To err is to be human, but some mistakes are downright chilling. From disturbing medical mishaps to harrowing close calls, these Redditors are haunted by a vast range of horrible mess-ups.
1. Step Into My Office
Ever since I was a kid, I loved to fiddle around with staplers. Playing with the automatic ones and doing dumb stuff like any child would, opening the manual ones and swinging it around, stuff like that. One of my favorite things to do was to open up a new strip of staples and break them apart before putting them in. Running my fingers through the staples, counting them, and breaking them apart...I loved it.
There are 210 staples in a standard strip and sometimes I’d break off each individual one until my fingers hurt. I’ve even found strips with 209 and 211 a few times. This progressed from me messing around with staples in Ms. Grady’s second-grade class, to buying a box of staples every other payday to play with, to literally having a collection of different brands and sizes of staples in my college dorm to break apart.
I had a problem, but no one was hurt, so who cares? Well...Fast forward to present day. I am a functioning middle-class adult with a wife and two children. I have a home, a normal car, and an office job. I am by all accounts a normal human being, and I still love staples. Working in an office with a supply room full of staples was a problem.
I’d spend my lunch break in the room opening boxes and breaking apart staples to get my fix before returning to work. It got so bad over the course of a couple years that my boss changed our supplier because the boxes all had broken apart staples and were sometimes ripped. So I had to stop doing that...I turned to Amazon first, buying 10 boxes of staples at a time for about 20 bucks a pop. It wasn’t enough. I went to 20, then 40.
My wife got curious then and asked, “Why are you buying all of these boxes of staples,” but I brushed it off as a work issue that I’d get reimbursed for and knew I had to change my methods. Over the course of a few months I enabled myself. I started using cash only at different office supply stores around my town and neighboring towns.
I would sit in my car and break apart staples before going to the next store. I began to stay out late and tell my wife I would be home soon, so I could go buy more staples from different stores. I opened up a new credit card to put online so she wouldn’t know, but she caught it in the mail. She then got suspicious because things weren't adding up.
This past Thursday after one of my “late nights,” I get home with a trunk full of broken staples and 10 freshly broken boxes in my passenger seat to see my parents’ cars at my house. I walked in and everyone is sitting around like it’s an intervention. Because it is. My wife asked if there was anything I wanted to tell them, and to tell the truth about my problem.
I sat down and kept saying, “What are you talking about?” until my mom said, “Honey, we saw the pictures". Then my wife tells me that my late nights, excuses, and general weirdness about the credit card, and some other little things made her hire a private investigator. This man followed me around to office supply stores and watched me “do something” with what I had in the bag from multiple stores.
It basically looked like I was a drug runner for Office Depot who was using some of the product for myself. At this point, my wife started to cry and my dad shook his head. I had to come clean and all I could muster was, "I...I like staples". The “what the heck” looks I got afterward turned into disbelief, then concern, then fits of laughter when I showed them my car.
I came clean. I backed this up by showing my secret stash of used staples in my attic and explained the purchases on the card to my wife. Right now, my only concern is my dad. He didn’t laugh—just kind of shook his head continually in disappointment without saying a word. Believe it or not, I think therapy or addiction meetings may help, as my wife gave me these suggestions the day after. I was told that although the addiction is not typical in its damage regarding my mental or physical well-being, I do need help.
I am going to go through addiction counseling like any other addict would. Just tailored to my specific issue. Apparently, part of fixing my brain is to know that it is not okay to continue this level of staplephilia. That included cleaning out my car, attic, and not garnering more attention through memorializing pictures, and stuff like that.
My wife initially thought I was having an affair. She didn’t think I was doing substances until she got the pictures. The PI just told her what he saw, and she deduced that I had an undercover type distribution thing going with someone in the office supply business. She admitted that she didn’t think it all through, but her mind was racing and conclusions came as they did.
I do not have autism or any diagnosed mental disability. I am just an addict, and an idiot. I know how stupid the addiction is and so I tried to hide it. It’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things I guess, but my embarrassing white lie just spiraled out of control.
2. Dodge This
I was playing with the laundry chute in my childhood home when I was around five years old. My cousins and I took turns dropping things down the chute while someone else stood at the bottom and dodged them. For the most part, it was things like washcloths, stuffed animals, a clothing item, etc.
It just so happened that when I stood under the chute, my cousin did the unthinkable. He dropped a five-pound dumbbell down and I, expecting something harmless, didn't get out of the way. That ended the game really quickly. I now part my hair in a way that hides the bald spot scar on my head.
