Many of my best stories are related to my job in the trenches of Blockbuster Video as man-child low-level manager of actual-child employees in the early-mid aughts (after proving my valor as a tux shirt and cumberbund doofus in the Wild West of Hollywood Video). My natural capacity for bullshit convinced the idiots running the show that my constantly high/drunk ass could be trusted in a leadership/mentor role.
The story I'll share here though concerns my favorite man I have ever interacted with. A people's champion and my hero to this day.
He was an unassuming older white dude who came to rent movies on a rainy and crowded night. Four cash registers were open and each line was at least six parties deep. Our normal sales pushes were halted to just efficiently get angry folks out the door with their 5th choice movies due to our depleted shelves. I was moving without thought, just concentrating on how high I was going to be when I stomped my roommate at Soul Calibur to blow off steam, when my savior arrived and told me he needed to sign up for a membership.
I motioned for him to follow me to a computer terminal near the entrance of the store and asked him to start filling out the membership form (Quick aside: Can you believe that BBV had the fucking stones to ask for SOCIAL SECURITY number on that dumb form?). I started navigating the menus and looked up to see that three or four parties lined up behind this dude to check out. I informed them in a weary, but polite tone, that the computer I was on didn't have a register and I wouldn't be able to ring them out. They would have to join one of the longer lines.
The young woman directly behind him let out a very small scoff. I have faced much ruder in customer service, but it still stung. This guy just turns to her and very casually states, "Hey, fuck you." It hit her like a punch to the face and the whole line quickly dispersed with a mixture of shock and shame.
When we are alone again, he just looks up at me with a twinkle in his eye, taking in my stunned grin, and uttered the words that ring crystal clear in my mind a decade and a half later.
Many of my best stories are related to my job in the trenches of Blockbuster Video as man-child low-level manager of actual-child employees in the early-mid aughts (after proving my valor as a tux shirt and cumberbund doofus in the Wild West of Hollywood Video). My natural capacity for bullshit convinced the idiots running the show that my constantly high/drunk ass could be trusted in a leadership/mentor role.
The story I'll share here though concerns my favorite man I have ever interacted with. A people's champion and my hero to this day.
He was an unassuming older white dude who came to rent movies on a rainy and crowded night. Four cash registers were open and each line was at least six parties deep. Our normal sales pushes were halted to just efficiently get angry folks out the door with their 5th choice movies due to our depleted shelves. I was moving without thought, just concentrating on how high I was going to be when I stomped my roommate at Soul Calibur to blow off steam, when my savior arrived and told me he needed to sign up for a membership.
I motioned for him to follow me to a computer terminal near the entrance of the store and asked him to start filling out the membership form (Quick aside: Can you believe that BBV had the fucking stones to ask for SOCIAL SECURITY number on that dumb form?). I started navigating the menus and looked up to see that three or four parties lined up behind this dude to check out. I informed them in a weary, but polite tone, that the computer I was on didn't have a register and I wouldn't be able to ring them out. They would have to join one of the longer lines.
The young woman directly behind him let out a very small scoff. I have faced much ruder in customer service, but it still stung. This guy just turns to her and very casually states, "Hey, fuck you." It hit her like a punch to the face and the whole line quickly dispersed with a mixture of shock and shame.
When we are alone again, he just looks up at me with a twinkle in his eye, taking in my stunned grin, and uttered the words that ring crystal clear in my mind a decade and a half later.
I was about to say holy shit I can’t imagine how painful that is, but... there were a couple of times when my kids bit down hard enough to tear a flap of skin and yet I would have to continue to let them feed through the pain so I have a slight idea...
Yeah Id say moms probably have a monopoly on nipple pain
You don’t know my life.
i do
I asked you to stop putting those cameras in my room VERY POLITELY.
i am sure we can come to some kind of
financial
agreement to get them removed
LOL If you think I have money plus also the only thing I do is masturbate to extremely boring porn, so I mean, you really got nothing actionable.
Basically I dare you to try to ruin me.
challenge accepted
I fully expect this to end with some variation on “I fell asleep every time I tried to dig into your past.”
I was about to say holy shit I can’t imagine how painful that is, but... there were a couple of times when my kids bit down hard enough to tear a flap of skin and yet I would have to continue to let them feed through the pain so I have a slight idea...
Yeah Id say moms probably have a monopoly on nipple pain
You don’t know my life.
i do
I asked you to stop putting those cameras in my room VERY POLITELY.
i am sure we can come to some kind of
financial
agreement to get them removed
LOL If you think I have money plus also the only thing I do is masturbate to extremely boring porn, so I mean, you really got nothing actionable.
Basically I dare you to try to ruin me.
challenge accepted
I fully expect this to end with some variation on “I fell asleep every time I tried to dig into your past.”
It's been over 24 hours since you posted this, so I think your'e right. I just hope Rorshach woke up in time to go to his job or whatever the fuck it is he does all day long.
