So, as you know, when I was a high school student I went on an exchange program to Tokyo. All the students bound for Japan convened in Los Angeles, for an orientation and a get together the night before our flight. We had fun, talking and meeting each other, preparing for our long soujourn, and in the morning we boarded the flight over to Narita from LAX. The trip is ten hours long, so aside from drawing comics, I had to find some way to occupy my time. Luckily, the boy sitting next to me, a preppy but good natured kid, was really into movies, so we started to talk about film. Realizing that we were both planning on film school after we graduated we struck up a friendly conversation, me explaining that I had gotten accepted into the animation program at Pratt, he, looking forward to life at New York University. We read, slept, talked, and drew, and before we knew it, we were stepping onto the tarmac on the other side of the world.
Fast forward over a year. I am now a Freshman at New York University, having decided that the big, academically oriented college of Tisch was more my dream than the Art School in Brooklyn. On our first day, groups of us were given single use cameras and sent to different neighborhoods to take pictures that would be used to create a narrative. I am therefore walking with a bunch of people down a street in Little Italy, snapping pictures and chatting away. Something is nagging at the back of my mind, however. My brain is seeming to play tricks on me, because the guy in front of me keeps drawing my attention for no conceivable reason. As I stare at the back of his head I wonder: Where on Earth do I know him from? Apparently, it's not just me, because suddenly he whirls around and says, "I know I know you from somewhere! Where?" We stare at each other for a minute and suddenly it clicks: Once upon a time, I spent ten hours sitting with him on the way to an adventure.
Another Small World Story:
In Chiba, at the week long exchange student camp, I met this boy who was just there for the summer. He was super quiet and shy, but really cute, and Rei-chan and I liked to hang out with him. After the summer, I moved in with his former host family, as my previous family could not keep me anymore. They were very nice, and would talk to me and show me pictures of their other exchange students. (I love that family, and consider them like an adopted branch of my own relations.) The next fall, freshman year at NYU again, I was sitting in Japanese class, and had the same confused feeling of deja vu come over me. When I recognized the kid sitting next to me, I jumped up and said his name really loudly, followed by "My long long brother!" In the ensuing moments, there was much confusion before he remembered Exchange Student camp and learned of my host family switch. We remained friends after that.
Tonight, at a bar on a cruise ship, after my show:
Passenger: "Where in England are you from?"
Me: "I was born in Kent, but lived most of my life in the North East, mainly North Yorkshire and County Durham. I now live in Berlin."
Passenger: "blah blah blah... and I lived in York"
Me: "I did too. From the age of three to nine."
Passenger: "What part of York?"
Me: "Acomb. I lived on Carr Lane."
Passenger: "Hmmm... what number?"
Me: "I'm not sure I want to say... but 127."
Passenger: "I once lived at 131. That's two doors away! And I still have good friends who live at number 127."
Personally I don't think it's a small world. I think it's a medium sized world. If it was small, everyone would know each other, and coincidences would happen all the time, and nobody would care or think them strange. If it was a big world, coincidences would happen so rarely that they'd be big news. In a medium sized world, coincidences happen enough for them to be noticeable, but not enough to be meaningful.
I had a dachshund named Oscar. As much as I love every pet I have owned, Oscar was different. Not necessarily better, but special in a way I cannot describe. My family took Oscar in when I was seven years old to keep him from going to a kill shelter. He was less than a year old at the time and was incredibly handsome. He was a standard sized, smooth, red dachshund. He could have been a show dog if not for the fact that his paws were damaged from being in a wire cage at a puppy mill when he was young. I hadn't had a dog since I was four, so I was thrilled to bits with the new puppy. Oscar took to his training with ease, was bright, well behaved, and quirky and sympathetic. He sang with me when I would practice my choral pieces and solos, he would cuddle up and lick my face when I cried, he barked and growled and the neighbor kids that teased me, and all in all he seemed in tune with me naturally. On my eighth birthday, my mother taped up balloons along with other decorations. When she took down the balloons, Oscar stood on his hind legs (with no coaxing or training for this) and hit the balloons with his snout. He kept doing this, literally bouncing them off his nose and keeping the balloons airborne for long stretches. We marveled at this little circus dance. Finally he got a hold on the little nub of the tied off balloon and shook it like it was an animal he had caught. He stepped on it, bit it, and killed the little balloons - one after another - with us quickly swooping in to grab the bits before he could ingest them. This balloon trick he did for the rest of his life and it, along with his other displays of intelligence, ingenuity, sympathy, and gumption delight our family even to this day. But boy, do I miss him still.
