We asked our regular contributors through e-mail, What’s your good/awkward/funny story you’ve always wanted to share? We got many interesting response. So here is part 2 of it. We have just copied and pasted their responses, not editing them in any way and most of the respondents have requested to stay anonymous, so no names will be published.
1-5 Good/Awkward/Funny Moments
01. I had this patient before medical school when I was an EMT and he still sticks with me:
20 something year old male, motorcycle vs SUV; SUV won. We arrived on scene to a man face down in a pool of blood, ~1L. We were told he was wearing a helmet, but it was nowhere to be found. He was about 30 ft from his bike and there was a clear trail of blood to the bike because he wasn’t wearing leathers. We rolled him onto the board and that was the first beating heart I ever saw. His road rash was so bad it eroded his chest wall and we were staring at his heart, a collapsed lung, his great vessels, and the branches of the brachial plexus. Amazingly, they were all intact. Of course he had multiple injuries to his other extremities, mandible, zygomatic arches, etc. but we frankly didn’t care at the time. We were on scene for no more than 2 min before we sped off to the trauma center. I remember transferring the patient to the chief of trauma surgery whose first words when the trauma pad was removed were “Holy s**t!” I thought for sure he died.
Fast forward 2 years when I was at my primary care physician’s office for a checkup after my medical school interview and saw a collection bin for a veteran’s wedding. Guess who? Yup, it was him. They had taken his left arm to reconstruct his chest since the nerves were shot and he recovered.
02. I basically was born with a congenital birth defect which has an extremely high mortality rate. Like 1 in 120,000,000 of it happening and about 95% to 99% chance of dying. Not only did I survive it for 20 years, I played lacrosse for 4 years. Now the issue was that I was missing a major blood vessel on my heart that is required to pump blood. My body compensated in such an extreme way that the blood vessel on the right side of the heart went down and around the heart and attached itself to aorta. My heart was basically circulating heart around itself and the rest of my body didn’t get enough blood.
So how it was found out? Blew my nose and full on heart attack.
Surgeons repeatedly stated and asked “How was I alive” and “You played lacrosse for 4 years”. Also, the main surgeon stated that anyone with this condition usually dies at birth. They only know of the condition from autopsies.
03. A few years ago, I went to jail for a day because I didn’t have enough money to pay at my arraignment. I was put in a holding cell with 5-6 other dudes who were waiting to either see the judge, or get transferred to Wayne County’s jail. While I was hanging out in there, I spoke to a black guy who looked very similar to Michael Clarke Duncan from The Green Mile. He told me he was in jail due to contempt of court.
When I asked him to elaborate, he told me how he took a bus to his sentencing as he didn’t have a car. In Dearborn’s courthouse, you’re not allowed to bring any cell phones with you, as they must be kept in a car or what have you. He didn’t want to leave his outside, so he actually put it in his ass. Yeah. He put his phone up his ass.
So he’s in court, waiting for the other people to get sentenced, or whatever, when his phone starts to go off. Loudly. Pissed, the judge stops the session and yells “who’s phone is going off?” Black dude raises his hand and the judge tells him to stand up. “Get your phone and turn it off immediately!” he screams. Slowly, the guy reaches into the back of his pants…
He got sentenced 10 days in jail for that.
04. My father worked in a county lockup for many years. He was generally well-liked by the inmates, to the point that a few times when I was with him as a kid, strange dudes would come up and thank him for being the ‘only one’ that treated them like humans. Anyway, they had an older inmate who was a very high-profile repeat escapee, and my dad would occasionally talk with the guy. Eventually the guy tells my dad that he could escape if he wanted to but he’s tired and could just use the break of staying inside for a while. My dad doubts the story, but casually agrees and thanks the guy for being cool and not causing trouble. Dad talks to his sup about it and the super decides that they want to see how this guy would get out. So they work it out with the guy that if he participates in a training exercise, he can get some credit on his time, all he has to do is escape to a certain point in the building, no negative consequences, but if he’s caught in the process the game is over and he shows them how he escaped and he goes back. I’m not sure what confidence they gave the guy that he wouldn’t get screwed over, but he agrees and a few days go by. While a very not-well-liked guard is doing rounds the old guy comes up missing. Like entirely missing. So now it’s super alert time. All of the guards are called together and they’re looking for this guy inside. They go to the designated area, some kind of lock-through or sallyport, and there’s a note from the guy that says “keep looking”. They keep looking, and find him sitting in the cafeteria office eating pie and reading the newspaper.