DisruptedCapitalist on
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
I have been in 4 fights in my life. This is the story of the first:
7th grade, middle school. I got picked on a lot. One of the kids was CS, and he use to pick and my friends and I mercilessly. Stole from us, called us names, slapped us with rubber bands, books knocked onto the floor, normal 80's movie bully stuff.
One day I had enough. Now, I've always had a flair for the dramatic, and I went full anime on him. I called him out and challenged him to a fight in Art class 3rd period. I even took some time to talk to this popular kid named Kyle about it, he said I shouldn't do it and when I did this big old challenge I even called him out "Kyle I know you said I shouldn't do this, but I can't stand for it anymore!"
I was the most cool kid.
Anyway, we were in the hall way before the next period, no idea why no teacher stopped us (I know now), our mutual friend Tim tried to talk me out of it, he knew CS would not be dissuaded because he was an asshole.
Anyway we did the big stand off thing in the hallway after the bell rang. Tossed our books down, he kneed me in the balls and punched me in the gut hard. I got up, grabbed his head and started slamming him into a locker, repeatedly. then when he backed up I did a sweet kick directly into his chest. This is when a teacher finally pulled us apart.
I was suspended for 4 days, he was kicked out of school since this was his like 12th strike. My parents took me out for a steak dinner that night. Why? Because this kid had been picking on my friends and I for about 5 years, and even shot my friend with a BB gun once. Parents complained to the school a bunch but they never did much of anything.
Years and years later I ran into him, he was working security at a store. He actually thanked me. It was fucking weird and sounds like a made up internet story but it turns out his parents sent him to a private catholic school where he found God and met his wife who was also the mother of his children and he said if we hadn't of fought he never would have found his true path. Though I guess that also means he had no remorse for the years of abuse, I'll take it.
My first fight is way less interesting. We were playing basketball in 8th grade and I spat on the ground for whatever reason, maybe kind of near another kid. A different kid said, "Damn Dan, he just spit on you and you're not going to do anything about it?" Nothing happened.
The recess bell rings and we're all headed back in to class, and Dan hocks the biggest fucking loogie you'll ever see right in my face. We're talking, like, 4 ounces of spit and booger. I slug him in his open mouth, while he's laughing at me, with a straight right, he falls to the ground, and I wiped the spit off on his shirt. It was fucking gross and he deserved worse. That's the only time I've hit "the button" and it's really not a good feeling. I have no idea how people derive pleasure from fighting.
I have been in 4 fights in my life. This is the story of the first:
7th grade, middle school. I got picked on a lot. One of the kids was CS, and he use to pick and my friends and I mercilessly. Stole from us, called us names, slapped us with rubber bands, books knocked onto the floor, normal 80's movie bully stuff.
One day I had enough. Now, I've always had a flair for the dramatic, and I went full anime on him. I called him out and challenged him to a fight in Art class 3rd period. I even took some time to talk to this popular kid named Kyle about it, he said I shouldn't do it and when I did this big old challenge I even called him out "Kyle I know you said I shouldn't do this, but I can't stand for it anymore!"
I was the most cool kid.
Anyway, we were in the hall way before the next period, no idea why no teacher stopped us (I know now), our mutual friend Tim tried to talk me out of it, he knew CS would not be dissuaded because he was an asshole.
Anyway we did the big stand off thing in the hallway after the bell rang. Tossed our books down, he kneed me in the balls and punched me in the gut hard. I got up, grabbed his head and started slamming him into a locker, repeatedly. then when he backed up I did a sweet kick directly into his chest. This is when a teacher finally pulled us apart.
I was suspended for 4 days, he was kicked out of school since this was his like 12th strike. My parents took me out for a steak dinner that night. Why? Because this kid had been picking on my friends and I for about 5 years, and even shot my friend with a BB gun once. Parents complained to the school a bunch but they never did much of anything.
Years and years later I ran into him, he was working security at a store. He actually thanked me. It was fucking weird and sounds like a made up internet story but it turns out his parents sent him to a private catholic school where he found God and met his wife who was also the mother of his children and he said if we hadn't of fought he never would have found his true path. Though I guess that also means he had no remorse for the years of abuse, I'll take it.
So yeah, that was my first fight.
So you can truthfully say you once kicked a man in the chest so hard he found God?
This is the closest I ever got to a fight. I had a college student named Jason spit in my face over what he thought was me stealing a cup of ramen noodles. The kicker was, this guy was an acquentence and the ramen noodles he thought I stole were mine.
I was about 225 or so at the time, he was maybe 150, I'm looking at him and vibrating with rage, it would not have been pretty as he had to spit up at least six inches to even hit my face due to the height difference.
My wife (girlfriend at the time) was in the room with some other friends and saw what happened and my face and towed me outo of the room. I didn't end up punching the guy, but when he was informed that in fact the ramen noodles had been mine, and that he had just spat in the face of friend over nothing, you pretty much have to re-evaluate his entire worldview. The guy was very proud of his intellectual status and apparently had been dealing with some inner demons.
