Your best Stories

Post your long winded "Stories" here.... you know those ones you you usually end up telling after a few beers. I have a few of them.

The Thief

There is this scrawny little guy that was friends with a neighbor and he was frequently around. I'm in the kitchen making a late night snack and my brother is out on the front porch steps sitting with his wife somewhat in the shadows. Now my brother is a pretty big guy, if you have met me except for the face you'd never think we were brothers.

This scrawny little guy comes walking down the sidewalk AND starts to look in the back of my brothers truck. His wife goes to say something but my brother gets her to be quiet so he can he watch what he's going to do. The guy ends up opening his door and then all hell breaks lose. So here I am in the kitchen and all of sudden I hear all this commotion, they made it around the side of the house which is where I met up with them. All I see is my brother has got hold of this screaming to let him go.. I'm like WTF you doing....

I get the story and we call the cops, while we are waiting for the cops the guy is dropping stuff out of his pockets. Screwdriver, sunglassses etc. The guy wriggles from my brothers hold and starts running. He trips on the sidewalk and smashes his head off the ground really good, he was half drunk at the time. When the cops get there they throw him in the back of the cruiser, the obvious question come up what happened to his head.... "Well officer he tripped and fell"... which of course was the truth. The officer gives us a wink and we're saying "No He really tripped and fell".

In the meantime we hear this clatter near the cruiser, apparently the guy had a pocket full of stuff and was trying to get rid of it, in any event he went to jail as he apparently was doing this to a lot of people over a few weeks. I can tell you it was great satisfaction to see him getting carted away.

So last summer some friends of mine and I meet to ride mountain bikes in the Rothrock SF SE of State College. This is an all weekend event planned for over the previous eight months. Four of us arrived Thursday and rode that evening. Another rider got there Friday AM. After gathering some food and our individual needs for a long day in the saddle we take off around 09:00. About three hours into the ride we break for photos and food/fluids at a fire tower.

The trail options from there are numerous and the ride "leader" opts for a run down a trail he believes is the premier run in that section of the forest. Off goes everyone while I decide to ride "mother goose"-last in line. A note: I was the only rider on what we refer to as a "fully rigid" bicycle...no suspension at all other than large tires. After about ten minutes the trail makes an abrupt left turn and pitches straight down the fall line of the ridge. I pick a line and *slowly* guide my bike into certain death.

Before I even realize what's going on I'm going OTB (over the bars). WHAM!! I slam into a rock pile I didn't even know was there. I extricate myself from the pile of human and steel when it dawns on me that I'm bleeding from above my right eye, and nose. Then I notice that my right eye is shut and I cannot open it.

Uh oh.

"Hey guys, I'm gonna need a hand here. I just broke my nose and dinged my head," I yell down the trail. The guy riding just in front of me was about 70 meters down hill and the first back. His first reaction was to say, "Bud, you netter hope the only thing wrong is a broken nose. You have a stick hanging out of your eye socket. You better sit down and we'll get help to get you out of here."

Bless Geordie for his calm.

By this point the remainder of the guys are there. A phone is produced that has a signal, 911 is called, GPS coordinates to the nearest road is given, and I begin stumbling down the trail holding on tot he pack of another guy-Rip.

Bless Rip for his fortitude and patience.

After around two hours I am at the first ambulance crew that has climbed up about a third of the mountain to meet me. This is after Rip and I loose the trail a couple of times inside a deer exclosure area grown up like some primordial forest. The EMTs get an IV of normal saline running, bottled (and cool) oxygen on my moosh, and we cut a water bottle in two to cover the stick so it doesn't snag on the remainder of the trip out of the woods.

Cooled oxy and electrolytes entering my system were a godsend. I calmed some, and my respirations dropped to a more normal rate. The second fire company brings there 6-wheel Gator up to me and they back board me onto it. I ride out to the first ambulance. Elapsed time from crash to this point is sitting at around 2:45.

