Random True Story Thread

[ER]

Everybody's got a story, right? Maybe one about yourself or someone you know, maybe even something you've heard around, but if it's true and at least a little interesting, why not share it?


I'll start:

When my dad was in elementary school his teacher assigned the class a writing project called Treasures From Trash, in which they were supposed to write a famous person and ask them to please mail them back some small item from their daily lives that they might otherwise have discarded. My father wrote then-First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, and she sent him back a fountain pen she had used at her desk. Nice of her, wasn't it?


Next time (yes, I am copying you, Boy Scout Kevin) the story of the one and only fight I have ever gotten into...

[ER]

After taking my first psychology class in middle school, I suddenly started worrying that I might be a sociopath.

Though my default switch is set to “quiet” (never shy), with little effort I can be outgoing and charming and manipulative, like sociopaths are said to be. I also had a well-hidden vicious side. For instance, all I wanted to do when I played another girl tennis was beat her, and beat her badly, which better than 75% of the time, I did. No mercy or consideration for how she might feel about what I was doing to her, just game, set, match and I was one step closer on my path to the pro tour. It scared me and oppressed my thoughts so much I mentioned my fears to my dad while he was driving me to play one Saturday.

He didn’t laugh, but I could tell he wanted to. He said, “You’re supposed to want to win. But for the record you’re one of the most compassionate people I know. Plus you worry about everything. Sociopaths don’t worry about anything.”

I said yeah, but sociopaths can seem compassionate, they’re just acting that way because they love the praise things like that get them.

Dad asked, “Don’t you often do kind things no one knows about?”

“Well, yeah, I guess,” I conceded, “but sometimes I feel like a blank slate, or a mirror that just reflects back at other people what I think they want to hear. I’m kind of like a chameleon, and that’s scary.”

He said everybody does that sometimes, and I was young and who I was ultimately going to wind up being wasn’t fully formed.

I countered with something I read in the psychology class, that our personalities are set before we’re two.

Dad said people change all the time, Saul into Paul, bad Scrooge into good Scrooge, and who someone is at one moment isn’t who that person will be in the next.

I said, yeah, exactly, and maybe my full sociopathic transformation wasn’t complete.

He laughed then and said, “You’re no sociopath. Trust me. I wouldn’t sleep under the same roof with you if I thought you were one of those.”

So, okay, I wasn’t a sociopath, but I was sort of a psychological hypochondriac, being convinced before that class was through that I might also suffer from just about every condition we read about, from having a martyrdom complex, to being a paranoid schizophrenic, to being a pyromaniac, to being a victim of latent birth trauma, to being an egomaniac (ahem), to being a sex addict because I thought about boys a lot. But in the end I do think Dad was right, I don’t think I’m a sociopath, I just think I’m Joan of Ark.

[Trevor]

From the age of 5 - school in my home country of Zimbabwe started for us then - teachers would always tell my folks things like "Trevor is strange, doesn't talk much, doesn't interact much, reads and writes a lot, likes movies and sports" etc, etc. They would always comment on how I never seemed to pay attention in class but yet managed to pass tests and exams and they wondered how that was possible.

One teacher in my high school told me because I had a low IQ, I would never amount to anything and did not deserve to be there. 

Answer to all this: you [expletive deleted] teachers always wrote me off and I proved you wrong: I continue to do so, so  

[indianasmith]

One time we came in from an arrowhead hunting expedition and beached my boat while I went to change out of my wet clothes.  Ray was not paying attention and the boat drifted off; I didn't want my dry clothes to get wet, so I stripped naked and swam after the boat!

[ER]

For his seventy-fifth birthday in the spring of 1994 Carl Lindner, then-owner of the Cincinnati Reds, Great American Insurance, and much else, rented out the 1870s concert hall where the local symphony performs, and a private birthday party was held for him.

Without much fanfare or publicity, the performer for the event was none other than Frank Sinatra.

I was allowed to be backstage that night because a relative of mine was among the invited, and a college-age family friend who worked for the symphony was assigned to keep an eye on me, though it ended up being the other way around since he was flamboyant and outgoing and into everything and was a weekend drag queen to boot, a hilarious person.

So we were there backstage, and Frank Sinatra came out and stood behind the curtain, and I thought the guy with me was going to have some kind of heemie, and he politely and with groveling humility asked "Mr. Sinatra" if he could please have his autograph, and "Mr. Sinatra" obliged.

That in itself was cool (even if at that age I wasn't all that well-versed in who Frank Sinatra was....I knew my grandpa hated him for his conduct in WWII, but that's another story) but right before the introduction came and he went on stage, Sinatra turned around and told several of us standing there that they gave him a big relish tray in his dressing room that he didn't want and hadn't touched and we could help ourselves to it.

So while he was singing, a bunch of us, some backstage workers there, the guy who was supposed to be keeping me out of trouble, and of course myself, went and snacked on Frank Sinatra's relish tray.

Okay, NEXT TIME, the story of the one and only fight I ever got in in my life!