I was pretty lucky my wife stepped in as I honestly don't know what I would have done but it would have involved beating the shit out of him.
In college, I fell into a large friend group, as you do. It had started with some folks I knew from high school, and through the sort of random social connections that college engenders, I suddenly was a part of some fifty-odd people who were dorm neighbors, friends-of-friends, and so on. We went to a lot of parties, and when we were old enough, the local bars and whatnot. I drank a good bit--too much, of course, looking back at it now--and gradually I began to become dissatisfied with all of it.
A year out from graduation, I had moved off campus into an apartment with some very close friends. The apartment grounds had a few facilities, including a volleyball court. One spring weekend morning I found that a bunch of that friend group of mine was busy playing. Nobody had thought to let me know, despite me living right there, in view of the court. A felt a lot of emotions that morning, and as I left the apartment to go to work, I had a simple, obvious conclusion: these people weren't my friends. In fact, I didn't actually like most of them. We didn't interact much outside of the context of drinking and partying. I had little in common with them.
In the weeks that followed I removed myself from their activities. I concentrated on my studies and my job. I found actual friends. People I did enjoy spending time with. I drank far, far less. I was happier.
Thinking about all this now, I can't say that this was a grand moment, a big turning point in my life. But it did teach me a lesson that I will never forget. That you can choose who you spend your time with, and that both of you should get some enjoyment from it.
I was stationed in Gulfport, MS during hurricane Katrina. Instead of getting to book it the hell out of there I got stuck with helping with the Navy's hurricane shelter for military dependents. The Navy used the giant equipment warehouses as shelters since the entrances were about six feet above ground.
Around the time the storm reached 50 mph one of the chiefs noticed that a set of wooden stairs used to get in to the warehouse had come loose and were being slowly blown down the street in front of where we were. He told me to go get a few other people to go out and grab it. I head to the back, shout we need a few people, then go back up front.
One guy shows up.
I decide that, being 20, I'm invincible. I tell other guy to come on and go running out in to the storm while the chief yelled something I chose to ignore.
There were a couple things I neglected to consider in my decision:
1. Untreated wood can absorb a lot of water and therefore accumulate much more mass.
2. The wide profile of stairs lets them catch a lot of wind like a sail and pick up much more kinetic energy.
I ran out and braced myself directly in front of the stairs. They slammed in to me going about 20 mph and miraculously I'm not only uninjured but also manage to stop them. Unfortunately I couldn't actually move them and was essentially pinned where I was.
Second guy who wasn't an idiot came running out to help me and we pulled the stairs in.
The important takeaway for me is from that day I could use the phrase "I was once hit by a flight of stairs".
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
We're telling stories about getting in fights?
It was in high school band class, I think my sophomore year. There were a large number of people in band class who had absolutely no interest in music or band or anything, just the free A from attending. Maybe about half the class at that shitty rural georgia school. There was one gal in particular who was a total asshole about it, too. I will call her Kay. The band director was low on the faculty totem pole and didn't have much power to do anything, like kick people out of the class, so Kay was getting meaner and nastier by the day to everyone.
One day, this all came to a head. Kay was loudly chit-chatting with some other miscreants through a song, with the girls not even bothering pretending to play or even look like it. The director called them out after the song, so they sarcastically held up their instruments as if they were ready to play. At this moment, one of the clarinets decided to tell one of the trumpets that his shirt was stupid (for the record, it was a stupid shirt, but I'm not sure why that clarinet picked that particular moment to tell him). Between the clarinet and the trumpet was Kay.
Things escalated quickly. Kay jumped up, knocking aside chairs and music stands, and got up in the clarinet's face, screaming and cussing loudly. The clarinet was about a foot taller than Kay, and he did some weight lifting so he was substantially heftier, but that only seemed to provoke her even more. That clarinet player was usually a very chill dude, so long as he didn't hate your shirt, but getting cussed out to his face in the middle of band when he wasn't even addressing her wasn't the best of circumstances. He seemed to be holding his cool, as people edged away and the director snuck around behind Kay to try to pull them apart, but the clarinet suddenly hit his limit. "Get the HELL out of my face!" and he shoved her hard. She flew back into the band director's arms, and he tried to pull her towards the door. Kay was so angry though that she hurled him (also a substantially larger person than her) over her shoulder to the ground and then charged at the clarinet player to fight. Only now, between him and her, was me.
In less than a second, before my conscious brain had time to figure out what was going on and what to do, I had already knocked her to the ground. Just instinctively pushed out and shoved her to the ground. Applied physicist Marshawn Lynch once explained that a person running at full tilt is highly unbalanced, so a little baby tap to them (such as a stiff-arm or a shove in a band room) can drop them. This is probably what happened here.
Anyway, with Kay on the ground, two larger guys were able to grab her and push her out the door, which we locked. One of the trombones had called the principal already and we just stayed behind locked doors until Kay was taken away. People wondered how I'd managed to take down Kay so fast, and I was like "adrenaline, I guess." She was given a week's suspension after that.
