True Story!

[Kaymyth she/her]

We all have them - those stories of things that happened to us, or of things that we did, that are just so good that they must be told.  Many of them are funny, but some might be creepy or poignant.  But they're all true, because truth is often stranger than fiction.  A lot of them might feature such phrases as, "No crem, there I was, when..."

 

So here is where to tell those stories.  All I ask is that we all tell stuff that's true and (obviously) keep it to the Shard's preferred cleanliness level.  I shall start!

 

 

Hi, my name is Rosemary, and I play Dungeons and Dragons.  And other RPGs.  This is certainly not unique to the forum.  But I have this pair of friends, we'll call them the Fabulous Monster and the Druid (for these are monikers that they would embrace without revealing their identity to random internet people), who like to co-DM games.  Their games are typically awesome, and my circle of friends gets excited when they get ideas for a new one.

 

Back a few years ago, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, Gary Gygax, passed away.  The FM and the Druid decided that to honor his passing and his contributions to nerdkind, they were going to run an all-day Gygaxian Grinder event.  See, there was this gloriously terrible cartoon in the 80's called Dungeons and Dragons that was loosely based on the game, featuring a group of kids who got sucked into a D&D world and saddled with character classes.  We all grew up watching it, of course, so we look back on it with +3 Goggles of Nostalgia.  And our illustrious DMs took those characters and made character sheets and said, "Hey, you're going to play these characters!  As people get tired of playing, they can swap out and someone else can pick up the character.  And here are a few extra ones we made up of a few different classes, just to keep things interesting."

 

The Fabulous Monster ran the plot and main bad guys, while the Druid jumped in for various other NPCs, including Uni the baby unicorn.  (Playing Uni mostly involves wandering into danger and saying, "Meh!" a lot, so it wasn't a very interesting part for a player.)

 

I wound up playing a character named Presto most of the day.  Presto is a nerdy teenaged mage-boy whose spells rarely work correctly.  In the show, he'd generally chant a couple of rhyming lines and his magic would go haywire, or sputter out completely, as the plot demanded.  As is often the case in RP, it hardly mattered that I don't match his gender; what did matter is that I demonstrated a prodigious talent for coming up with rhyming doggerel on the fly. 

 

The DMs had come up with a system to figure out when and how Presto's spells worked or didn't work.  I declared what spell I was trying to cast, and spat out a rhyme (the worse the better).  The Druid then rolled a die.  Roll too low, and the spell fails.  Roll in the middle, and it goes off as normal (but what fun is that?).  Roll too high - and things get interesting.  And by interesting, I mean it in the Wash from Firefly/Serenity sense of the word.

 

We played through a few modules without anything terrible happening.  (Unless you count me summoning a human-sized hot dog to make Billy stop whining about being hungry as terrible.  Which you might, because who knows what they put in those things.)  We also picked up a non-canon sorcerer character who annoyed the crap out of poor Presto because the little jerk's spells worked perfectly.  It was very upsetting (for Presto; everyone else was just happy to have someone who could do magic without risking the creation of giant predator-attracting globs of mystery meat).

 

Then we got to an episode where we had to go through a heavily trapped dungeon.  We were several rooms in before we realized our first mistake:  nobody had thought to play the thief character this episode, so we had nobody capable of disarming traps.

 

Oops.

 

Well, there was nothing for it but to keep going, we figured.  There were six of us; I remember myself and the sorcerer specifically, and there were at least a couple full-on fighter types.  But nobody who had the slightest idea how to get through the place safely.

 

Eventually, we came to a large room that was filled with a very fine-grain sand.  After some testing and measurements, we determined that the sand was 10 feet deep and any of us trying to walk across it would immediately sink down and suffocate.  The annoying sorcerer kid was showing off with his actual magic that works by using the Flight spell to try and examine the room when I got an Idea.  (Word to the wise, when I get Ideas with a capital 'i', it's probably a good opportunity to just run far, far away.  You'll see why soon.)

 

I figured, Presto's a teenaged nerd.  It's not inconceivable that he'd know certain scientific and industrial uses for sand.  Certainly before we were all dumped into D&D Land he was the kid reading ahead in the science textbook in class.  So I declared my intent to the DMs, and spoke:

 

I'm either stupid or have <bleeps> of brass,

But I'm gonna melt this sand into glass!