[indianasmith]

One day construction workers dumped a huge pile of fill dirt in the corner of the parking lot of the apartment I lived in during my first year of college. After a four inch rain, I walked by the pile and found a very nice spearhead sticking out of it!

[Chainsawmidget]

At my old job, I usually came in by myself to open. 

One day I came in, unlocked the door, went in, and inside the building, I saw a man standing there in the dark. 

I looked away for a second, looked again, and there was nobody there.  I searched the place, there was nobody in there and no way anybody could have gotten out with the keys.   

I'd heard my co-workers talk about the place being haunted before, but I hadn't given it much thought until then.  Needless to say, I felt really uneasy the rest of the day.

[ER]

One of my earliest memories that can be dated to a specific time happened on December 16, 1982. I was in the townhouse we were living in, with my mother, when we heard this sound of a plane flying fast and too low, basically right overhead, with that classic shrill diving sound you hear in war movies, then this immensely loud crash that sounded like a giant box being crushed, followed by sirens coming from what seemed like all directions.

It turned out a small plane carrying several FBI agents, a retired police officer, and a known embezzler were in route to the secret location where the embezzler had buried a substantial amount of cash, which he was in the process of turning over as part of a plea bargain, when for reasons unknown to this day, the plane took a nosedive right into a real pretty little house built in the early 1800s, destroying the house (somehow sparing those inside) and killing everyone on board in the single worst one-day disaster in FBI history.

That day and its sounds and the hustle it set off with rescue workers and reporters and police and closed roads and the rising rolls of smoke has stayed frozen in my mind for a third of a century now.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/this-week-in-cincinnati-history-location-of-embezzled-bank-money-lost-in-1982-plane-crash

[Chainsawmidget]

My earliest memory is going fishing with my dad in a small rowboat. 

I have no other memories of that boat even existing. 

[ER]

Back in the mid-70s my dad went to college in New York, and while there he met this cute girl from a Portuguese-American family whom he thought was sweet, and he started having certain feelings for her. (I think maybe my dad sort of went for foreign girls, my mother being Irish.)

Well one evening she was acting funny and said there was something she wanted him to know about her, and my dad said, oh yeah what's that, and she told him in late childhood she was demonically-possessed and underwent a prolonged process of exorcism.

She was absolutely utterly serious, and told him the story, how it began with her feeling watched and depressed, having sleepless nights because something would pinch her until she came awake. She said she heard voices telling her she was worthless and unwanted and unloved, how her mother wished she'd miscarried her instead of having yet another child, and it started making this girl physically sick to join in the family's nightly rosary praying, or to go to church, and one day when her father dragged her to Mass, she lost control of her bladder right there in the sanctuary doorway.

So I guess being a traditional Old World sort of family, instead of thinking the girl maybe had psychological problems, a priest was consulted and an old man who was an exorcist was brought in. He lived with the family for, as I remember Dad saying, weeks. He read the Bible every day there and prayed (always in Latin) and put holy oils and water on doorways and windows and floor vents, and made crosses with it on the family's foreheads, and had them fast some days and stop eating meat and stop watching television or listening to music, had them take communion nightly and set up a small altar in their living room, and I don't know what all else, prayed over the girl a lot and had her read long ritual prayers over and over, I think Dad said she told him.

And after a while the girl felt better and the demonic influence was said to have been "defeated." She slept fine again, went to church, stopped hearing the voices and stopped feeling self-destructive impulses.

So she turned to my dad and said (in what he said was a scared voice), "I thought you should know all this about me."

And upon hearing all this Dad didn't quite know what to think but he said he told her reassuring things about how, no, that didn't freak him out, and, yes, he believed her, and he was glad she was better now, and yeah, it was all cool.

And then he basically never went out with her again.

(Long before they were our parents, our parents were themselves once teenagers.)

So.....

[indianasmith]

One time when I was walking the lake shore, I found a note in a bottle.  I pulled it out and read it.  Its message went something like this:  "HELP!  We are stranded on a remote island and the Indians are surrounding us.  They will attack at dawn!"

The note was in a plastic Dr Pepper bottle and written in ball point pin, and the lake was a man-made reservoir only a couple miles wide, so I did not notify the authorities.

I hope the Indians were merciful.

[ER]

In 2003 I was playing tennis at this big complex of open courts, and to my left I heard these girls scream, and out of the corner of my eye I saw something explode into this big cloud of fluff, and it seems some bird chose the wrong moment to fly directly in front of this power server, and WHOMP, that was it. Poor thing. But what're the odds, y'know?

[indianasmith]

Ever see the video of a pigeon colliding with a Randy Johnson fastball?  Poor bird!

[ER]

So once upon a time, like, oh, I dunno, three days ago, I show up  at work and my boss tells me he's running off and marrying my mother, who is like fifty-six and looks like eighteen on her bad days, freak of nature, that woman.

I was like, yeah, okay, whatever, but be careful of her, she's flighty. Good luck, best wishes, yeah, put me in therapy again why doncha. (Head was spinning.)