But that's not the end of the story. Kay came back to school (though not band, at least)...and she was a lot nicer after that. At first I thought this was some trick, that she was planning on coming after me for hitting her, but then she was nice to everybody after that. By the time I graduated, she was genuinely one of the sweetest, coolest people at that place, even helping out other people and doing good deeds and not being an asshole at all.
So that's the story of the time I knocked the mean out of someone.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
I'm picturing a Dr. Strange soul punch. But the soul is just, like, such an asshole and the body's pretty chill.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Growing up in small towns I've seen people get the asshole beaten out of them on multiple occasions. Typically they'd be a kid who was big all their life and liked to push their weight around, eventually they'd push too hard and some scrawny kid that was sick of getting picked on would belt the piss out of them.
I think mostly folks like that tend to need a push to realise that no, people don't like you, they're scared of you.
All throughout school I never ran into a bully, so I was led to believe that the bully stereotypes were just stereotypes and not real. Turns out, no, I was just huge so nobody thought picking on me would end well for them.
Alternatively, I was the bully and never realized it? I don't think that's the case, but how can I be sure?
All throughout school I never ran into a bully, so I was led to believe that the bully stereotypes were just stereotypes and not real. Turns out, no, I was just huge so nobody thought picking on me would end well for them.
Alternatively, I was the bully and never realized it? I don't think that's the case, but how can I be sure?
I didn't steal any, but in high school I had set up a blackjack game we played in trig where we bet with, often, our lunch money. I think I lost more than I gained, net. Does that count?
30 Rock’s episode where Liz goes to her high school reunion is one I think on a lot.
I would say I was bullied. Did I ever bully back? Honestly, I don’t know. In hindsight high school was so full of drama and bitchiness on all sides and sometimes misunderstandings arose out of nothing.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
All throughout school I never ran into a bully, so I was led to believe that the bully stereotypes were just stereotypes and not real. Turns out, no, I was just huge so nobody thought picking on me would end well for them.
Alternatively, I was the bully and never realized it? I don't think that's the case, but how can I be sure?
I ran a fascinating scientific experiment where I was the smallest kid in class until junior high, and was pushed around quite a bit as a result.
Then I started growing at a rate of six inches per year while at the same time spending most of my non-school hours hand-loading square bales with my dad. The summer between eighth and ninth grade I passed the six-foot mark and dad and I spent the whole summer loading thirty tons of oat hay onto a semi in the morning and unloading it in the evening.
Suddenly all of my tormentors started to look very small and breakable, and everything got real civil real fast.
Never been in a fight, though.
Jedoc on
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astrobstrdSo full of mercy...Registered Userregular
edited May 2019
I got in one real fight as an adult. I told the story once in the movie thread, but I got absolutely sloppy drunk on margaritas before seeing Pan's Labyrinth for the first time. I mostly sobered up by the end, but a douchey bro behind me said "If I wanted to read, I'd get a book" to his friend and instead of my normal bitchy comment to myself, I said "You'd never read a book." out loud. The dude followed me outside, and though he was younger and in better shape, he wasn't prepared for my sad fat boy strategy of just grabbing an arm and being fat on him until he got tired.
What amazes most of my friends though (aside from the one or two I kept in contact with from my old school in Florida) is that as a young kid I was small and also a fucking psychopath. Some combination of abuse, neglect, depression and being a smart weirdo made me react to any perceived slight in the most extreme means possible. Other kids might want to get in capers or scrapes. I assumed you were threatening my personhood and reacted as such. Some highlights included biting multiple kids hard enough to draw blood, a few attempted strangulations, real deep scratches from my dirtbag long fingernails and putting one kid in an eyepatch for a week while the eye I tried to gauge out healed.
What's crazy is that I remember feeling completely justified and couldn't understand why adults were upset. Of course I got a running start and punted that kid in the stomach, he stole my seat. Why wouldn't I fishhook that kid by the collarbone and pull him over a bus seat? He spit on me.
I'm not violent at all now (well, I get more self-destructive than retaliatory), but that fear of losing perspective and going ham is a fairly persistent anxiety.
Edit: Also, I really hope this doesn't read as one of those really sad "I don't fight, but if I had to, I would fight dirty and win" stories. I have no doubts someone with training would absolutely clown me. Just that as a child I would go into a blind unreasoning fury and my family has a history of mental breaks that leave me scared that I might escalate a scrape in a way that rational me wouldn't intend.
All throughout school I never ran into a bully, so I was led to believe that the bully stereotypes were just stereotypes and not real. Turns out, no, I was just huge so nobody thought picking on me would end well for them.
Alternatively, I was the bully and never realized it? I don't think that's the case, but how can I be sure?
Never been in a fight, though.
Keep that up, fighting is awful. I like to keep my adrenaline rushes in the bedroom, where they belong.
One thing I like about getting the hell out of the states is the freedom that waitstaff in other countries have to judge the hell out of your choices. I had a waitress yesterday who was so completely upfront about her disdain for my order that i wanted to hug her.