 

The Fabulous Monster proceeded to dissolve into helpless laughter, and the Druid quietly facepalmed.  I didn't understand why; it was a perfectly reasonable trick for a disgruntled 14-year-old who thinks he's way smarter than he is to try.  I was going for an Aganazzar's Scorcher, a line of fire that would melt a nice, neat little bridge of glass across the room, allowing us all to cross to safety.  And if that annoying little sorcerer twit got a bit singed, well, then that was just a bit of righteous vengeance to add to Presto's burning need to prove himself.

 

FM managed to catch her breath while the Druid rolled for the actual magical effect.

 

He rolled high.

 

Instead of the Aganazzar's Scorcher I wanted, I instead got an Empowered Fireball.  (For those of you who don't know D&D spells, that's like a giant ball of fire, only with +1/2 the firepower.)  This...is most emphatically NOT a spell that anyone wants to cast in an enclosed space.

 

But it gets better.

 

Because at this point, the Fabulous Monster has melted into a puddle of gasping, sobbing laughter, even more intense than before.  She just lay there, hanging halfway out of her chair, completely unable to speak or even breathe for a full two minutes.  The Druid was laughing, too, though a bit more resignedly, and the rest of us were just caught up in the infectiousness that humor has, not really knowing quite why we're laughing, but figuring we're going to get the joke sooner or later.

 

And indeed we did, for finally the Fabulous Monster pulled herself together long enough to say, "It's not sand!  It's...

(wait for it...)

a mixture of flour and saltpeter!"

 

It was several minutes after that before anyone was able to breathe again.

 

The sorcerer was completely incinerated.  Another character who'd been too close to the blast radius was also fried.  And me - poor little Presto, standing in the doorway to the room - was in the path of the blast.  Now, in D&D, when getting hit by a fireball you can roll a reflex save to take half damage.  Also in D&D, there is this thing called a "Natural 20" that means when you roll a 20-sided dice, it lands on the 20 itself.  This is a critical success, and is usually accompanied by sunshine and rainbows and unicorn farts and wild amazingness.

 

Yes, you see where this is going.  I rolled a natural 20 on my fireball reflex save.

 

This, in fact, did not save Presto's life.  Rather, instead of being incinerated like my sorcerer nemesis, I was instead picked up by the blast radius and flung 50 feet down the hallway and crushed against a far wall.  A rather appropriate cartoony death, I think.

 

Now, it's important to note here that the party actually did have access to Resurrection spells.  But while all of the players agreed that it was one of the funniest mass party deaths ever to grace the annals of gaming, the characters were rather upset.  So instead of resurrecting Presto they stuck his poor corpse into a Bag of Holding to cart around for a while until they came across a situation where they absolutely needed a mage.  So I got to take a nice little episode break before they decided that they needed me again.

 

In the end, we faced the Five-Headed Dragon Tiamat, and several died.  But not Presto.  He saw a chance to abandon the lost and jump the portal home and took it.  And with any luck, he never had the opportunity to touch another magic spell again, because dang that kid is incompetent.

 

And that is the story of the most epic gaming fail that I have ever had the pleasure to witness, let alone create.  The moral is:  don't try to outsmart your DMs.  It will end in tears.  And possibly fiery death. 

 

Though it does make for a great story.

[Curious Anamaximder he/him]

What

You

Did

[Kaymyth she/her]

What

You

Did

 

There's a reason why "it seemed like a good idea at the time" is often referred to as "Famous last words."

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

I've seen Bigfoot. 

 

No, seriously. Shake your head and roll your eyes if you like, but I know what I saw. 

 

So there I was, on a camping trip with my church youth group. Called Low Gear, it was a four-day trip up into the mountains of Northern Idaho near upper Priest Lake. Back before the lead pastor of my family's church in Spokane stepped down and was replaced by a man whose love of Ugg boots and hideous imported Swedish sweaters was as deep and abiding as his hatred of the great outdoors, it was an annual tradition. We'd pile into church vans and drive up to the campsite, then leave our vehicles behind as Pastor led us up the trail. It was a beautiful winding footpath (though you could bike some of it, there were parts that were too narrow and steep to do anything but walk) through the sort of dense trees and blackberry thickets the Northwest is known for. Sunlight dappled the forest floor and birds called to one another over the sometimes distant, sometimes near sound of a gurgling brook. Every so often an enormous log would lie across the path, leaving just enough room on either side to go over or under it. The air was the sort of fresh you can only find in a place dominated by trees instead of people. 