This is a story from long, long ago, in fifth grade. Me and my friends were waging the equivalent of miniature war against another group of fifth graders. The "war" was over control and possession of a little plastic chair . This war had been going on for about a week, during recess. The groups were even, with only about four people on each side. One day, the enemy group decided keep the chair guarded in the playground structure, which vaguely resembled a castle. Me and my friends tried for about three quarters of the recess to get the chair, but we were thwarted. Eventually, I got tired of not being able to get the chair, so I suggesting to my friends that we get a few more people to help us. The first person we asked was my sister, who was in fourth grade. Not only did she agree to help, but she got her friends to help, who got their friends to help, and so on. About seven minutes later,the ENTIRE fourth grade was organized in rows, facing the playground structure. They were in four rows, each row lead by either me or one of my friends. When everybody was ready, me and my friends shouted, "Charge!", and proceed to converge on the enemy group,. Needless to say, we got the chair back. Interestingly, the leader of the enemy group decided to punch my best friend. He got the shit beaten out of by the horde of elementary schoolers. As a testament to how much my teachers cared about us, they stood there watching us. Sadly, when we came back over the weekend, the chair was gone.
Also, in the same grade, me and my best friend were in the library looking for the computer specialist at our school. We went to his room, only to find out that he had gone out to get some coffee. We also found that he left his door unlocked, and his administrator account logged in. Thanks to the kind of network our school had (the one where everybody had an account, and could log onto it on any Macintosh in the school), we were able to give everybody administrator access. As we were walking out of the library, we saw the computer specialist come back, with a cup of coffee in hand. The rest of the week (the specialist wasn't that attentive) was spent installing and playing games, changing backgrounds and screensavers, changing account names, and just messing around.
As a side note, at the end of fifth grade, my teacher told me that between my best friend and yours truly, we had added two full pages of rules to our school rulebook.
As a side note, at the end of fifth grade, my teacher told me that between my best friend and yours truly, we had added two full pages of rules to our school rulebook.
As a side note, at the end of fifth grade, my teacher told me that between my best friend and yours truly, we had added two full pages of rules to our school rulebook
Children may not organize in to factions. Children may not form armies against each other. Said armies may not cross grades....
In my primary school we played a game that invariably lead to hurt and pain. What we did is get as many people as we could to hold hands in a long line, then run across the playground. If anyone was caught in the path of the line, they'd either have to duck under the arms of those in the line or try to get around the end of the line. That might seem dangerous, but that never lead to anything more than bumped heads.
The dangerous part is this: changing the direction of the line. When you have twenty kids running forward, they all keep the same speed. Now, if they start turning a corner, the ones on the inside should slow down to let those on the outside travel the further distance.
This never happened. Instead, everyone ran as fast as possible. This meant that the line became like a cracking whip! The outside end was pulled forward and at higher and higher speeds. The end two or three kids would soon be running way, way faster than their legs could take them normally, and the weight of their body would become too much for their hands to hold. They'd let go and either fall over trying to stop, or keep running and stop when they hit a wall.
As I said... hurt and pain.
I'd love to try this with adults, and maybe on grass. I see this as a fun project for the next festival I go to.
I was taught a game similar to Crack The Whip recently. Everyone holds hands in a big circle with something sizable yet light in the middle, like a plastic chair. The goal is to force other players to touch the chair. If they touch the chair, they are out. If two people let go of eachother's arms, they are both out. Just a few rounds of this game leads to severe aching the next morning, but it's so much fun.