In the course of three days he had managed to disassemble the light fixture that served his cell, remove the pigtail for the ground and a three foot section of ground wire, and three pieces of metal from inside the mounting box and the fixture. With those he fashioned a tool that allowed his door to be closed and appear to be locked by the through-bolt, but he could release the through bolt from the carrier and get it back out of the receiver. The guy proceeded to walk them through every step of the process and they ended up having to change a whole bunch of stuff on the unit so that the feat couldn’t be repeated.
05. In high school I took AP US History from a Vietnam vet. He was a stern man with no patience for bullsh*t and a heart of gold. I loved his class. He presented history based on factual documentation and with as little bias as possible. He forced us to critically think and encouraged discussions regularly. His tests were always fifty multiple choice, fifty true or false, and two timed essay questions. You always studied for those because the easiest part was the timed essay. There were no easy multiple choice questions. For example, if it asked you the date of an event, unless you knew the correct answer, all four answers made complete and total sense.
When the class did well, he baked us brownies. I’m not sure if they were delicious on their own merit or because we earned them, but g*ddamn they tasted like victory. To this day, I’ve never had a more challenging or rewarding class.
The only sign of his service was a small banner that read “Army Ranger” he kept posted on his window. From time to time he’d tell us silly stories about his unit, but kept most of his service secret. Some kids did some snooping and a rumor he had been tapped for Delta and was a sniper in Vietnam starting flying around school. Aside from AP US History, he also taught Psychology as an elective. I signed up because I loved his classes (also brownies).
On the first day he handed out syllabuses and gave a brief overview of the things we would be covering. When he finished he asked if there were any questions we would like answered. I think part of the reason I loved his AP class was my classmates. We were all there because we wanted to be and took our academic pursuits seriously. Psychology was not the same batch.
This m*ron kid (who I recently found out is incarcerated on multiple DUI counts as well as domestic abuse and possession with intent to distribute) raised his hand. He asked how many men, women, or children he had killed in Vietnam and whether or not he had kept ears as trophies. Immediately, everyone in the class knew how incredibly fu*ked this kid was. There are some lines you don’t cross, especially when you’re talking to a guy who had a heart attack and a week later was out running ten miles (a light jog, as he put it).
The teacher handled it professionally and said he was only taking questions pertinent to the class. The kid followed up with: “So like twenty or what?”.
You know that moment when you drop a glass and realize there’s nothing you can do to save it? The only you can do is brace for the impact. Imagine that moment lasting longer than it takes for a glass to fall. Imagine it felt that way for a full minute. Two minutes. An hour. A lifetime. That’s how it felt in that room. Everyone looked intently at their belly buttons while we waited for the hammer to drop. Well, everyone except for me. My eyes were squarely on my teacher.
He used to say that life is defined by the trying moments, the difficult ones; it’s easy to act morally and justly on a full belly. The mark of a man is how he handles himself under duress. His jaw clenched and lips tightened as he placed his hands firmly on the podium he lectured from. He was a master of the slow blink and now employed it with devastatingly terrible connotations.
“Mr. [redacted]. Please collect your belongings and see yourself to the office. I will be along shortly.”
The classroom sat in silence. We knew how it felt when he was disappointed we didn’t do better on a quiz. We knew how it felt when someone asked a boneheaded question. But this, this feeling here, was new. It was coals of anger restrained only by sheer force of will, it was rage incarnate.
“What?” The kid smiled and looked around at his silent classmates, “Did I say something wrong? Why do I have to go to the office?”