 

Once we reached the campsite, a six-mile hike from our vehicles, we set up camp and set about traditions. It was the same every year: We had spaghetti for dinner the first night, rice and meat with gravy the second, and huckleberry pancakes every morning after Pastor and whoever wanted to join him went out into the woods to pick huckleberries. Pastor told the same joke every year. 

 

A young man walks into a pet store, looking for a companion. He's drawn to a mynah bird who speaks, and tells him, "Take me home, and I will take you to see porpoises. Porpoises that never die." The young man wants to see these immortal porpoises, so he buys the bird and takes it home. 

 

The next day, they set out, the mynah bird perched on his arm and giving instructions. They walk for quite a long ways, through forests and city, but finally, they wander along a dirt path. The young man stops when he sees a sleeping lion in front of him. Each of the lion's ears bears a tag: one says Oregon and one says Washington. 

 

"Just step over the lion," the mynah says. "He won't harm you." 

 

So the young man does—and the second his feet touch the ground, police jump out from behind the trees and arrest him. "Why?" he asks them. "What am I under arrest for?" 

 

"For transporting a mynah over the state lion with intent on immortal porpoises."

 

On the second night, we always held a snipe hunt. If you've never been on one, I won't spoil the surprise, but as me and a few of the other older students were preparing, I felt like I was being watched. So I glanced over my shoulder—and there it was. 

 

I say "it" not to diminish the creature, but because it was too distant and dark for me to determine gender. It stood peering out from behind a tree, a tall, apelike shadow watching us prepare our snipe hunt. I don't know how, but I knew it meant us no harm. It didn't even intend to join in. It was just curious, watching the strange loud visitors to its home. 

 

I returned my attention to the snipe hunt, and when I looked back, the shadow was gone. 

[The Honor Spren she/her]

I haven't ever actually had anything happen to me that would be good enough to make a story, but Shel Silverstein has, and it's pretty sweet. 

 

True story
This morning I jumped on my horse
And went for a ride,
And some wild outlaws chased me
And shot me in the side.
So I crawled into a wildcats cave
To find a place to hide
But some pirates found me sleeping there
And soon they had me tied
To a pole and built a fire
Under me---I almost cried
Till a mermaid came and cut me loose
And begged to be my bride
So I said I'd come back Wednesday
But I must admit I lied.
Then I ran into a jungle swamp
But I forgot my guide 
And I stepped into some quicksand
And no matter how hard I tried
I couldn’t get out, until I met
A watersnake named Clyde
Who pulled me to some cannibals
Who planned to have me fried
But an eagle came and swooped me up
And through the air we flied
But he dropped me in a boiling lake
A thousand miles wide
And you’ll never guess what I did then---
I DIED

Edited February 17, 2016 by The Honor Spren

[little wilson she/her]

It was May 2005. I'd just turned 18 a few weeks prior and it was about 2-3 weeks until I graduated from high school. After school one Wedensday, I was talking to a good guy friend of mine, who I shall call P. He was in his car, which was idling, with his window rolled down, listening to me blather on about....something. I can't remember what, but it was really important at the time. Okay, fine, for the sake of honesty, the topic of conversation was probably another guy. The point is, it was really important. 

 

But P had tennis practice to get to. He didn't have time (or the inclination) to listen to my woes. So he put his car into drive and started coasting forward, slowly. I walked alongside the car, continuing my story. He'd been parked along the main road, away from the high school, and there was a side road that went back to a parking lot right by us. He had a habit of going back into that parking lot to turn around and head back to the high school. So this is what he was doing. He turned the corner onto this little side road, and I just kept following alongside him. About halfway down, he decided that he was really done listening and accelerated, leaving me standing in the middle of the road, mid-sentence.

 

I was furious. This was important, and he'd left me almost mid-word. He would pay. I knew he was going to turn around and come back down this road, so I decided that I would inconvenience him by staying exactly where I was. He had room to go around me on either side, and that was my goal. He wants to ditch me in the middle of the road, fine. But I'm not moving.

 

He turned around and started heading back for me. About 20 feet in front of me, he slowed down to about 5 miles an hour or so, and this is when it occurred to me that he's not going to change direction. At all.

 

The first thing that popped into my head was not to get out of the street (which, let's be honest, we all knew that: I wouldn't be telling this story if it were). No, I am a stubborn individual when I put my mind to it, and I'd said I wasn't moving, and by golly, I wasn't moving. But I couldn't just let myself get hit by a car. So what should I do? Movies. What do characters in movies do when a car is coming toward them? Why, they jump on the hood, of course! In that moment, I felt as if I've never had a more brilliant idea in my life (very important note: I cannot jump worth a darn).