So, I went to visit my buddy Chad in Alaska this summer with my friends Audrey and Melissa. His family insisted that we visit some of the more touristy attractions while we were up there, and one such attraction was a wolf zoo. Except it wasn't so much of a zoo as it was some crazy old guy's house out in the middle of nowhere where he kept wild wolves chained up in his backyard. We arrived slightly late for one of the "tours" so we were told to walk down the path and meet up with the group. We exited the back doors and walked down the path towards the others, quickly finding that the chains that the wolves were attached to were *just* long enough so that they could reach the path. We nervously waddled along, trying not to make any sudden movements as each wolf growled and bared it's teeth at us. We caught up with the old man and the other tourists and moved along with him, listening to him talking about how old each wolf was, which ones were born in there, how he was recently injured by them, etc. They're absolutely beautiful animals, but it was fairly nerve-wracking to be around them, especially the ones that weren't fenced in.
Eventually, we got to his most "famous" wolf named Harmony. Apparently, she's been used in a lot of movies because she is incredibly tame. She basically behaves exactly like a dog, just a really really huge dog. It's not every day you get to pet and play with an animal that is normally so incredibly dangerous.
To conclude this story, I would like you to take a good hard look at the photo above before following this link to a video that I took just moments after. I was very lucky to have my camera in my hands and at the ready. You can hear how much I was laughing.
If you can't view the video due to lack of Facebook, this image will give you a pretty good idea of what happened.
Wow, you can hear all the wolves howling in that video -- crazy. A wolf zoo -- that's awesome.
I used to go hiking in the Angeles National Forest with a friend of mine fairly often, and once we hiked up to this waterfall, and just as we came out of the woodsy part to the clearing with the waterfall, we saw a wolf, just hanging out there. We were like "Oh shit! Is that a fucking wolf?!" Then we crept up a little, and saw this woman just chilling on a rock, near the wolf. So we said "Is that your wolf?" And she said that yeah, and it was only half-wolf. So we met the half-wolf, and got to pet it.
I was going to tell another story here a while ago, but I accidentally closed to tab and lost it after typing for like five minutes. I'll get around to it soon.
The wolf zoo is a little sad, in my opinion. It reminds me of the time I saw these foxes chained up in Hokkaido. Everybody was like "oooh, cool!" but I felt bad for the foxes having a chain on their necks. I wish the wolves could run around more.
Also: Cool thing about captive wolves (and bears.) They are actors, but the trainer family is very active in conservation projects, and they seem to be really good with the animals.
The wolf zoo is a little sad, in my opinion. It reminds me of the time I saw these foxes chained up in Hokkaido. Everybody was like "oooh, cool!" but I felt bad for the foxes having a chain on their necks. I wish the wolves could run around more.
One time, back when I was in a punk band, we were driving back home from playing a show in East L.A. (That particular show is probably a story in itself, but I'll save it.) We stopped at a Circle-K in Whittier at about 2 in the morning for some snacks. It was around halloween, and I remember we got some halloween cupcakes. So we're sitting on the hood of my friend's pickup in front of Circle-K eating halloween cupcakes, and we see these three guys in suits approaching. One of them was really, really big, and upon closer inspection, was Shaq. They went in and got some stuff and came back out. Then Shaq said "What's up, fellas?" to us, and we said "What's up?", and then they drove off in their SUV. Also, Shaq drinks orange Fanta.
Most of my interesting stories are centred around either fighting or almost dying.
One of the more interesting ones involved a cliff. It was about 30' or so high, washed out of the dry Colorado dirt by a stream near where I lived. I was spending the afternoon hanging out with a guy that I was pretty much forced to be friends with by my parents (stereotypical obnoxious Jew kid). Anyway I was walking along the top of the little ravine and he was walking along the bottom when he randomly decided to start throwing dirt clods at me. I wasn't expecting this really, so when I got hit directly in the face with one I stumbled forward onto the soft sandy edge of the cliff, which then collapsed.
After I woke up all I heard was "Oh my god, he's alive, he's moving!" which is always reassuring. Apparently I had fallen directly onto my head, knocked myself out cold for over 5 minutes and appeared to be quite dead. I then had to walk home almost a mile with sand in every hole in my head, sprained wrists, cuts and an awful headache. Oh, and I had somehow scraped off half of the skin on my face, Like my entire cheek, parts of my ear, the side of my face around my eyebrow and temple, it look horrible.