She thought that a) I should include some food, and b) it was ridiculous to order a hot and cold drink simultaneously, and decided unilaterally that she would not bring my chai until long after I'd finished the first drink: "You will get a bad stomach." Then someone ordered a toasted smoked chicken sandwich, and she told us it was more of a cake time of day. But we did get the sandwich.
One thing I like about getting the hell out of the states is the freedom that waitstaff in other countries have to judge the hell out of your choices. I had a waitress yesterday who was so completely upfront about her disdain for my order that i wanted to hug her.
Oh we judge .
Just secretly.
King Riptor on
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
One thing I like about getting the hell out of the states is the freedom that waitstaff in other countries have to judge the hell out of your choices. I had a waitress yesterday who was so completely upfront about her disdain for my order that i wanted to hug her.
Oh we judge .
Just secretly.
Sure, but secret judgement might as well be no judgement.
If I piss someone off or disgust them, I'd appreciate it if they would let me know.
She thought that a) I should include some food, and b) it was ridiculous to order a hot and cold drink simultaneously, and decided unilaterally that she would not bring my chai until long after I'd finished the first drink: "You will get a bad stomach." Then someone ordered a toasted smoked chicken sandwich, and she told us it was more of a cake time of day. But we did get the sandwich.
Oh, I know that. I'm talking about the casual judgmental comments right to your face. In the US it's either forbidden because tips, or restaurants have to go and make being an asshole a whole gimmick.
All waitstaff hate customers, after being in America for a few years I just like going to places where nobody ever pretends otherwise.
Oh, I know that. I'm talking about the casual judgmental comments right to your face. In the US it's either forbidden because tips, or restaurants have to go and make being an asshole a whole gimmick.
All waitstaff hate customers, after being in America for a few years I just like going to places where nobody ever pretends otherwise.
If you're ever in the Pittsburgh giant eagle I work at I promise to question why you're buying Deli meat at 2am in as judgy a way as possible
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
My job specifically was compound controller. Despite being clearly too low ranking for the job, my shift boss realized someone with an admin background was a perfect fit since it was literally 100% admin work. Just, you know, sometimes things were on fire during that work.
So anyway, I'm in the controller shack and have access to all the detainee files. Our compound had about a thousand detainees altogether. In our particular compound the Army decided to try and put all the leaders together under the assumption that they would fight each other so much they wouldn't cause trouble otherwise. (They became ISIS).
But this isn't about them. This is about Crazy Steve.
See, one day we were told we were getting a detainee called Crazy Steve. My shift boss asks me to pull up his profile and see what his deal is. We knew that the really bad trouble makers would have upwards of a dozen demerits for things like fighting, stealing, etc. I look up Crazy Steve's ID number and he was over a hundred demerits. And all of them were for fucking with the Air Force. "Crazy Steve walked outside naked and refused to put on clothes." "Crazy Steve kept repeating orders back to people." "Crazy Steve kept mooing like a cow."
The man wasn't nefarious, he was a trickster god and that spoke to us on a deep level. We were excited for him to arrive because we held a mutual disrespect for authority. Based on what we read, we wanted Steve to stay with us forever.
So the prison bus shows up to drop off Crazy Steve. My shift boss grabs our two biggest guys, this ginger from Scotsman stock and a guy who was a minor league baseball player both walk out behind him.
Crazy Steve gets off the bus and we're greeted with what's essentially a Middle Eastern Danny Devito. Short, squat, but a full head of curly hair.
My boss tells him "Alright, I saw your record, we can do this the easy way or the hard way."
Steve looks at him, looks at the two giant guys behind him, proceeds to throw down his bed roll and stuff and says in a glorious Iraqi accent "Hard way!"
They weren't prepared for this. My boss looks at the other two, shrugs, and picks up Steve's stuff. The two giants pick up Crazy Steve by the armpits and he raises his feet so that they effectively have to carry him across the prison grounds while everyone watches.
They get him to his quad and put him in there with his stuff. Crazy Steve turns around, look my boss in the eye, and says, "In three hours, I run this place." He picks up his stuff and goes in.
Unfortunately for Steve, he was in a quad full of future ISIS. Just about three hours later we get an alert that someone has been dragged to a gate and it's Steve. Poor guy was with the wrong crowd. We pulled him out of there and the last I saw he was being moved to his own cell in a proper prison instead of our open air one.
One summer, we were getting the boat prepped for an outing to the seas near Tonga for some warm-water dive catching. Sea cucumbers, abalone, whatever they could find.
Anyway, I'm sitting on the third level aft deck prepping a surface for some arc welding using a needlegun. A lady and, presumably, her young son (4 maybe 5 years old) are on the dock and when my gear quiets down, she says, "Excuse me?"
I turn to her, "Yeah? What's up?"
"My son wants to know if working on the boat is fun."
"Oh, it's pretty good!" My mouth adds another sentence nanoseconds later with absolutely no input from my brain. "Except they make us eat spiders."