 

Somehow, I cleared the hood. Landed right on it, dead center. Perfect leap, perfect landing. But somewhere between the landing and P's shock at me leaping on his car and him slamming on the brakes, I lost my balance and promptly faceplanted straight into the windshield.

 

The left side of my face took the brunt of the fall, and it knocked my glasses out of place, which sent the nose-piece tearing down my nose and leaving a nice long scratch--not that I knew that initially. All I knew was pain, and I grabbed my glasses, held my face, and rolled off his car to go sit on the curb and figure out just how much damage I had done. My nose and cheek hurt the most, but it didn't seem like I had a bloody nose, and I didn't think anything was broken. Then P's girlfriend--one of my best friends--ran over. She watched this entire thing happen from across the street, and she asked me if I was okay and then told me my nose was bleeding. She got a bandaid and kleenex from P's car and handed them to me.

 

And that's about when P took off. He didn't say a word to me; he just zipped out of there (I'm nearly certain he was in shock).

 

I got home that afternoon and examined my face. Besides a cut across my nose and down it, that was the only damage. No black eye or anything else. I've no idea how that happened, but I have a habit of somehow escaping accidents mostly unscathed (really, though. I was run over pretty wickedly when I was 3 and should've been either paralyzed or killed but only got a minor scrape on the side of my face, and when I was 4, I should've drowned in our pool, but somehow didn't).

 

So I graduated high school with a new scar from one of the stupidest (and craziest) things I've done in my life. I still have that scar to this day.

 

And that, dear children, is why one should never try to reenact movies. Particularly not by jumping on the hoods of moving vehicles. Attempting to channel your inner stunt(wo)man usually ends badly. #commonsense

[Kaymyth she/her]

OK, new headcanon:  little wilson is a Highlander Immortal.

[Orlion Blight he/him]

OK, new headcanon:  little wilson is a Highlander Immortal.

There can be only one!

[Kaymyth she/her]

Come on!  There must be more people out there with entertaining anecdotes to tell!  Very well, in an attempt to tease out the shy ones, I shall tell another:

 

Once upon a time, I went to Dragon*Con.  I don't go anymore because it's gotten too big for me to handle, but it is one of the greatest gathering of nerds in the States.

 

So, on this particular day, I needed to use the restroom.  Yeah, I know, but it's a fact of life.  So I walked into one of the public restrooms, very preoccupied with how on earth I was going to manage this in full skirts and a corset.  (Thank goodness there weren't any hoops involved.)  There was a woman leaving as I entered, and I gave her a polite nod and a smile (like you do) as we passed each other.

 

Now, with my brainspace half-taken up by preparing for some difficult mechanics, I was at first only vaguely aware of the recognition circuit that had been tripped.  "Huh," I thought.  "Wait, she looked familiar; what cosplay was that?"

 

And then the rest of my brain caught up to current events and said, "That wasn't a cosplay, you idiot.  That was Felicia Day."

 

And that's how I almost met a famous person.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Kaymyth

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

Being raised in a household that was as anti-Potter as they come, my brother and I knew our parents wouldn't support our staying out until 2 AM to watch Deathly Hallows Part 2 in theaters. 

 

Which is why we snuck out to see it. 

 

I read the books about a year before my brother did. He caught me flipping through Goblet of Fire at the bus stop one snowy winter morning, and when he raised an eyebrow at my choice, I told him the truth. "They're very good. They're not Satanic." Anyone who's read the books will say, "Well, duh," but in a house where "There is no good and evil; there is only power, and those too weak to seek it" was presented as the whole theme of Philosopher's Stone, it was a pretty radical statement. He checked them out for himself later on, and by the time Deathly Hallows Part 2 was slated for release, we were both as far into the fandom as our sneaking ways would allow: He'd Sorted himself firmly into Gryffindor and figured out the best time to catch an ABC Harry Potter marathon while our parents were out of town, and I'd been writing fanfic on the sly for years. 

 

It was the last movie in the series (Fantastic Beasts wasn't even on the radar back then) and so he and I agreed that we had to see it. In the weeks leading up to the premiere, we hiked out into the woods behind our house and each cut a small branch from a different type of tree, then took them home and sanded them down until we had our own homemade wands. His was oak, twelve inches, nice and sturdy; mine was birch, fourteen inches, very slender but strong. We bought some of those popping fireworks—the little bits of paper and gunpowder that kids use to amuse themselves on the Fourth of July while they're waiting for nightfall and real fireworks. And then we had to come up with a plan to actually see the movie. 