3. Didn’t Get The Memo
After my heart operation where they went in through my femoral artery, they forgot to tell anyone outside the theatre that they had given me anticoagulants. Long story short, when I got back to the ward, my mom and dad came to visit and see how I was doing—only to walk into terribly unpleasant room.
I had two doctors and two nurses around me, caked in blood with the back wall of the room dripping with it. I should have been in this tourniquet thing for like 12 hours minimum after surgery, but they removed it and asked me to get up and move around after four hours.
Suffice to say, it wasn't pretty and the first nurse (the one who removed it) went absolutely white. No one answered the emergency buzzer for about 10-15 minutes to help her, either. She just kept panicking and saying, "You are bleeding out!" to me. Oddly, I was completely calm and kept offering her advice.
I think it was the shock, since I tend to get very analytical instead of scared. I should also mention that the advice I gave was rubbish: "Would you like me to hold that while you go and get some help?" She met this with, "You'll be gone before I get back". "Oh ok, best for you to hold it then".
4. All In Good Fun
To begin, my husband and I can get naughty in the bedroom. My husband often cuffs me, and on Wednesday we had a pretty intense session. He put these big leather cuffs on me, but failed to take off my Apple Watch. I didn't realize that if you hold the dial down, it automatically dials 9-1-1.
I'm pulling on my restraints, and the restraints hold down the button. Suddenly I hear from my watch—and my heart drops. A voice says, "Ma'am, I hear what appears to be hitting and screaming. We are sending someone to you. Hold tight". "Did you call 9-1-1???” My husband asked, "Tell them it was an accident!!"
So I tell the operator that it was just an accident, and she says is your name [She said my name here]? And I say yes...She says "We have your address from our database, and we're sending someone over now. I’m sorry, but we hear a male voice telling you what to say, and this sounds like coercion on our end, so we are obligated to make sure you're safe".
I said okay thank you, and I hung up. Oh, heck no. I'm literally covered in bruises and welts, and the authorities are coming to check on my well-being. Within a few minutes, there's a stern knock at the door. We put our clothes on and come to the door, and the officer takes my husband outside, separating us from communication.
I calmly explain that it was an accident and we were just being intimate. Another officer comes in and asks about our contract, which we use to make sure everything is consensual. "He told you about our contract?" "He felt it best to come clean about your extracurricular activities tonight, and thought the contract would possibly show State of Mind".
I go get our contract and showed it to the officers. After a mortifying few more minutes of explaining, they believe us and tell us to disable the 9-1-1 feature on the Apple Watch if we're going to do that again.
5. Drive-thru Drive-by
I worked at McDonald's when I was in high school and finally got a better job, with better hours, closer to home after a couple of years there. When I quit, I was annoyed to learn that they wanted my greasy threadbare uniform polo and pants back after I was done.
See, I didn't want them, but it seemed cheap and sort of insulting—they were just going to throw them away, same as I would, but they were going to require an extra trip back there for me to do it? No, I don't think so. Screw them. Keep in mind I was 16 at the time, and apply "I'm such a rebellious free thinker" teenage arrogance to the situation.
What happened next makes more sense that way. So, on my last day, I put my plan into action. I went out to my car, stripped down to my boxers, went through the drive-thru, and threw my wadded-up uniform at the woman working the window.
That's when told her to give them to the owner. The look on her face was priceless. I drove off, music blaring, feeling ridiculously happy and proud of what I had just done, and happened to run into a friend of mine who was also cruising around. I explained why I wasn't wearing a shirt or pants, and he laughed and said we should go get something to eat.
Sure, no problem, I'll just change into the clothes I brought, grab my wallet, and...Ah, crud. That’s right. I had a sinking realization. My wallet was still in the pocket of the pants I'd thrown in the drive-thru window.
I had to slink back in, sheepishly ask someone to search through the trash for me to find my pants and find my wallet. They did. I didn't go back to that McDonald's for years.
6. The Mix-Up
In 1986, my mother came for a routine pregnancy exam at the hospital... It wasn't her usual gynecologist because they were on holiday. As the gynecologist enters the room, she's waiting with her two feet in the stirrups, wearing the typical hospital grown with the opening at the back. He revealed the instruments for the exam.