Twenty minute ride in A/C down the forest roads to Rte. 322 where thay have closed a section of the east bound side for the helicopter.

Did I mention the helicopter?

The three medical facilities in State College pre-advised teh EMTs that I should go directly to Geisinger Med. Ctr. in Danville. They would have the trauma staff and surgeons to handle this sort of thing.

Uh oh, again.

Forty-five minutes in a helo (whereupon I spewed vomitous all over the bulkhead and attendant after he administered morphine during flight). They would have needed a fire hose to clean it.

Present at the ER at Geisinger. First nurse to see the wound from under it's cover actually shuddered and gasped some.

Uh oh, again.2

Off to radiology for pictures, CT scans, MRI, and angiograms. Back to ER for waiting game. A nurse sometime around 18:00 (now around 5.5 hours after the crash) asks if anyone is coming to the hospital for me. At this point I realize that I need to call my wife back here in Ohio. Call placed, sit. rep. made, panic assuaged, she gathers kids and gets her mother over to bring her to Danville.

At around midnight I'm wheeled into OR. I wake up some time later with my wife hovering over me at 04:00 Sat. She, to her credit, is neither angry nor visibly scared. Fatigued, and concerned about my health, but not overly so. We establish that she and her mother are getting a room locally and getting some shut-eye. I'm so groggy it's ridiculous. Some hours later (the sun was up) they return and ask for directions to the Rothrock SF where the car is. "How do we get there from here?"

"In a helicopter, that's how I got here. I don't have a clue where I even am other than it's Danville." At least that's what my wife has told me I said. I'll have to take her word for it as I can be sarcastic like that. Her mother had her lap top (why???) and the hosppital has WI-Fi! Log on, click our way to PA DCNR site, Bureau of Forestry page, Rothrock SF, camp sites, number 6, print a map with directions.

Off they go.

In walks two residents that were among the four surgeons the previous night/morning. They are both wicked concerned about my case.

More uh-oh moments.

I am whisked down to the ophthalmologists, Dr. Ullrich, office. He removes the bandage and tries to examine the eye. Back to the room. By around 14:00 my wife returns with our car and most of my gear (her mother took the other stuff with her. I meet with the same two docs that came earlier, we discuss options, nad decide to discharge as there was nothing they could do until the following Tuesday b/c of edema. Scripts written and filled locally, papers printed, wheeled out I am for a long ride home.

You know, I never thought to ask them for the stick.

ugg gruesome. I take it your all healed up now. I had a friend in school who lost his eye in a go kart accident. They left his severed eye (slit in to) for over a week before they removed it. It was bad.

Well I guess I'll share a small story. Its was January 13th 1992. It was 75 degree's and I was going for a motorcycle ride. I cracked the throttle and passed three cars on a straight and noticed a Ford F-150 about to turn on the road the same direction as me. About a mile down the road I looked in my mirror and about a 1/4 mile behind me I see this F-150 passing those three cars. O *censored*, He's after me! Who is it! I take off. Go about two miles put my turn signal on (not know why) Jacked the brakes to make a quick turn on to this street. I hear a whack. Then I see grass then the blue sky then grass then blue sky then asphalt. I land in a gas station parking lot and jump right up and look over and see my bike going down the highway with out me and a F-150 on its ass. Bike goes in ditch and doesn't even fall over, F-150 takes off. My left arm is numb and I see that my arm isn't pointed the way it should be. I yell at a person pumping gas to call 911. I sit there waiting for an ambulance and the deputy sheriff pull in. They ask if I need an ambulance and I said yes. They are taking details from me and the F-150 pulls in. One goes over to the driver and I can clearly see they know each other. About 15 minutes go by and I ask where the ambulance is. O you wanted an ambulance? Within three minutes of them calling for it. The ambulance shows up. I get a ride to the er. They took my shirt off and my elbow is deformed. I had to wait for three days for surgery for the swelling to go down. The state police show up to question me in the hospital, It seems I spiked my brakes on the truck and didn't have any turn signal on according to the driver of the f-150. It seems he's also a deputy sheriff. I told the Trooper to go look at my bike that the signal was on and it probably still is. So long story short everything turned out ok for me. The driver of the truck was suspected of being drunk. Which I think he was but nothing came out of it. I think he dumped his booze before coming back to the scene of the accident. On a side note I got about 30 grand off his insurance company (Which I drank away! I was 20!) and he got his third DUI and fired from his job. Seen him getting arrested by the City Police.