 

I'll just disappoint you fine folks right now: We didn't sneak out a window at 10 PM. I didn't hide him in my trunk and race to the theater with our parents nipping at our heels. (I drove a minivan back then. There was room for him to sit up front and then some.) We simply decided to visit a couple of mutual friends after work instead of going straight home, warning our parents ahead of time that we'd be out late. If they asked why on earth we didn't make it home until 3 in the morning, we'd just say that we lost track of time. 

 

So we went to their apartment, chatted for a while, and then hurried to the nearby theater to save our place in line. There was already a line winding its way around the theater and to the door of a nearby department store, so we joined it as quick as we could. We chatted with a few Gryffindors and a Hufflepuff about the previous installments and how they differed from the books; and then, when that got boring, we took out our wands. 

 

Remember those poppers from earlier? And remember how the books described some curses as causing a loud noise when they're cast or when they hit? We'd toss a popper on the ground and shout "Stupefy!" or other curses while pointing our wands at other people in line. There were many laughs and no shortages of yelps. 

 

When we finally got to the theater, it was packed. I was painfully shy and nervous back then, and I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to sit with the only person I knew there—but a group of strangers waved us down, pointing to two vacant seats they had. We took them, learned our seat mates' Houses, and chatted through the previews. 

 

When the logo appeared on screen, my brother and I stood, aimed our homemade wands, and said, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good," causing ripples of laughter all around. 

 

We didn't make it home until 3 AM, what with the theater being half an hour from our house. I had to be up at 7 the next morning to help with my church's Vacation Bible Adventure, but it was so worth it.

Edited February 25, 2016 by TwiLyghtSansSparkles

[Delightful]

Twi that is AMAZING.

[Kobold King he/him]

The stories on this thread:

 

 

Wanting to tell a story but not having anything really interesting to say:

 

[Delightful]

I also want to tell funny stories but I can't think of anything worth telling.......

When I was really small my brothers pushed me off the top of their bunk bed and onto my cot. I still hold them responsible for it. Nevermind that my reaction was "aahhhh. Scary!!! :O I want to do that again!"

[Kaymyth she/her]

I also want to tell funny stories but I can't think of anything worth telling.......

When I was really small my brothers pushed me off the top of their bunk bed and onto my cot. I still hold them responsible for it. Nevermind that my reaction was "aahhhh. Scary!!! :o I want to do that again!"

 

They don't necessarily have to be funny.  They can be thought-provoking, or just something you'd like to share.

[The Honor Spren she/her]

Um. Okay. I have a sad one.

When I was 8, a little girl I knew who was about 4 died a few weeks before Christmas.

At the beginning of December, when we first heard she was in the hospital, we bought their family some punch balloons for a Christmas present. As we walked out of Publix, my mom told us that we had to let their kids know not to open them until their sister got home.

"But mommy, " I said, "What if she dies?"

"Don't be silly, she won't die."

If I had been reading that story in a book, I would have taken one look at it, and start screaming about foreshadowing.

[Zathoth]

You know this? It is not one of my horror shorts, it actually happened.

 

Anyway

 

A couple years ago me and my friends find out that an old 70s Metal band is playing in Gothenburg. We have to see them. The singer is an old junkie and can die at any moment, this is our only chance, if we miss it we miss it.

 

Problem is of course that they are playing in the middle of nowhere at midnight, on a wednesday. We decide that we dont need sleep. We are going to see this band.

 

Song link

 

The trip there is easy enough. Nothing all that interesting happens other the running gag "It's good for your teeth". Oh yeah, this is autumn by the way, it is cold and raining. Im in a jeans jacket because I am hardcore like that. We stand in line a while to get in, the people working in the bar are kind enough to come out with some coffee for everyone in the cold, I dont drink coffee, but I am ready to make an exception to gain some heat. My friends have a bottle of whiskey and decide to mix the coffee and whiskey together, I dont drink whiskey, but I am cold and ready to make an exception (Note: They dont really mix)

 

We get in. I sit with my friends, have a good time, show starts, is awesome, show ends, we sit and talk to some more people. One of my friends have disappeared, we find my friend, he is drunk, because of course he is, right? For you to understand this properly, I am probably mildly lubricated, my friends are pretty buzzed, this guy cant walk straight. We find the singer before leaving, shake his hand, share a few words with him and walk out. My friend holds a long monologue about how their lives are so similar (hint: they are not) and we manage to drag him away from the singer. ("Excuse my friend, he's a bit drunk")

 

Ok, we have to find our way back to the bus station to get to school. This was around 3am, we do it the only way we know: Drunkingly jaywalking across the highway with only a phone GPS telling us where we are supposed to go. Of course it sends us in the completely wrong direction.