My mother was a nurse. She recognized the instruments for an abortion and asked the doctor, “What's going on? Is there a problem?" The gynecologist's response floored her. He said, "Well yes, as you know the baby is gone, we need to remove it". My mother threw the biggest tantrum in the history of tantrums.
My dad usually picks up the narrative at this part of the story, "I saw your mother storming out of the exam room, she passed by me as she was howling, "WE GO, NOW!" with her clothes in her hands and her exposed behind". The gynecologist had mixed up the files. He was supposed to do the abortion on someone else.
7. Wormageddon
This mess-up has been set up perfectly for disaster over the past few months and is continuing to destroy my life. This is a long one, but every detail counts in portraying one of the worst weeks of my life. Let me preface this by saying I love my cat more than anything, and while he is currently not sleeping anywhere near me, he's still getting a lot of cautious love.
Truly, I love him too much—too much love got us here today. In January, I adopted an 11-year-old, 19 lbs chonker. I fell in love instantly. His last family returned him after six months with a bad case of fleas. He had been de-fleaed but came home with a slew of other health issues. By the end of January after a lot of vet visits, he seemed to be on the mend.
I knew what I was signing up for when I adopted a senior cat, but just didn't realize the endless possibilities. Truly, I tell him every night before bed how much I love him, and that's about to be tested with this saga of the greatest love story ever told. Early February, he starts coughing and stops pooping in his litterbox, despite me cleaning it daily.
He's still peeing in there, but seems cautious and runs out immediately. Even when he started pooping on the floor (thank God for wood floors), he'd run under my bed from it. That was the only time he'd go under my bed, otherwise, he was cuddled up on or next to me. His medical chart from when I adopted him said he had issues with litterbox pooping.
They suspected he was afraid of his last family's other cat and it was behavioral, but something didn't add up. He was fine with pooping in the litterbox for the first month after his kitty enema. I cleaned up his poop every other day and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He was starting to lose weight, which was good because as cute of a chonker as he is, it's not healthy.
I stopped free-feeding him, started feeding him scheduled wet food meals, and we had daily playtime to get him to a healthy weight. I bring him in to the vet in February for the sixth time in a month and a half. He had half of his teeth removed before I adopted him. This resulted in an incision infection and an enema due to opioid constipation.
This visit was for his cough. I even ask if he could have worms. The vet tells me, "I know you're trying to be a good pet owner, but he likely has allergies and it's a behavioral issue. This might be something he has to live with. Come see me if his mucus turns brown". I had been right about every single Dr. Google diagnosis up until this point, but whatever.
I buy an air purifier, vacuum and clean regularly, change the bedding weekly. I already have an obsessive cleaning schedule. Ask any of my previous roommates and I am the cleanest person you'll ever live with. Despite the cleaning, some coughing days were better than others. All of a sudden end of last week, he starts coughing a lot less, and I start feeling like absolute garbage.
My best friend even makes a joke that I caught whatever my cat had. Sick, sick foreshadowing. My chest was tight, frequent bathroom runs, just pure exhaustion, losing weight rapidly despite not really exercising, and malnourished to the point that my hair is falling out. I'm a mess. I guess it's a good thing I got laid off two weeks ago because the bathroom and I are very close friends these days.
I wake up Monday morning to the pungent smell of my cat's usual poop surprise on the wood floor. He's such a kind cat to poop where it's easy cleanup. That's when I see them. Worms crawling around EVERYWHERE. I'm gagging, take a little sample for the vet, and flush the rest. I Dr. Google the heck out of it and it is for SURE tapeworms.
Then I read about the eggs. Let me remind you I change my sheets and wash my duvet cover weekly. I make my bed the second I get out of it and even vacuum my duvet cover. I RUN to inspect my bed. There are eggs EVERYWHERE. Little rice demons that have been dropping from my poor cat's bum for three months. I'm dry heaving at this point.
I live in an old studio apartment and my bed is against a brick wall, so I get little grout crumble patches that I have to vacuum up pretty regularly. I remember feeling little patches of what I assumed one night was grout in my sheets, but fell asleep and ignored it. When I tell you they were everywhere, I mean they were everywhere.
My pillow, under my pillow—my cat and I fall asleep cuddling every night. Again, I love this cat too much. I call the vet and it is undoubtedly tapeworm. We suspect he's had it since I adopted him. His prescription gets to me within a few hours. I also get flea medication and spray. I check him for flea dirt regularly and hadn't seen anything, but better to be cautious.
