not really that interesting or dramatic,

but one spring weekend I was taking the bus from upstate New York back to New Jersey. I was walking from the Port Authority to Penn Station in NYC and ducked into the Tir na Nog on 8th Ave hoping to sneak in and use the bathroom before anyone noticed. I opened the inner door and the Chieftans were sitting there with all their instruments out and there was all this film equiptment sitting around. I sort of froze not knowing what to do and the older guy with the long beard said "In or out, love." So I went in and stood in the back behind a bunch of tables that had been moved out of the way. They were filming a commercial for St. Patrick's day and I got to listen to and watch the Chieftans and some of the cast of Riverdance go through five or six takes. By then I really, really needed to pee and I was afraid to push my luck by asking for the bathroom so I just walked back out again. As soon as I was gone, I heard them lock the door behind me but no one said anything while I was there.

[Snow]

17. Old Peace Corps meets the US air force story...

Early 70's and I was set to vote for McGovern against the Trickster. Only problem was, I was in the pleasant town of Hwasoon in South Cholla province, Korea - working for the Peace Corps and the Korean Ministry of health. So I wrote back home for the old absentee ballot, it came fine, and I went in to the provincial capital, Kwangju, where I thought to go to the local arm of the US government & vote. Said local arm was one of those USAID libraries. Got in there, the functionary informed me that
a) he was not a notary
b) this was deliberate, because
c) this library was for Koreans, not Peace Corps volunteers
d) if he was a notary, Peace Corps volunteers would be coming in wanting to vote all the time and being nuisances. At the time, there were five Peace COrps volunteers in the entire province.

So he informed me that I had to go to the US air force base out the other side of town. By now it's getting kinda late in the day, it's Friday & I had taken the afternoon off from the health center to do this. So I hop on a bus, trundle out to the base, and approach the front gate. I informed the guy at the gate what I was there for, and he said "Oh, that'll be Capt. so-and-so. I hope he's still around; it's late in the day." He makes a phone call & a jeep appears. I hop in, and off we roll to Capt so-and-so's office.

In the office, the captain is quite courteous, sits me down at a desk to mark my ballot. While I'm doing that, the driver, a 'sarge', chatted with the captain.

"How's it look out there, Sarge?"
"Pretty quiet, sir."
"Well, let's hope it stays that way."
"Yes sir."

Now there was some civil protest going on, and with good reason, but nothing that I thought worrisome. But here these guys were, inside their fence, thinking the world out there was pretty scary. I finished up my ballot, the captain checked my id, we did all the sealing bit, shook hands and said 'thank you' - then off I went with the sarge, back to the front gate, and out into the scary world of south Korea....

[darknemus]

18. This is going to seem 'out there'..

But I'll do my best to keep it as 'clean' as possible. However, it does qualify as the most 'interesting'.. at least from my perspective.

At the age of 18, I got a phone call @ 3 AM from a woman who asked me if I know how to give a good 'back massage' - I'm like "who is this" - she's like "just answer the question, craig" - (gulp, she knew my name.) Anyways, because I'm the adventurous type, I said yes.. got directions to her home.. went there.. (I was nuts, yes) - and didnt' leave her home for basically about 10 weeks, except to retrieve some clothes & various sundries.

Oh, for the record, she was 31 @ the time - and she had known me online and seen me around at a couple local BBS Get Togethers.. however, we really didn't have any direct interaction before this event.. but she knew of my.. 'quirks'.. and, well, I quickly became aware of hers.

Outside of that.. hmm.. well, I rode Space Mountain with the lights on.. I know.. no comparison.

-darknemus

[Bossy Monkey]

20. Welcome darknemus!

Shouldn't that be 9 1/2 weeks?

And kickage for further storyage

[Cheswick2.0]

21. There was this time in the pole vault pit at my high school

really, it was a glorious spring day.