 

During this walk friend number drunk repeats two things "I shook hands with Bobby Liebling" (Yes, we all did) and "You should never drink with a Punk". Because that is apparently why he is so drunk. Makes sense.

 

As we jaywalk across the highway (It was in the middle of the night, there was barely any traffic) we do hear one car driving against us and stops. It is the storming police, because of course, right? The police are actually really nice. Just telling us that maybe we shouldnt walk across the highway as much as we are doing.

 

Right then friend number drunk does a drunken stumble and my heart stops. I am not sure what is going to happen, but it is bad. We are spending the night in drunk jail or whatever, but no such thing happens, the police just tells us to keep an eye on friend number drunk and drives away.

 

We actually, somehow, find the bus station.

 

It is closed, because of course it is, right?

 

We keep walking and we see a McDonalds, and let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, the golden arches have never looked so golden. We walk in to get some warmth and food. Never eat at McDonalds 4.30am. The personal does not care to even try to make the food edible. To them we are just a bunch of drunken teenagers, we wont care if the food isnt up to the standards, right? And to be honest, I dont care that the burger tastes like crem, I am frozen, tired and hungry. I need warm food.

 

We sleep on the bus to school town, arrive in school town, put drunk friend on a bus home and go to get some extra sleep in the friends band room.

 

School starts, school goes alright, even if I havent slept a wink.

 

I hear from the previously drunk friend. Apparently he ended up back in gothenburg.

 

So let this be a lesson ladies and gentlemen; never drink with a Punk.

[Delightful]

So I was with a friend on a tour group in a very religious Israeli city. (To be clear, the law is secular and all but the population is very religious). So my friend and I split off from the group to get dinner, and were supposed to meet back at the hotel at a particular time. It's dark, it's raining, and we get lost. We're also hungry because it took us ages to find a restaurant by which time we had very little time to eat before heading back.

So we're busy wandering the streets trying to find the hotel and there's practically no one around. We do pass a bunch of teenage boys but because we're women we can't exactly ask them for directions. (We could, but it would be really really awkward. It's like a very strong social contract type of thing. Not law.). There aren't many people on the streets at all, so we have to find someone to ask directions, hope that person is a woman. and then gather the courage to ask in Hebrew before either of us chicken out and the person is gone. Or be even braver and ask a guy but that wasn't really going to happen. So we decide to keep wandering, trying to use google maps, we're pretty sure we're not that far away from the hotel.

It's dark, it's raining, we're soaked through, tired, hungry and grumpy. We wander on, and reach what is essentially a fork in the road. Miracles of miracles, a group of teenage girls appear from the fork we just decided to walk down, so we ask directions. They point us down the other fork, and Lo and behold, the hotel! The rest of our group is doing some activity in the hallway so as we go to our rooms every single person knows we got lost. (They were eating food though, so we grabbed some on our way past ).

The next morning, our tour leader announces "we're going to visit some very holy people buried in the cemetery nearby!" (Yes this is a thing. Sometimes. It's complicated).

We all walk back to the fork in the road from the previous night.

We follow the path my friend and I nearly stumbler down, cold, wet, hungry and in the dark.

Into the cemetery.

Edited February 26, 2016 by Delightful

[Claincy he/him]

Here's one:

 

Around 3-6 years ago I used to play CTF with a group of friends on a semi-frequent basis. We often played it across a primary school on weekends, perhaps once every month or two. (We were mostly within the age range of 16-21 at the time.) This particular story occurred in 2012 during one of the last ones that we ran (perhaps the last one actually, I don't remember). This particular CTF day was a NERF one, and I think there were around 10 of us.

 

The rules were pretty simple, roughly:

-the two flags were placed at playgrounds at opposite ends of the school

-if you were shot you had to go back to the designated respawn point for your team and drop the flag if you had it

-if you managed to grab their flag and bring it back to yours, you won!