When my parent's got home, this kid's mom who was 'taking care of us' said the greatest line ever to my Mom (understand that my Mom is from a crazy German family of fairly serious people).
"Now don't be alarmed, Cody just had a little accident, but it looks a lot worse than it is. He'll be just fine"
This story is still something my Mom brings up often on the rare occasions that I see her. I had to get her to verify it to some other family members who didn't believe me, even after showing them how half of my face is full of scar tissue that turns a purple color when it gets cold.
Well one time I was hanging around Camden Town with mah buddies and as we walked outside of MTV's building we saw Dave Grohl and the rest of them Foo Fighters. One of the guitarists is like "Hey Dave, I bet you can't jump that bar", talking of the parking lot's entry bar. Dave runs up to the bar and jumps it clean by about 20cm. Keep in mind that this bar is about 1 meter off the ground and that Dave Grohl is 40. I was impressed.
This is one from back in high school. During my senior year I sat at a table with other geeks and there was this one girl who I always seemed to have a good rapport with. Later in the year when prom was coming up I asked her if she would be interested in going with me. She said "You do know I'm a lesbian right?". I just sat there in stunned silence for several minutes. I think the others at the table were afraid that I had slipped into a coma. I told her that it was alright. I didn't end up going to prom after all mostly because it was so expensive.
@ElJoe -- that's rad. I saw Dave Grohl just walking around Santa Monica once. Not as interesting as your story. Speaking of rock stars named Dave, I also saw Dave Navarro at the only strip club I ever went to.
@MarcusNoble -- ouch. If you've just met her, that's easy to laugh off, but if you've "always had a good rapport"? Ouch again.
When I was on a class trip to the east coast for my junior year, we were assigned 4 people to a room but only 2 beds per room. I, standing about 5 inches taller than everyone else and being a HUGE man, basically said, "This here bed be mine.". Of course, no one questioned it. Well, apparently, they didn't like me calling a bed because later that night I'm awoken to someone whispering my name.
When I opened my eyes, the lights were on. My head was also turned on it side (looking at a wall and not the ceiling and I was laying on my back). My name was whispered again and I turned my head upright. I'm greeted by the image of the ass of one of the kids in the room. Before my recently awoken brain can compute what it is, why it was there, what to do about it, and all those other obvious questions, the ass emits a fart into my face.
At this point I had what can be described as a moment "hulking out". Blinded by the ass gas in my eyes I screamed, bolted upright in the bed, and flailed my arms. In my rage, I grabbed something with my right hand and just YANKED. What I can guess is only a matter of seconds later and I rub the fart burn out of my eyes, I see one of my roomies crouched in the fetal position gently sobbing. I asked what happened to him and one of the other boys said, "I think you pulled his balls off, man!".
Thus is the story about how I touched another mans testicles in the most non-sexual way possible.
Thus is the story about how I touched another mans testicles in the most non-sexual way possible.
That's pretty hilarious. I have a related story.
Once I was in a car with a bunch of friends, and for some reason, my friend started acting like he was gonna touch my junk. I didn't think he was gonna actually do it, and I guess he didn't think I was gonna actually let him do it. It was like this horrible game of chicken. Then he touched me, and we both felt really uncomfortable.
Another time, I was at a gig with my old band, waiting to load in, and the same friend (starting to see a pattern here) was drunk, and he grabbed me in a bear hug and started like licking my neck. My arms were pinned up against my chest in a way that I couldn't push him away, so I snaked my arm out and hit him with a left hook to the body. He dropped, curled up into a ball, and started throwing up. I was shocked that I could've really hit him that hard. We both thought I'd broken a rib. Years later, now that I know more about this stuff, I realize I'd hit him in the liver, which can produce pretty horrifying results with even a relatively weak shot.
I always interpreted these things as being less "gay" than just "not giving a fuck", but I heard rumors years later that he'd been "experimenting" with this gay guy from the bar a bunch of my friends hung out at, so who knows.
So I was going through my old profile pics and found this little gem:
And so the story of how this happened pretty well shows how I tend to be very self-sacrificing to help and/or amuse people.