Around 2000 my sister in law had a Honda dual sport motorcycle. My neice was about 15 at the time. They lived in northern NJ on a nice wooded side street with a small lake just a couple hundred yards behind their house. Between the lake and their house is an old railroad bed that goes almost straight past the lake and into the woods. There's miles and miles of mountainous trails up there, I call it quad country.
We decided to take a ride through the woods, it was almost dark. I was in a bad mood due to a thankless job working for a plumbing company. She got on the back of the bike, in bare feet, pajama bottoms. Neither one of us had a helmet. We went up the railroad bed and I was jumping on it. I took a side trail that came out on a paved road. I opened it up and went around a curve at maybe 40 mph. Well, my neice didn't know how to lean with the driver and she leaned the opposite way of the turn. This pulled the bike off the road and onto the dirt shoulder and the bike went down. She went past me over the handlebars on the left, the bike slid on its side past her and stopped on the other side of the road 50 yards in front of me. I was thrown into the woods and landed on my back. I wasn't knocked out, but the whole thing was totally surreal. Slow motion. I got up and ran to her, she was sitting on the road side doubled over. She had the wind knocked out of her and was OK soon. She had a puncture wound on her right calf but it wasn't bleeding bad.
I ran to the bike and uprighted it, the throttle was bent around, I franticly tried to start the bike. It started and I told her to get on, we had to get out of there. I was scared cops would come and all kinds of problems would happen. She refused to get on the bike and told me to get her father.
I rode that bike all the way back, less than a mile, and ran up on my brother's deck and told them what happened. They got in their mini-van and went around and picked her up. They took her to the emergency room and waited hours. She was OK.
I went home feeling unbelievably horrible. I could have killed my neice. My back took a hit and it was starting to hurt. I had to sleep on a recliner for quite a few days. Sometimes that injury comes back to roost if I lift something wrong.

If there are guardian angels or divine intervention, that was the day for it. I was thrown into a patch of leaves by the roadside, missing a telephone pole, trees, rocks. An angel must have got a hold of me and set me down.
My sister in law sold that bike soon after. I have lost the desire to ride since that day. Previously, I had restored and ridden a dozen old bikes over the years.

cArNaGe wrote:ugg gruesome. I take it your all healed up now. I had a friend in school who lost his eye in a go kart accident. They left his severed eye (slit in to) for over a week before they removed it. It was bad.

The eye itself is intact. It's blind as there was apparently some optic nerve damage. Image forms well on the retina but doesn't make it to visual cortex for processing. I have two surgeries left (at least) for reconstruction of the eye lids and sclera, and bones of the orbit.