 

Back then I wasn't exactly fit but I could still outpace most of the people who were playing, I was also one of the best shots. My memory is a little hazy on some of the details but I think we'd already played one game (in which I had successfully captured the flag for our team) and in the second game I'd managed to fight (or sneak) my way into their base and grab their flag again. I think most of their team was busy elsewhere and I was just making it back to our base when I saw one of the opposing players coming towards our base from the opposite direction. I was reasonably sure I was a better shot than them and I had another team-member nearby so I could have taken the careful approach and *probably* won. But I knew there was a risk of failure and if they managed to get our flag before I got there we'd have to retrieve it to win. So decision made I flat out sprinted for the drop off point, keeping my eye on the opposing player who was also sprinting in. I reached the point, dropped the flag on ours and BAM. I was flat on my back and having severe difficulty breathing. Turns out there was a tumble bar parallel to the ground at my chest height that I'd completely forgotten about and I had just sprinted straight into it at near top speed.

 

I was reasonably aware of what was going on around me but I think it was about a minute before I could really move or make a sound to let them know I was ok, just long enough for me to start seriously wondering if I wasn't. I'm still not entirely sure how I didn't at least crack a rib doing that but I got away with some moderate bruising. The thing that scared me in retrospect was that if I was a bit shorter, or that bar a bit taller, that could have ended very very badly. (I don't run in playgrounds anymore )

 

Unsurprisingly that was pretty much it for my ability to play that day and once everyone was sure I was ok I think there were a number of jokes about me handicapping myself because I was too OP Cos when you get down to it, despite the stupidity and pain, I *did* capture that flag

[Oversleep]

Few years ago, during one of bridge tournaments (small, informal, relaxed one which we played after school) me and my partner paired off with another pair of our friends, so I played with the guy from the other pair and my partner played with the other one. To freshen up our play.

Set up: After a good play I would raise my hand to my partner to do a high five. After some time he started doing it with his forehead (so he basically headbutted my hand). Even more time later he would raise his head for me to tap in some sort of head-hand high five.

So, he plays with the other guy and after some good play as always raises his head and says "High-five!". The other guy thinks for a moment and then... headbutts him.

Yeah, we're all weird in one way or another

P.S. Later I will post some stories from sailing camp.

Edited April 7, 2018 by Oversleep

[Kaymyth she/her]

I've been debating the idea of telling you guys a not-so-happy story, but I'm really not sure I want to inflict the horridness that was 2003 on all of you.  There's a lot of sad in there.

 

So instead, tonight I am going to kick the lever on the WayBack Machine just a little less far back and tell you a tale from the early days of dating my now-husband.  This is a direct copy/paste from the logs of my LiveJournal, so the forum filter's going to have its work cut out for it with the language.  (I have faith in you, forum filter!)

 

 

May 31, 2009

 

So, yesterday James and I went to Worlds of Fun. James is a rollercoaster fiend. I am terrified of heights and before yesterday, had never been on anything other than a kiddie coaster, and that when I was about eleven. But, y'know, I finally decided that maybe I ought to give the things a fair shake and actually try a few. Because I'm a crazy person. Or James is a crazy person and it's catching.

First ride: The Octopus. James was kind enough to start me out gently with this wacky contraption of arms with spinning seats. It was kinda fun, though there were only six arms, not eight. Geek. I know.

Second ride, first coaster: After that, my confidence was high (oh, stupid me) and we came to the Boomerang. Now, this is a crazy-chull coaster that ratchets you up this steep-chull grade and then lets you go on a sort of gravity-powered slingshot through an upside-down loop, a hairpin turn, two more upside-down loops, and then up another steep-chull grade.....which then ratchets you up s'more. And then you get to go through the entire thing again backwards.

Words cannot express how completely horrible this was. Really. It jerks you around so that you wind up slamming painfully into your restraints, and the loss of directional orientation through the upside-downs was just....ugh. I wound up squeezing my eyes shut through most of it and whimpering softly. And then after getting off, I was so dizzy that I couldn't walk straight without help for several minutes.

Third ride: Fury of the Nile. I needed to regain my equilibrium in a nice, long line, and we were both getting a bit hot, so we figured a relatively easy water ride would be a good choice next. The line was nice. In addition to settling my inner ear, there was a giant fan blowing mist out at us which felt OH SO GOOD. And we had a pretty good view of the Mamba, which kept us entertained with all the coaster-trains that were getting stuck midway up the lead rise. No, really. We saw some park workers talking to the stuck folks while they tried to figure out the problem, and later they ran a bunch of empty trains through (which also got stuck about 50% of the time). We decided then and there that the Mamba might be a good coaster to skip that day.