This happened during sophomore year of college (Winter 05-06, I don't remember which month exactly). I was out one night with a couple friends, sledding on one of the big hills around campus (the yellow thing is the sled). It's really one of the only places on or around campus that provides for good sledding. The tricky thing though, is that the hill slopes straight down towards a small lake (more of a pond really). So we would have to be careful not to let the sled go after bailing out.
You can probably guess where this is going. Yes, someone failed to stop the sled from going into the water. So the others start fussing about how to get the sled out, since it is slowly moving away from the shore. I just decided to man up and waded out into the water to get the sled back. Upon doing this, I was soaked up to just below my hips. After I got the sled out, someone says,
"Dude, I dare you to sled into the water."
So I did.
Needless to say, after the photo was taken, the night was over to prevent me from getting hypothermia. Thus, if you've ever wondered if I would jumping into a freezing lake in the middle of winter just to get a stupid piece of plastic, and then do it again to create a few laughs, the answer is yes.
Comments
Fast forward over a year. I am now a Freshman at New York University, having decided that the big, academically oriented college of Tisch was more my dream than the Art School in Brooklyn. On our first day, groups of us were given single use cameras and sent to different neighborhoods to take pictures that would be used to create a narrative. I am therefore walking with a bunch of people down a street in Little Italy, snapping pictures and chatting away. Something is nagging at the back of my mind, however. My brain is seeming to play tricks on me, because the guy in front of me keeps drawing my attention for no conceivable reason. As I stare at the back of his head I wonder: Where on Earth do I know him from? Apparently, it's not just me, because suddenly he whirls around and says, "I know I know you from somewhere! Where?" We stare at each other for a minute and suddenly it clicks: Once upon a time, I spent ten hours sitting with him on the way to an adventure.
Another Small World Story:
In Chiba, at the week long exchange student camp, I met this boy who was just there for the summer. He was super quiet and shy, but really cute, and Rei-chan and I liked to hang out with him. After the summer, I moved in with his former host family, as my previous family could not keep me anymore. They were very nice, and would talk to me and show me pictures of their other exchange students. (I love that family, and consider them like an adopted branch of my own relations.) The next fall, freshman year at NYU again, I was sitting in Japanese class, and had the same confused feeling of deja vu come over me. When I recognized the kid sitting next to me, I jumped up and said his name really loudly, followed by "My long long brother!" In the ensuing moments, there was much confusion before he remembered Exchange Student camp and learned of my host family switch. We remained friends after that.
Passenger: "Where in England are you from?"
Me: "I was born in Kent, but lived most of my life in the North East, mainly North Yorkshire and County Durham. I now live in Berlin."
Passenger: "blah blah blah... and I lived in York"
Me: "I did too. From the age of three to nine."
Passenger: "What part of York?"
Me: "Acomb. I lived on Carr Lane."
Passenger: "Hmmm... what number?"
Me: "I'm not sure I want to say... but 127."
Passenger: "I once lived at 131. That's two doors away! And I still have good friends who live at number 127."
Personally I don't think it's a small world. I think it's a medium sized world. If it was small, everyone would know each other, and coincidences would happen all the time, and nobody would care or think them strange. If it was a big world, coincidences would happen so rarely that they'd be big news. In a medium sized world, coincidences happen enough for them to be noticeable, but not enough to be meaningful.
My family took Oscar in when I was seven years old to keep him from going to a kill shelter. He was less than a year old at the time and was incredibly handsome. He was a standard sized, smooth, red dachshund. He could have been a show dog if not for the fact that his paws were damaged from being in a wire cage at a puppy mill when he was young. I hadn't had a dog since I was four, so I was thrilled to bits with the new puppy.
Oscar took to his training with ease, was bright, well behaved, and quirky and sympathetic. He sang with me when I would practice my choral pieces and solos, he would cuddle up and lick my face when I cried, he barked and growled and the neighbor kids that teased me, and all in all he seemed in tune with me naturally.
On my eighth birthday, my mother taped up balloons along with other decorations. When she took down the balloons, Oscar stood on his hind legs (with no coaxing or training for this) and hit the balloons with his snout. He kept doing this, literally bouncing them off his nose and keeping the balloons airborne for long stretches. We marveled at this little circus dance. Finally he got a hold on the little nub of the tied off balloon and shook it like it was an animal he had caught. He stepped on it, bit it, and killed the little balloons - one after another - with us quickly swooping in to grab the bits before he could ingest them. This balloon trick he did for the rest of his life and it, along with his other displays of intelligence, ingenuity, sympathy, and gumption delight our family even to this day.