The little boy clutches his mother's waist tighter, "Not spiders, mommy!"
I cannot recall the mother's reaction at all, and the whole thing was fairly surreal to me, but I was extremely proud of my bizarre, quick wit.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
That should not be making me laugh this hard, you monster.
She thought that a) I should include some food, and b) it was ridiculous to order a hot and cold drink simultaneously, and decided unilaterally that she would not bring my chai until long after I'd finished the first drink: "You will get a bad stomach." Then someone ordered a toasted smoked chicken sandwich, and she told us it was more of a cake time of day. But we did get the sandwich.
I think I have enough people in my life who think they know what's best for me already, I don't need random strangers filling that particular role.
Posts
holy shit, I love this guy, what a fucking hero
The fuck was inside of you the whole time.
A true prince among men.
The real fuck you was the friends we made along the way.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I fully expect this to end with some variation on “I fell asleep every time I tried to dig into your past.”
It's been over 24 hours since you posted this, so I think your'e right. I just hope Rorshach woke up in time to go to his job or whatever the fuck it is he does all day long.
7th grade, middle school. I got picked on a lot. One of the kids was CS, and he use to pick and my friends and I mercilessly. Stole from us, called us names, slapped us with rubber bands, books knocked onto the floor, normal 80's movie bully stuff.
One day I had enough. Now, I've always had a flair for the dramatic, and I went full anime on him. I called him out and challenged him to a fight in Art class 3rd period. I even took some time to talk to this popular kid named Kyle about it, he said I shouldn't do it and when I did this big old challenge I even called him out "Kyle I know you said I shouldn't do this, but I can't stand for it anymore!"
I was the most cool kid.
Anyway, we were in the hall way before the next period, no idea why no teacher stopped us (I know now), our mutual friend Tim tried to talk me out of it, he knew CS would not be dissuaded because he was an asshole.
Anyway we did the big stand off thing in the hallway after the bell rang. Tossed our books down, he kneed me in the balls and punched me in the gut hard. I got up, grabbed his head and started slamming him into a locker, repeatedly. then when he backed up I did a sweet kick directly into his chest. This is when a teacher finally pulled us apart.
I was suspended for 4 days, he was kicked out of school since this was his like 12th strike. My parents took me out for a steak dinner that night. Why? Because this kid had been picking on my friends and I for about 5 years, and even shot my friend with a BB gun once. Parents complained to the school a bunch but they never did much of anything.
Years and years later I ran into him, he was working security at a store. He actually thanked me. It was fucking weird and sounds like a made up internet story but it turns out his parents sent him to a private catholic school where he found God and met his wife who was also the mother of his children and he said if we hadn't of fought he never would have found his true path. Though I guess that also means he had no remorse for the years of abuse, I'll take it.
So yeah, that was my first fight.
The recess bell rings and we're all headed back in to class, and Dan hocks the biggest fucking loogie you'll ever see right in my face. We're talking, like, 4 ounces of spit and booger. I slug him in his open mouth, while he's laughing at me, with a straight right, he falls to the ground, and I wiped the spit off on his shirt. It was fucking gross and he deserved worse. That's the only time I've hit "the button" and it's really not a good feeling. I have no idea how people derive pleasure from fighting.
Don't do fights.
So you can truthfully say you once kicked a man in the chest so hard he found God?
I was about 225 or so at the time, he was maybe 150, I'm looking at him and vibrating with rage, it would not have been pretty as he had to spit up at least six inches to even hit my face due to the height difference.
My wife (girlfriend at the time) was in the room with some other friends and saw what happened and my face and towed me outo of the room. I didn't end up punching the guy, but when he was informed that in fact the ramen noodles had been mine, and that he had just spat in the face of friend over nothing, you pretty much have to re-evaluate his entire worldview. The guy was very proud of his intellectual status and apparently had been dealing with some inner demons.
I was pretty lucky my wife stepped in as I honestly don't know what I would have done but it would have involved beating the shit out of him.
A year out from graduation, I had moved off campus into an apartment with some very close friends. The apartment grounds had a few facilities, including a volleyball court. One spring weekend morning I found that a bunch of that friend group of mine was busy playing. Nobody had thought to let me know, despite me living right there, in view of the court. A felt a lot of emotions that morning, and as I left the apartment to go to work, I had a simple, obvious conclusion: these people weren't my friends. In fact, I didn't actually like most of them. We didn't interact much outside of the context of drinking and partying. I had little in common with them.
In the weeks that followed I removed myself from their activities. I concentrated on my studies and my job. I found actual friends. People I did enjoy spending time with. I drank far, far less. I was happier.
Thinking about all this now, I can't say that this was a grand moment, a big turning point in my life. But it did teach me a lesson that I will never forget. That you can choose who you spend your time with, and that both of you should get some enjoyment from it.
Around the time the storm reached 50 mph one of the chiefs noticed that a set of wooden stairs used to get in to the warehouse had come loose and were being slowly blown down the street in front of where we were. He told me to go get a few other people to go out and grab it. I head to the back, shout we need a few people, then go back up front.