I wish I could say this kid had balls of steel, but all evidence points to the contrary; he had brains of mush.
“Mr. [redacted],” his voice was even and controlled, but radiated power, “you will collect your belongs and see yourself to the office right now…” He repeated again slower and more clear, “…or I will assist you in doing so.”
And then it hit. Like a tsunami wave crashing against the shore, he realized how much sh*t he really was in. He wasn’t being sent to the office because the teacher was angry, he was being sent to the office for his own well being. Finally breaking my sight line, I look at the kid. His face was pale and mouth slightly open, signifying the epiphany currently washing over him. He quickly grabbed his stuff, not even bothering to put them in his bag and left.
My teacher took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then said, “Are there any OTHER questions regarding my class?”
What I should have said was nothing. What I actually said was: “We still get brownies for doing well on tests, right?”
He looked at me with the same cold eyes my classmate had earned. My boisterous confidence shriveled under the gaze. I had taken the anger from being asked if during a war he had butchered innocents and redirected it unto myself with a smartass question. I would be joining my idiot counterpart soon. He gave me a slow blink and said, “Everybody but you Mr. Kid, everybody but you.” He gave me a small rare grin as the class sighed and chuckled. “Please open your textbooks to page [somenumber] and begin reading. I have other ahem matters to attend to. I will return momentarily.”
The kid transferred classes that day. Three weeks later I received my first, last, and only personal pan of brownies for a perfect score on his test.
6-10 Good/Awkward/Funny Moments
06. I’ll share my terrible tinder story.
I matched with this really cute girl, all of her pictures were professionally done, like senior pictures. We texted for a few days and she seemed alright, not exactly interesting or funny but, as any sane male using tinder, I wasn’t looking for anything more than a hookup. One night she invited me to pick her up, because she was sneaking out of her house. I agreed and drove to her neighborhood to meet her. I called her when I was at the gate and she sounded funny, it sounded like she was eating and her mouth was full. Thought nothing of it and waited for her to come out.
She rounds the corner walking kinda funny, and wearing weird clothes, like clothes a 12 year old girl would wear. (we’re both 19) She gets in my car and she’s kinda making a funny face. As she reached to hold my hand without saying hello, it hit me. This girl was retarded.
Her little brother came running around the corner yelling telling her to come back because their parents were gonna go crazy. She yelled back out of my open window, “It’s ok, I’m with my boyfriend. He’s gonna take care of me.” I sh*t my pants. I calmly told her she should probably go with her brother but she wouldn’t let go of my hand. After some convincing she went back with her brother and I sped out of there.
She called me about 20 times, texted me saying she needed me because her parents were going mental being mad at her. I sent one text back saying she should listen to them and not sneak out any more and never texted her again. She still texts me to this day inviting me to go places with her family as her boyfriend, and I never reply. Now I Skype everyone before I meet them in person.
07. I used to work at an inner city thrift store. One day, this hot mess of a drag queen comes in. He’s wearing sparkly false eyelashes, bubble-gum pink lipstick, and a long, blonde wig. He’s got on one of those see through mesh shirts, and a tiny leather skirt. He also has on pink fishnet stockings, and Lucite stripper heels.
He asks me if I’ve seen a certain man, and when I point in the general direction, he starts to head over. When the guy sees the drag queen, he starts pushing over shelves and hitting people, trying to get out of the store. The drag queen lifts up his skirt, and pulls a small gun from a thigh holster. He shouts “Police, you motherfu*ker!” And starts running after him.
The drag queen tackles him to the floor, with the plastic heels still on. Turns out he was an undercover cop, and the guy he was after was arrested for an illegal human trafficking ring.
08. My Dad does stupid things on a fairly regular basis. Here are a few of his Dad Stories:
- He was in the local hardware store and wanted to test out a clamp. For some reason he thought it’d be a good idea to clamp it on his hand. He couldn’t get it off and had to walk around the store for ages trying to remove it.