But boy, do I miss him still.
Also, in the same grade, me and my best friend were in the library looking for the computer specialist at our school. We went to his room, only to find out that he had gone out to get some coffee. We also found that he left his door unlocked, and his administrator account logged in. Thanks to the kind of network our school had (the one where everybody had an account, and could log onto it on any Macintosh in the school), we were able to give everybody administrator access. As we were walking out of the library, we saw the computer specialist come back, with a cup of coffee in hand. The rest of the week (the specialist wasn't that attentive) was spent installing and playing games, changing backgrounds and screensavers, changing account names, and just messing around.
As a side note, at the end of fifth grade, my teacher told me that between my best friend and yours truly, we had added two full pages of rules to our school rulebook.
The dangerous part is this: changing the direction of the line. When you have twenty kids running forward, they all keep the same speed. Now, if they start turning a corner, the ones on the inside should slow down to let those on the outside travel the further distance.
This never happened. Instead, everyone ran as fast as possible. This meant that the line became like a cracking whip! The outside end was pulled forward and at higher and higher speeds. The end two or three kids would soon be running way, way faster than their legs could take them normally, and the weight of their body would become too much for their hands to hold. They'd let go and either fall over trying to stop, or keep running and stop when they hit a wall.
As I said... hurt and pain.
I'd love to try this with adults, and maybe on grass. I see this as a fun project for the next festival I go to.
So, I went to visit my buddy Chad in Alaska this summer with my friends Audrey and Melissa. His family insisted that we visit some of the more touristy attractions while we were up there, and one such attraction was a wolf zoo. Except it wasn't so much of a zoo as it was some crazy old guy's house out in the middle of nowhere where he kept wild wolves chained up in his backyard. We arrived slightly late for one of the "tours" so we were told to walk down the path and meet up with the group. We exited the back doors and walked down the path towards the others, quickly finding that the chains that the wolves were attached to were *just* long enough so that they could reach the path. We nervously waddled along, trying not to make any sudden movements as each wolf growled and bared it's teeth at us. We caught up with the old man and the other tourists and moved along with him, listening to him talking about how old each wolf was, which ones were born in there, how he was recently injured by them, etc. They're absolutely beautiful animals, but it was fairly nerve-wracking to be around them, especially the ones that weren't fenced in.
Eventually, we got to his most "famous" wolf named Harmony. Apparently, she's been used in a lot of movies because she is incredibly tame. She basically behaves exactly like a dog, just a really really huge dog. It's not every day you get to pet and play with an animal that is normally so incredibly dangerous.
To conclude this story, I would like you to take a good hard look at the photo above before following this link to a video that I took just moments after. I was very lucky to have my camera in my hands and at the ready. You can hear how much I was laughing.
If you can't view the video due to lack of Facebook, this image will give you a pretty good idea of what happened.
I used to go hiking in the Angeles National Forest with a friend of mine fairly often, and once we hiked up to this waterfall, and just as we came out of the woodsy part to the clearing with the waterfall, we saw a wolf, just hanging out there. We were like "Oh shit! Is that a fucking wolf?!" Then we crept up a little, and saw this woman just chilling on a rock, near the wolf. So we said "Is that your wolf?" And she said that yeah, and it was only half-wolf. So we met the half-wolf, and got to pet it.
I was going to tell another story here a while ago, but I accidentally closed to tab and lost it after typing for like five minutes. I'll get around to it soon.
Also: Cool thing about captive wolves (and bears.) They are actors, but the trainer family is very active in conservation projects, and they seem to be really good with the animals.
One of the more interesting ones involved a cliff. It was about 30' or so high, washed out of the dry Colorado dirt by a stream near where I lived. I was spending the afternoon hanging out with a guy that I was pretty much forced to be friends with by my parents (stereotypical obnoxious Jew kid). Anyway I was walking along the top of the little ravine and he was walking along the bottom when he randomly decided to start throwing dirt clods at me. I wasn't expecting this really, so when I got hit directly in the face with one I stumbled forward onto the soft sandy edge of the cliff, which then collapsed.