I bag all of my bedding, throw out half of what I own, vacuum every inch of this place for an hour, I'm on the freaking floor with my flashlight, and find a tapeworm under my couch. Swiffer, disinfect my couch, flip my mattress—like total mental breakdown. I give him his medication and his cough stops instantly. He hasn't coughed once since Monday.
This has been one of my childhood phobias since I read that urban legend about the guy who starved himself then put a burger patty on his tongue and lured the tapeworm out until he could grab it from his mouth. I'm thinking about this story after giving my cat his medications when holy moly diarrhea. I look in the toilet bowl…and nearly puke.
Three long strings floating on the sides that normally I would have flushed to sewage heaven without a second thought, but they are undoubtedly tapeworms. My grown self calls my mom and sobs while still sitting on the toilet in all of my wormy glory. I call and embarrassingly show the doctor, the doctor undoubtedly tells me I too have tapeworm and writes me a prescription.
He asks me if I want just tapeworm or a full deworming? I'm like what does that mean? He's like, "You'd be surprised how many parasites are living in you regularly. Just wait and see what you're about to poop out". I honestly just want to expire at this point. My cat and I are prescribed the same medication, obviously just different doses and different price tags.
His was $13 for two doses. Mine? $130 for one dose, two pills. That's WITH my last month of insurance from my previous employer. I immediately receive a text that my prescription is on backorder. I'm trying to fall asleep that night on my couch without any blankets, when would you guessed it—my heat stops working. So now I'm just shivering on a small couch knowing there are worms crawling around inside of me and eggs everywhere.
I don't sleep. I call the pharmacy when they open in tears, asking when my meds are going to get there. Lucky me, they had just arrived. He asks me, "Did you know your prescription is $130?" I'm like, "Uh no, I've never had tapeworms, but I guess the price is irrelevant". We both nervously laugh. This is trying on soooo many levels.
I order delivery for a bi meal from my favorite restaurant because first, I have no appetite because the thought of feeding the worms makes me want to retch, and I was hoping ordering from my favorite restaurant would entice me to eat. Second, the medication has to be taken with food. Third, I realize this is the last day the calories don't matter. Might as well enjoy it.
I pick up my prescription, light a candle, call my best friend, we have a little virtual funeral for my worms, and try to make light of the situation. I play the song I want played at my funeral. But it just keeps getting worse, y'all. My best friend hesitantly tells me he was telling his physical therapist about my worm saga. She recommended buying clove oil and rubbing it on my, er, pink starfish.
I'm like why? Apparently, worms like to bite your butt on the way out, and clove oil prevents that. I hate everything at this moment. It's like the different levels of a nightmare. I take the pills and am reading the prescription pamphlet. It notes that you'll experience random aches and pains while the worms are expiring. Let me tell you, I felt every worm as I lay blanketless on my couch in the fetal position.
All of a sudden, I'm thinking about the worms and I can't breathe. My throat is kind of itchy, and I'm thinking there are worms in my tonsils at this point. I'm laying there in the fetal position, telling myself it's just a panic attack. My cat decides to go pee at 2 am and jumps out startled, trailing pee all over the apartment. I know the medication says to limit your alcoholic beverages, but I say screw it and make a drink.
I clean the pee and finally fall asleep for about three hours. I wake up bright and early to the smell of cat poop. Still half asleep, I searched his normal spots and couldn't find any poops. He left it in the tub for me—a new spot—thanks, cat. Easy cleanup and no worms, I take it as a win. I flush it down the toilet, bleach the tub, and obsessively wash my hands.
Let me tell you, my hands are bleeding from the number of times I wash them in wormageddon. I look at myself in the mirror while scrubbing my raw hands and oh my god. My face is swollen to the point I'm still surprised I can see out of my eyes. My tongue is flopping all over the place. I am having a severe allergic reaction to the tapeworm medication.
That panic attack while falling asleep was actually an allergic reaction. I immediately video chat my doctor, and he tells me to go get Benadryl immediately and writes me a steroid prescription. I get a call from their finance department on the brief walk to the pharmacy: $140 for that five-minute virtual visit. I try to dispute the charge, but she can't do anything.
I just flat out ask her: "Can I just tell you about my awful life then for $140?" We talk for five minutes about how much my life sucks and she agrees. She was very nice about it, but still $140. She basically tells me that if I had waited a month to get tapeworm and almost pass from the medication, the virtual visit would have been cheaper without insurance.