So my boss was like, yeah, whatever, here, run the business for me til I get back from Ireland and parts unknown in a month. Then he kissed me goodbye and gave me the keys to his house, cause we're close you know, you might say he's like a father to me because he sort of is my father.

So I sat and stared a minute and thought, um, growing up with parents like these why again am I not an alcoholic, I wonder, instead of the stable, even-tempered person I am?

But okay, cool, fine, whatevs, Daddio, if she knocks you down for twenty-one years, get back up, that's the spirit that made America great.

So mad with power I kick out all but two interns, say here give me your sheets, I'll sign them, don't show up anymore, you get full credit, you're welcome, enjoy the summer, except for you Missy, who called me "ma'am" all the time, I'd fail you if I could.  "Ma'am" is my grandmother, you little worm. (I only said that in my head, fear not.)

Then I realize I don't just want to skate by in my father's absence, I want to elevate things to Olympian heights, so I ask my dead one-time fiance's father, this man who could sell ice to Eskimos, to come help me run the place, and he said oh sure, glad to help, nice of him considering I not long ago wished all manner of Hellish curses on him and spent twenty years ruing the day I saved his life around Christmas 1996, and...

Oh, wait, back up, back up. Oh, yeah, lest I forget, my four-year-old could have drowned yesterday, gray hairs, much, right?

So anyway, I walk in today, open the door, it's raining, I think, oh, nice, I like rain, Irish do not melt in rain, just sunshine, yaay rain, I'm happy for a minute in other words, shell-shocked about yesterday's pool-related mishap but happy, and I think I was humming Tonight, Tonight Billy Corgan's all-purpose time-travel back to high school ode to the 90's, or maybe it was Pepper by the Butthole Surfers, and out of the blue I get a call from the firm's lawyers, this paralegal, actually, who talks like she's from Wales, that almost West Indian-sounding accent Welsh people can have, you know the one? Bing it if you don't, it's a trip to hear, and oh sparkling, she wasn't for some reason calling to tell me hi, she said we've been handed this big hawking fine from Germany for violating some sort of cheesy overprotective policy or other by "unduely" severing the account of someone overseas whom we never met.

There was an undercurrent hint that just perhaps said firing had something to do with the firee's being a transsexual, which is balderdash, if you aren't comfortable with trannies, don't get in the art business, y'know? Couldn't have cared less that the dude dressed like Amanda Palmer in his off hours, his work didn't market, so that was the whole of it. (Germany is way overprotective of LGBT people right now, almost like they're making up for past issues with singling minorities out, but I guess it couldn't be that, could it?)

So I punched into Bing how much that fine's amount was in dollars, and I'm like, oh, not good.  I call my boss, from whom, don't forget, I get half my DNA, and he was like, just close the place down. Shut it down, I am not paying the Germans one dime over a hack artist whose work didn't sell. I was like yeah, well you're on your honeymoon in Ireland under her spell again and not thinking straight I am not shutting this place down. He was like yeah shut it down. I said don't you like your grandkids to have, you know, like food and stuff, and he said, do whatever then, I don't care, go work for your dead one-time fiance's father, didn't he offer you a better paying job, but do not cut any checks to the Germans.

So I was like yeah okay got it, no checks to Germany, but I am not closing down. He said that's fine, I don't care. (Oh, has she got him under her spell...) And he suddenly got narcotized cheery and pointed out that the new anniversary to punch in on my calendar is 7-16-16, which is almost numerically alliterative, don't you think?

Yeah, cool, dad, g'bye, whatever, thank you for dumping it all on me, have a good day in the Celtic Holy Land there.

Then my aforementioned dead fiance's father showed up looking like he just stepped out of a Brooks Brothers catalog, kind of made me do a double take, he's got those same gray-blue eyes and that just about creeps me out when it doesn't make me feel like crying because I loved his son so much, and right behind him comes our dear little Mormon intern, love that girl's German-meets-South Korean-meets motivated Jamaican work ethic, and I said welcome in, everybody, let's conquer the world, but first pay no heed while I proceed to bang my head on this desk.

My DOTF'sF was like oh what's wrong, um, "ER"?

Good question to ask actually, so I unloaded the full story of my last few days, absolutely ended up telling my dead fiance's father everything about everything and he said:

"1. don't pay the Germans, who cares, 2. be happy your father's so happy, plus give your mother the benefit of the doubt, maybe she'll be more stable this time, and 3. you should never again feel like anything that happens to you short of dismemberment is bad again, because your little girl didn't drown yesterday."

And he was totally right. I mean....yeah, she could have drowned and didn't. That's worth overlooking everything else.

Which brings me around to this: my little girl did not drown, and I am thankful for that, so thankful I will say it in non-prose form:

These are the things to cherish,
A seed and a dream and a child,
Else must the nations perish, and earth fall away to the wild...

I hope everyone has a brilliant day, I love you all: yes, even you!

[indianasmith]

Now THAT was a full day, my friend!!!