crazy stories

5 or 6 years ago, toward the end of my Mom's life she came and lived with us. She had a stroke and a heart attack and spent 2 weeks in the hospital. Neither was too serious, but for one reason she could no longer live alone. Her "pill rememberer" died. She really did quite well for a long time as long as we made sure she took her pills. For a couple years she puttered around, cooked, knitted, went & played cards with her friends twice a week and once a month the card game was held here. Church came to us each Sunday for communion. Time went on, she started to fail. Maybe a mini stroke or two, but slowly but surely she went downhill. It came a point that we had to cut her food up for her as her arthritic hands didn't work as well. We bought her an automatic card shuffler. Finally came a day she had an episode during a card game....her last card game outside the house. Her friends came here more often, but then, sadly, she had to give that up. Over the next two months she got weaker, weaker. We had to feed her. Her food went from pre-cut, to cereal, to baby food, then she stopped eating. Four or five days later she was so weak she could not sip water from a straw. We knew she would die within two or three days. The night she could not sip water we dripped water into her mouth with a washcloth. My wife & I went to sleep at about 1AM. At 4:30AM we get awakened by a noise. What the?? Mom is in the kitchen making herself a peanut butter sandwich. HONEST! From that moment she did not sleep for almost 48 hours. Finally she started hallucinating and ended up in the hospital. While there she had another heart attack, another stroke. She spent over 2 weeks but finally got strong enough so we could bring her home. She remembers nothing since the last card game, but told us "God wasn't ready for me". Over the next three months she got stronger, begged to go play cards. This whole thing still blows me away when I think back to it. Mind you, she's 82 or 83 yrs old at this point. Everything reversed, she got steadily stronger, started caring for herself. A year later she moved back to her old house! She begged for her car back. I told her if the Dr said OK, OK. Each month we'd go to the Dr & she'd ask "can I drive"? I sat behind her mouthing "NO!". The Dr would say no. Finally after 6 months when she asked the Dr, he looked at me & I shrugged my shoulders. He told her "Have Freddy take you to an open parking lot & see how you do." After a month of lessons so to speak, we allowed her daylight use of the car. She was so happy, she could get her own groceries again, not have to have me take her to card games twice a week. She lived by herself & did pretty well for another year or so, then came another stroke. Back to us she came for the final time. Over the following year we went through the same steps as before, but this time, come a certain day, when we went to bed at 1AM, we cried as we laughed "Is there peanut butter and bread for Mom? Oh gosh, tears are running down my face as I type..... Mom did not surprise us this time. The next afternoon, with almost every living family member by her side she slipped peacefully away on April 29. 2007.

The story continues just a little. Mom's chair stayed empty for exactly 4 days. The day of her funeral we got word that my wife's Mom was ill. She took over the chair and the hospital bed and has been with us ever since. We got her strong enough to "live a normal life" for over a year, but now is starting to go downhill. Just this week we're having to go behind her with the walker as sometimes her legs give out. It wouldn't surprise us if she died this week, but it also wouldn't surprise us if she lived several more years.