After I woke up all I heard was "Oh my god, he's alive, he's moving!" which is always reassuring. Apparently I had fallen directly onto my head, knocked myself out cold for over 5 minutes and appeared to be quite dead. I then had to walk home almost a mile with sand in every hole in my head, sprained wrists, cuts and an awful headache. Oh, and I had somehow scraped off half of the skin on my face, Like my entire cheek, parts of my ear, the side of my face around my eyebrow and temple, it look horrible.
When my parent's got home, this kid's mom who was 'taking care of us' said the greatest line ever to my Mom (understand that my Mom is from a crazy German family of fairly serious people).
"Now don't be alarmed, Cody just had a little accident, but it looks a lot worse than it is. He'll be just fine"
This story is still something my Mom brings up often on the rare occasions that I see her. I had to get her to verify it to some other family members who didn't believe me, even after showing them how half of my face is full of scar tissue that turns a purple color when it gets cold.
@Sova, that's an incredible story.
@MarcusNoble -- ouch. If you've just met her, that's easy to laugh off, but if you've "always had a good rapport"? Ouch again.
When I opened my eyes, the lights were on. My head was also turned on it side (looking at a wall and not the ceiling and I was laying on my back). My name was whispered again and I turned my head upright. I'm greeted by the image of the ass of one of the kids in the room. Before my recently awoken brain can compute what it is, why it was there, what to do about it, and all those other obvious questions, the ass emits a fart into my face.
At this point I had what can be described as a moment "hulking out". Blinded by the ass gas in my eyes I screamed, bolted upright in the bed, and flailed my arms. In my rage, I grabbed something with my right hand and just YANKED. What I can guess is only a matter of seconds later and I rub the fart burn out of my eyes, I see one of my roomies crouched in the fetal position gently sobbing. I asked what happened to him and one of the other boys said, "I think you pulled his balls off, man!".
Thus is the story about how I touched another mans testicles in the most non-sexual way possible.
Once I was in a car with a bunch of friends, and for some reason, my friend started acting like he was gonna touch my junk. I didn't think he was gonna actually do it, and I guess he didn't think I was gonna actually let him do it. It was like this horrible game of chicken. Then he touched me, and we both felt really uncomfortable.
Another time, I was at a gig with my old band, waiting to load in, and the same friend (starting to see a pattern here) was drunk, and he grabbed me in a bear hug and started like licking my neck. My arms were pinned up against my chest in a way that I couldn't push him away, so I snaked my arm out and hit him with a left hook to the body. He dropped, curled up into a ball, and started throwing up. I was shocked that I could've really hit him that hard. We both thought I'd broken a rib. Years later, now that I know more about this stuff, I realize I'd hit him in the liver, which can produce pretty horrifying results with even a relatively weak shot.
I always interpreted these things as being less "gay" than just "not giving a fuck", but I heard rumors years later that he'd been "experimenting" with this gay guy from the bar a bunch of my friends hung out at, so who knows.
And so the story of how this happened pretty well shows how I tend to be very self-sacrificing to help and/or amuse people.
This happened during sophomore year of college (Winter 05-06, I don't remember which month exactly). I was out one night with a couple friends, sledding on one of the big hills around campus (the yellow thing is the sled). It's really one of the only places on or around campus that provides for good sledding. The tricky thing though, is that the hill slopes straight down towards a small lake (more of a pond really). So we would have to be careful not to let the sled go after bailing out.
You can probably guess where this is going. Yes, someone failed to stop the sled from going into the water. So the others start fussing about how to get the sled out, since it is slowly moving away from the shore. I just decided to man up and waded out into the water to get the sled back. Upon doing this, I was soaked up to just below my hips. After I got the sled out, someone says,
"Dude, I dare you to sled into the water."
So I did.
Needless to say, after the photo was taken, the night was over to prevent me from getting hypothermia. Thus, if you've ever wondered if I would jumping into a freezing lake in the middle of winter just to get a stupid piece of plastic, and then do it again to create a few laughs, the answer is yes.