Anyway, the Fury of the Nile is more like the Nice, Relaxing Trip Down the Nile With a Few Good, Cool Drenchings. It was just.....nice. And in the supposedly-scary tunnel near the end, we spun around just right for me to get a clear view of Thoth on the wall. So naturally, I shouted, "Hi, Thoth!" And then I got drenched by a waterfall. Good times.

Fourth ride, second coaster: The Patriot. I agreed to go on this one 'cause of all the comfy securedness that makes up the ride's restraints. And parts of it were almost fun. If it had been about half as fast and with no upside-down loops, it would have been fun. But I still had to close my eyes on the loops; the vertigo was just too awful to bear eyes open. And I was really dizzy again after getting off.

I've always hated any sort of upside down. I couldn't do cartwheels as a kid. Could barely stand doing a somersault. I suspect, now, that I may have an inner ear issue contributing to this, 'cause every flip-you-upside-down ride sends me to Dizzy Central.

Fifth Ride: Viking Voyage. Another water ride, this time in a faux-wooden log floating down a half-tube. It was fun. It was wet. It was not scary. Yay.

Sixth Ride, third (and LAST) coaster: The Prowler. This is the new one at WoF, and James had been dying to go on it. And I figured, well, hey. It doesn't go upside down. It doesn't look all that big. It's got seat belts AND lap bars! And c'mon, it's a wooden coaster, how bad can it be?

Ha. Ha.

I got my first clue as the opening climb clunked us around pretty roughly. And then, as we got higher, I could see.....the REST of the coaster: it. was. huge. Oh. Crap. And then, we got to the top, and it started. Oh, gods. The damned thing was so frakking fast I was feeling g-forces. There was no squeezing my eyes shut this time. I was too TERRIFIED to close my eyes; I had to keep them open so I would know whether the next gut-wrenching gravity shift was a turn or us flying off the track to our doom. And I was screaming. Not your typical "Whee! Fun!" scream (like James was doing), but more like an "Oh rust we're gonna storming die stormstormstorm make it stoooooop!" sort of screaming. And probably thanks to my death grip on the lap bar, somewhere midway it actually managed to click in a notch tighter, thus digging into my poor, squishy belly-pudge and making the second half of the ride terrifying and uncomfortable.

As we finally slowed down and pulled into the platform (miraculously) alive, I managed to gasp out, "That's it. No more. No more coasters. I'm done." And I stumbled out, not dizzy this time, but just weak-kneed and brain-dead.

And James bought us both some Dippin' Dots. And by the time we had eaten them, I'd managed to almost fully recover from Cave Buffy vocabulary. "Coaster bad. Ice cream yummy."

I have come to three conclusions from this experience:

1) I am a wuss.
2) I have a twitchy inner ear. This also explains why I get dizzy when I'm just up really high, and could be the source of my height-fear.
3) I really do hate roller coasters.

We went on Fury of the Nile one more time, because it was still hot outside and the water felt good. And then home, where I sort of collapsed into a pile of exhausted goo. But we did damned well on the sunscreening. Go us!

As I was falling asleep, I kept thinking the bed was moving.

Coaster bad. Ice cream yummy.

[Delightful]

So naturally, I shouted, "Hi, Thoth!" And then I got drenched by a waterfall. Good times.

I agree with your eloquent conclusions.

[The Honor Spren she/her]

I've been debating the idea of telling you guys a not-so-happy story, but I'm really not sure I want to inflict the horridness that was 2003 on all of you.  There's a lot of sad in there.

Go for it.

[Kaymyth she/her]

Go for it.

 

Really?  Eh.  I might, then, but not tonight.  We need another story or two in here by someone else before I add more to the mix.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

Really?  Eh.  I might, then, but not tonight.  We need another story or two in here by someone else before I add more to the mix.

 

Trying to think of some of mine I can share. Most of the longer ones are just kind of a bummer, and the better ones are a lot shorter. Like the time I was in Science Olympiad and one of the senior members said he knew the mating dance of the blue-footed booby, so all of us freshman begged him to do it, and he refused. 

 

Come to think of it, that one's kind of a bummer too. We never did get to see him do the mating dance of the blue-footed booby. 

[Silverblade5 he/him]

I once left my boxed set of mistborn at a signing. Had to have to mailed back.