One guy shows up.
I decide that, being 20, I'm invincible. I tell other guy to come on and go running out in to the storm while the chief yelled something I chose to ignore.
There were a couple things I neglected to consider in my decision:
1. Untreated wood can absorb a lot of water and therefore accumulate much more mass.
2. The wide profile of stairs lets them catch a lot of wind like a sail and pick up much more kinetic energy.
I ran out and braced myself directly in front of the stairs. They slammed in to me going about 20 mph and miraculously I'm not only uninjured but also manage to stop them. Unfortunately I couldn't actually move them and was essentially pinned where I was.
Second guy who wasn't an idiot came running out to help me and we pulled the stairs in.
The important takeaway for me is from that day I could use the phrase "I was once hit by a flight of stairs".
A flight of stairs in flight, in fact.
It was in high school band class, I think my sophomore year. There were a large number of people in band class who had absolutely no interest in music or band or anything, just the free A from attending. Maybe about half the class at that shitty rural georgia school. There was one gal in particular who was a total asshole about it, too. I will call her Kay. The band director was low on the faculty totem pole and didn't have much power to do anything, like kick people out of the class, so Kay was getting meaner and nastier by the day to everyone.
One day, this all came to a head. Kay was loudly chit-chatting with some other miscreants through a song, with the girls not even bothering pretending to play or even look like it. The director called them out after the song, so they sarcastically held up their instruments as if they were ready to play. At this moment, one of the clarinets decided to tell one of the trumpets that his shirt was stupid (for the record, it was a stupid shirt, but I'm not sure why that clarinet picked that particular moment to tell him). Between the clarinet and the trumpet was Kay.
Things escalated quickly. Kay jumped up, knocking aside chairs and music stands, and got up in the clarinet's face, screaming and cussing loudly. The clarinet was about a foot taller than Kay, and he did some weight lifting so he was substantially heftier, but that only seemed to provoke her even more. That clarinet player was usually a very chill dude, so long as he didn't hate your shirt, but getting cussed out to his face in the middle of band when he wasn't even addressing her wasn't the best of circumstances. He seemed to be holding his cool, as people edged away and the director snuck around behind Kay to try to pull them apart, but the clarinet suddenly hit his limit. "Get the HELL out of my face!" and he shoved her hard. She flew back into the band director's arms, and he tried to pull her towards the door. Kay was so angry though that she hurled him (also a substantially larger person than her) over her shoulder to the ground and then charged at the clarinet player to fight. Only now, between him and her, was me.
In less than a second, before my conscious brain had time to figure out what was going on and what to do, I had already knocked her to the ground. Just instinctively pushed out and shoved her to the ground. Applied physicist Marshawn Lynch once explained that a person running at full tilt is highly unbalanced, so a little baby tap to them (such as a stiff-arm or a shove in a band room) can drop them. This is probably what happened here.
Anyway, with Kay on the ground, two larger guys were able to grab her and push her out the door, which we locked. One of the trombones had called the principal already and we just stayed behind locked doors until Kay was taken away. People wondered how I'd managed to take down Kay so fast, and I was like "adrenaline, I guess." She was given a week's suspension after that.
But that's not the end of the story. Kay came back to school (though not band, at least)...and she was a lot nicer after that. At first I thought this was some trick, that she was planning on coming after me for hitting her, but then she was nice to everybody after that. By the time I graduated, she was genuinely one of the sweetest, coolest people at that place, even helping out other people and doing good deeds and not being an asshole at all.
So that's the story of the time I knocked the mean out of someone.
I think mostly folks like that tend to need a push to realise that no, people don't like you, they're scared of you.
Alternatively, I was the bully and never realized it? I don't think that's the case, but how can I be sure?
How much lunch money did you steal?
30 Rock’s episode where Liz goes to her high school reunion is one I think on a lot.
I would say I was bullied. Did I ever bully back? Honestly, I don’t know. In hindsight high school was so full of drama and bitchiness on all sides and sometimes misunderstandings arose out of nothing.
I ran a fascinating scientific experiment where I was the smallest kid in class until junior high, and was pushed around quite a bit as a result.
Then I started growing at a rate of six inches per year while at the same time spending most of my non-school hours hand-loading square bales with my dad. The summer between eighth and ninth grade I passed the six-foot mark and dad and I spent the whole summer loading thirty tons of oat hay onto a semi in the morning and unloading it in the evening.
Suddenly all of my tormentors started to look very small and breakable, and everything got real civil real fast.
Never been in a fight, though.
What amazes most of my friends though (aside from the one or two I kept in contact with from my old school in Florida) is that as a young kid I was small and also a fucking psychopath. Some combination of abuse, neglect, depression and being a smart weirdo made me react to any perceived slight in the most extreme means possible. Other kids might want to get in capers or scrapes. I assumed you were threatening my personhood and reacted as such. Some highlights included biting multiple kids hard enough to draw blood, a few attempted strangulations, real deep scratches from my dirtbag long fingernails and putting one kid in an eyepatch for a week while the eye I tried to gauge out healed.