In August of 1989 my neighbor, good friend of 10 years & dive buddy Ernie & I decided to do a beach dive off of White Horse Beach in Manonemt Mass. I was 42 yrs old at the time & Ernie had just turned 50. We had been diving this area for many years for lobster & felt very comfortable there. It was low tide & typically our dive ended up being in 40’ or less at their deepest. We followed our normal routine of suiting up on the beach, tossing our "bug bags" & masks into our inner tubes (with round laundry baskets tied beneath & dive flags affixed to them) we had devised to make the leisurely surface swim out to the area where we would descend, about 1/2 mile from shore.
The dive was totally routine & at one point Ernie tapped me on the shoulder to point to a golf ball in his bug bag that he had picked up off the bottom.....amazed to find one out this far from the beach!
I must confess that Ernie & I had made so many dives together, felt so confidant in each other's dive ability & the fact that we didn't want to be fighting over the same lobsters that we tended to follow the "Same Ocean" buddy diving technique. (For those not familiar with that technique it states that as long as you & your buddy are in the same ocean...at the same time...you are buddy diving!)
Anyway, Ernie always towed his float behind him while I, always a little paranoid about getting tangled in the float's line, tended to anchor mine where we first headed down. About 30 minutes into the dive I surfaced to spot Ernie's float & noticed that he was about 75 yards farther out to sea..…..& headed out. He never used a compass so I swam over to his float & followed the line down to him where I pointed to my compass & pointed to the direction of the beach recommending that we start to head back in. Ernie nodded his head & we started back in.
As usual, we met at my anchored float & started to swim back to the beach. We usually threw our bug bags (now filled with lobster & seaweed) into the inner tube for the swim back. This time, as my bag was only partially filled & I had quite a bit of air left, I decided to continue lobstering on the way in while Ernie swam in on the surface on his float. By now we were in roughly 20' of water & I could see Ernie swimming leisurely in on his float as I continued lobstering on the bottom. After probably 5 minutes or so I had lost sight of Ernie & headed up for the surface. When I surfaced (expecting to see Ernie on his float.... swimming in) I was about 50 yards behind him & could barely make out his empty tube with a black object floating next to it. I swam over, expecting to find him looking down at something while snorkeling on the surface, but instead found Ernie floating on his back, mask gone, unblinking eyes wide open & unconscious! (For a split second I thought he may be joking around but that was something neither one of us ever did while diving) This whole scene probably took place in seconds but things seemed to happen in slow motion.......As things began to solidify in my mind that this was really happening, I noticed that while he was floating on his back, both his nose & mouth where under slightly so I raised him up in the water, tried to perform mouth-to-mouth & started to swim him back to shore. (Years ago I had taken a Red Cross life saving program & was trying to remember the correct things to do)
The swim in took me about 15-20 minutes during which I would stop regulary & again try mouth-to-mouth ...to no avail. (If any diver has ever tried doing mouth-to-mouth, for real, in the open ocean, without being trained as a rescue diver, you know how difficult it is!)
Anyway, I headed for a bunch of rocks off to the south side off White Horse Beach as the closest exit from the sea. By this time, someone (who must have been watching our ordeal from a house overlooking the scene or from the beach) had called the police who, along with EMT’s were already on the beach waiting for us to make it in. When we finally made it to the rocks, a small aluminum runabout (evidently flagged down & sent over to us by the police) came crashing into the rocks to drag Ernie & I out of the water & speed us back to the beach, to the waiting EMT’s.
The EMT’s worked on Ernie for about 5 minutes on the beach (shocking him & trying anything they could to revive, again to no avail. They transported us both to Jordan Hospital where, after a few more desperate attempts to revive him, Ernie was pronounced dead.
Autopsy revealed that Ernie's heart was in very bad shape & the doctors told me the same thing would have happened to him one day, mowing the lawn.

So the date is 9-11-2001. A day that started for me as any other day. I am at work and hear on the radio that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. I think man, that really sucks (assuming it is a small private plane) and wondering what my friends that worked there were doing and if they had seen it happen and figured they were okay. Some time goes by and I then hear that it was a commercial airliner that has struck. I am numb now not knowing what to think other than "oh no I have friends that work in the WTC". I have this sick feeling something is very wrong. I don't remember too much after that other than another plane strikes and the first tower falls. My daughter calls me...........she is scared and asking me what she should do. I have no idea what to tell her. She then says "Dad are you okay"? I tell her "yeah I'm okay". She then says "you have some friends that work there don't you"? I remember saying "yes I do" and telling her she should come home (she was in college about an hour from here).
I then remember thinking of my friends and feeling like I could throw up. I make some calls. I manage to get voicemail for one of them and leave a message to please call me and let me know he is okay. I have a very very bad feeling. The call never comes. I find out a few days later that all three had been killed. That day I became a changed man.

(This may not be my "best story" however it is the one that has the most profound change on me forever).



That's all I have to say about that.

My folks divorced in 1957, after that my brother and I spent winters going to school in Florida and summers with our other parent. We traveled the country alone just him and I for four summers by airplane train and Greyhound moving between parents.

The most memorable trip was the second year when we traveled from Florida to New York by train (the first year was ok, we flew in a Lockheed Electra from south Florida to Albany New York).

I was 8 years old and my brother was 6, we spent 3 days traveling up the coast under the charge of the conductor. My mother forbid us to act up and not get into mischief but what were two boys going to do to amuse themselves. The train seemed like it was about 40 miles long and we explored every inch of it from the caboose and baggage cars to as far toward the engine that we could go.

My brother was intrigued by the sign in the bathrooms not to flush in the station. The conductor told us that the contents of the toilet dropped onto the tracks so of course we had to test it. We took turns getting off the train and looking under the car while the other flushed the toilet just to see this mysterious operation. Oh the things that will amuse a young mind. The conductor caught us and threatened to tie us into our seats.