- He had what he thought was a bottle of orange juice so he shook it up to evenly distribute the pulp. Unfortunately when he opened it he realised it was a bottle of soft drink and it was spraying out. In a panic he put his mouth on the bottle to stop it and his cheeks filled with fizzed up soft drink. Funniest thing to watch.
- For my 18th we hired a boat and the rental guy was giving Dad instructions on how to work it since he’d never driven one before. The guy says something like ‘so does that make sense?’ and my Dad was all ‘yep, got it’. The guy left and my Dad casually asked if anyone knew what he said because Dad forgot to listen. He had to get out of the marina, dodging million dollar boats, and kept lurching in the wrong direction. My Mum was terrified.
- He tried to wipe super glue off his hands using paper towel and ended up with bits of paper towel glued to his fingers.
- When I was in school everybody had a surf brand shoulder bag. My parents cheaped out and got me a no-name backpack. One day one of the straps broke and I was really excited because it meant they’d get me a good one. Except my Dad decided he would cut off the strap, thus turning it into one of those ‘cool shoulder bags’ I wanted. Problem was he accidentally cut off the one good strap.
- We were waiting for my Mum to finish at the hairdressers and Dad points in the window and says ‘Wow, Mum looks great!’ The chair swivels around and it’s some random dude.
- A couple of weeks ago I got a text from him that said, ‘Could you come over when you’re free. I’m locked in the loo’. It turned out he was repainting the toilet door and took off the handle but left the actual lock part on, so when he went to paint the inside he became trapped. I had to actually go to his house to free him.
09. I used to be an employee at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. I was in high school at the time and I didn’t have a car so my parents took turns taking me to work and picking me up. One day my mom tells me that she is going to bring the two kids she babysits and have me give the three of them a quick tour around the highlights of the zoo before we go home.
After I finish my shift I meet up with my mom and the kids and I decided to take them to the tapir exhibit first. The zoo’s tapirs were a breeding pair and the female was pretty far along he her pregnancy. As we approached the exhibit I explained how the zoo keepers were expecting the tapir to give birth any day now.
We reach the exhibit and one of the tapirs walks right up to the glass and suddenly something pink starts emerging from beneath it. The kids point it out almost immediately and second by second its coming further and further out. My mother starts screaming “OH MY GOD THE TAPIR IS GIVING BIRTH! OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO GO GET A ZOO KEEPER THE TAPIR IS GIVING BIRTH!”. As a typical teenager I was easily embarrassed by my parents, but this was a new low. A huge crowd almost instantly formed and my mom wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise. I wanted to tell her that the tapir has the largest penis to body ratio of any animal in the world. I wanted to explain that the tapir was just proudly sprouting a boner for the ever growing crowd to admire, but she wouldn’t hear it.
I melted into the crowd and abandoned her. Maybe I was a terrible son.
10. I was once mistaken for dead and it was hilarious.
I had a cubicle job during college and in my cubicle was a 3-hole-puncher which I purchased with my own money in order that I might organize my schoolwork into binders during breaks. The 3-hole-puncher kept going missing, then I found out that Barb from the call center was “borrowing” it from my desk to make scrapbooks of her grand kids. I sent a polite email to the entire department explaining that it was my personal belonging and asked that it not be removed from my desk.
Not long after, a guy from a department adjacent to mine who looked sort of like me hanged himself to death. There were about 300 employees in the branch, and I imagine many conversations circulated that morning which went like “Did you hear that guy from the third floor hanged himself?” “No, who?!” “You know the quiet guy with glasses and a beard?” “Oh no, not John!” By the time I got to work that afternoon, everyone thought I was dead, and I spent the whole day walking into rooms to watch faces go white.
Here’s the kicker. When I got back to my cubicle my 3-hole-puncher was missing. I walked slowly into Barb’s cubicle. She was mid phone conversation but her jaw dropped and she couldn’t speak when she saw me. She thought I was dead, and wasted NO time robbing me of my possessions. The look on her face when she thought my ghost had returned for his stolen office supplies like some bad Goosebumps novel was worth being dead for a morning.
To whomever wrote number 5, you have to shops of a writer!