What's crazy is that I remember feeling completely justified and couldn't understand why adults were upset. Of course I got a running start and punted that kid in the stomach, he stole my seat. Why wouldn't I fishhook that kid by the collarbone and pull him over a bus seat? He spit on me.
I'm not violent at all now (well, I get more self-destructive than retaliatory), but that fear of losing perspective and going ham is a fairly persistent anxiety.
Edit: Also, I really hope this doesn't read as one of those really sad "I don't fight, but if I had to, I would fight dirty and win" stories. I have no doubts someone with training would absolutely clown me. Just that as a child I would go into a blind unreasoning fury and my family has a history of mental breaks that leave me scared that I might escalate a scrape in a way that rational me wouldn't intend.
Keep that up, fighting is awful. I like to keep my adrenaline rushes in the bedroom, where they belong.
With my videogames.
She thought that a) I should include some food, and b) it was ridiculous to order a hot and cold drink simultaneously, and decided unilaterally that she would not bring my chai until long after I'd finished the first drink: "You will get a bad stomach." Then someone ordered a toasted smoked chicken sandwich, and she told us it was more of a cake time of day. But we did get the sandwich.
Oh we judge .
Just secretly.
Sure, but secret judgement might as well be no judgement.
If I piss someone off or disgust them, I'd appreciate it if they would let me know.
That all times of day if you try hard enough
All waitstaff hate customers, after being in America for a few years I just like going to places where nobody ever pretends otherwise.
If you're ever in the Pittsburgh giant eagle I work at I promise to question why you're buying Deli meat at 2am in as judgy a way as possible
I make that kind of list more often than you'd think.
3 times.
My job specifically was compound controller. Despite being clearly too low ranking for the job, my shift boss realized someone with an admin background was a perfect fit since it was literally 100% admin work. Just, you know, sometimes things were on fire during that work.
So anyway, I'm in the controller shack and have access to all the detainee files. Our compound had about a thousand detainees altogether. In our particular compound the Army decided to try and put all the leaders together under the assumption that they would fight each other so much they wouldn't cause trouble otherwise. (They became ISIS).
But this isn't about them. This is about Crazy Steve.
See, one day we were told we were getting a detainee called Crazy Steve. My shift boss asks me to pull up his profile and see what his deal is. We knew that the really bad trouble makers would have upwards of a dozen demerits for things like fighting, stealing, etc. I look up Crazy Steve's ID number and he was over a hundred demerits. And all of them were for fucking with the Air Force. "Crazy Steve walked outside naked and refused to put on clothes." "Crazy Steve kept repeating orders back to people." "Crazy Steve kept mooing like a cow."
The man wasn't nefarious, he was a trickster god and that spoke to us on a deep level. We were excited for him to arrive because we held a mutual disrespect for authority. Based on what we read, we wanted Steve to stay with us forever.
So the prison bus shows up to drop off Crazy Steve. My shift boss grabs our two biggest guys, this ginger from Scotsman stock and a guy who was a minor league baseball player both walk out behind him.
Crazy Steve gets off the bus and we're greeted with what's essentially a Middle Eastern Danny Devito. Short, squat, but a full head of curly hair.
My boss tells him "Alright, I saw your record, we can do this the easy way or the hard way."
Steve looks at him, looks at the two giant guys behind him, proceeds to throw down his bed roll and stuff and says in a glorious Iraqi accent "Hard way!"
They weren't prepared for this. My boss looks at the other two, shrugs, and picks up Steve's stuff. The two giants pick up Crazy Steve by the armpits and he raises his feet so that they effectively have to carry him across the prison grounds while everyone watches.
They get him to his quad and put him in there with his stuff. Crazy Steve turns around, look my boss in the eye, and says, "In three hours, I run this place." He picks up his stuff and goes in.
Unfortunately for Steve, he was in a quad full of future ISIS. Just about three hours later we get an alert that someone has been dragged to a gate and it's Steve. Poor guy was with the wrong crowd. We pulled him out of there and the last I saw he was being moved to his own cell in a proper prison instead of our open air one.
I miss Steve.
Anyway, I'm sitting on the third level aft deck prepping a surface for some arc welding using a needlegun. A lady and, presumably, her young son (4 maybe 5 years old) are on the dock and when my gear quiets down, she says, "Excuse me?"
I turn to her, "Yeah? What's up?"
"My son wants to know if working on the boat is fun."
"Oh, it's pretty good!" My mouth adds another sentence nanoseconds later with absolutely no input from my brain. "Except they make us eat spiders."
The little boy clutches his mother's waist tighter, "Not spiders, mommy!"
I cannot recall the mother's reaction at all, and the whole thing was fairly surreal to me, but I was extremely proud of my bizarre, quick wit.
I think I have enough people in my life who think they know what's best for me already, I don't need random strangers filling that particular role.