On the second day of our journey my brother disappeared after we had breakfast. I was the older responsible brother any was charged with watching him but anybody that has a younger brother knows how that goes. Around noon he showed up, when I asked him where he had been. He told me that he found a bunch of dogs in one of the rear cars and had been playing with them and took me back to show me. He had let them all loose and the dogs were having a grand time with their freedom. We didn’t get caught but the conductor figured it was us and threatened us again with confinement.

It has been a long time and I am sure my memory embellished the memories a lot but we sure had fun. The only bad thing that happened to us was my brother lost his Roy Rogers wallet with his small sum of money. After we returned home a package arrived for my brother, it was his wallet with a note from the conductor. The conductor had removed 25 cents for the postage, he said it was a memorable trip but he never spilled the beans on us.

I have often asked my mother if she was trying to get rid of us but all she ever said was anybody that took us would bring us back quick

I was living in Boynton Beach, Fla. in 1980. My girlfriend and I were renting a house and would go for walks on the beach almost every night. There was a parking area parallel to the beach, and a pavillion. Scattered street lights kept the area illuminated, but you could really see the stars over the dunes and down on the beach. A few people were usually around.
One warm breezy night we were strolling close to the surf and looking up at the night sky. I noticed a satellite moving across the sky coming from the southeast. I pointed this out to Linda and said, "Look at that. What you see is the sunlight reflecting off the shiny surface of the satellite. Look at the straight line it is going in! It's in orbit and will reappear in about 45 minutes as it circles the Earth."
If you have ever seen a satellite in orbit, this was totally typical. It had the brightness of a star, and just appeared to be in orbit around the Earth.
We were both looking up at it, and it instantly veered off at an acute angle, a couple of times, and shot off out of sight. It appeared to have accellerated to thousands of miles an hour. This all took place within less than thirty seconds. We left the beach that night astonished. To this day I just have to say there is no way to explain what we saw.
My nephews and neices laugh out loud every time I tell the story to somebody that hasn't heard it. They have heard it so many times they lip sync it when I'm telling it. 27 years later, I reported the sighting to MUFON, and heard from the Florida Director of Mufon, lol. I've met a couple of people that have seen them in the American Southwest. I make no claims other than what I just described, just can't explain it!

Dann757 wrote:I was living in Boynton Beach, Fla. in 1980

My Mother-in-law lives off Military Trail in Boynton Beach. (love the orange juice at The Boys market) Where did you live?

Your not crazy Dann757, I grew up looking at the most powerful radio station in the world. We saw many odd things at night. Cant explain it even with todays aircraft.

Kevin

Oh ya! I have a UFO story. One hot, humid, summer night, Four couples, four street bike motorcycles out for a ride. We stopped on top of "Kings Mountain" just 3 miles from here. We parked under a radio tower & we are just shootin' the bull. One of us noticed and said "what's that?" We all turned to look. From that instant not a word came from any of us. Each of us was so overwhelmed we were speechless.... a large orange yellow light came over the top of the mountain off to one side. It was not over us, it was level with us as it came around the mountain. It was hard to tell the size, but it was not just a light, it was clearly a lighted object, mostly round, but thinner of the edge. It wavered, dropped, stopped for an instant, went back up a bit, then progressed forward again. One more time it slowed, dropped, hovering, then progressed forward. This took place over a 15 or 20 second time period. Then... then... it sped up, we could now hear it and see it more clearly.... it was a jet coming in toward the airport. At the instant we all felt pretty foolish, we also realized.... all of us, each and everyone, without word, without realizing the others had done it, all of us were crouched, nearly on the ground, one knee touching, one or both hands on the Earth, hiding as best we could behind our motorcycles. I'll tell you what, if that airplane had gone without us identifying it, I would be swearing to my dying day that what we saw was not from this world.