I cut my losses go back to the same pharmacy from the day before and they ask me what's wrong. I lift up my glasses and they were like "Ooooof—did you know you were allergic to this medication?" At this point, I'm like "WHY DO ANY OF YOU THINK I'VE HAD TAPEWORMS BEFORE?" Truly, complete mental breakdown. I buy my medication, 12-pack, and $20 worth of candy to ease the pain.
So folks, here I am. Unemployed, clenching my butt like never before, still haven't pooped because I'm terrified of worm kisses on the way out, face still swollen shut, but I'm breathing fine. My cat is a new cat, so for that? I am grateful. I am 100% sure I will have PTSD from this experience. It is going to be a long, long, time before my cat and I snuggle regularly again, but I know we'll get there and I still love him.
Adopt senior pets regardless of this story, because 10/10, would still get worms again for him. Wormageddon 2020 will not soon be forgotten.
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8. A Fly On The Wall
I’m not a surgeon, but I had a screw put in to hold together a fracture in my wrist. At the last moment before surgery, the anesthetist told me I could have the surgery with a local rather than general anesthetic as planned. So I let her make the call for me to be awake. That’s how I heard everything the doctor didn’t want me to hear.
See, he didn’t realize I wasn’t under, and it was one eye-opening experience. During the drilling, my surgeon started complaining at length about why he hates the drill he's using and how it's inferior to the other type of brand. It was apparently the only one he could find at the time and he didn't want to reschedule. So not great so far.
Once the screw is in, the surgeon says to close up. Someone asked if the screw should protrude as much as it was, to which he responded, "No, but we can get away with it, and you never want to take a screw out and put another in, because it will wear out the bone". Then silence for about 10 seconds while I feel them shifting my wrist around, followed by, "Actually we better put a smaller screw in".
When I was in recovery, the surgeon was surprised how quickly I woke up and had a slight look of surprise when I told him I was only under local. Next thing he said was, "Surgery went well..."
9. A Web Of Lies
This happened quite a while ago, but it only just caught up to me a few weeks ago. About 11 months ago, I moved into a new house as a temporary sort of thing until I could get the money together to sort something out properly. I was hoping to have already moved out by this point. On my second day after I’d finished unpacking, I decided to break the house in with a nice acid trip.
I’d brought some with me that I’d recently bought but not had the chance to use yet. Things were going well with the trip, but then it seemed to be getting really intense and I quickly realized that the tabs were much stronger than I had been told they were, and I thought being locked up in the unfamiliar house wasn’t helping me relax.
I figured the best thing to do to relax would be to go for a stroll because I was starting to get pretty overwhelmed at that point. I left the house to start my walk and my next-door neighbor happened to be just arriving at the same time. It’s a street of tightly packed terraced houses, so next door’s door is about one meter away from mine.
I’d not met anybody on my street yet and didn’t realize this was a friendly tight-knit community where people talk to each other. She said something along the lines of, “hello nice to meet you, my name’s (her name), are you new to the area?” So basically, I do this thing sometimes when people try to sell me things on the street where I pretend I can’t speak English.
I remember a few words from my GCSE French, so I just say some nonsense sentences and then people usually leave me alone. In the state I was in, this conversation seemed like it would be way too intense for me, and French just sort of came to me as my default response to the situation. My exact words were “je voudrais une boulangerie” (one of my favorite lines to use) and I shrugged my shoulders a bit with a weak smile.
She pretty much just left me to it after that and I went on my way. I did my walk and got home about two hours later. I was tripping majorly so the walk ended up taking a lot longer than it needed to. When I got home, though, my next-door neighbor was standing in her doorway talking to another neighbor who was stood outside. I tried to keep my head down because I couldn’t handle any more human interaction but she waved at me and said “bonjour".
So I instinctively returned the bonjour and got inside my house as fast as possible. When I got in, I started freaking out straight away. I realized that I’d just become French and now two of the neighbors think I can’t speak any English. The next day when I woke up, I realized the best thing I could do (as an Englishman) was just live with the lie for the rest of my short stay in this house to avoid the excruciating embarrassment of having pretended to be French for seemingly no reason.
Fast forward 10 months, I still live here, and at this point, I’m in DEEP. My life on this street is a web of lies. I’ve perfected my French accent and over the course of 10 months. French Me has learnt a decent amount of English so he can hold a disjointed conversation. I’d gotten to know the neighbors pretty well and I was the nice, quirky French guy on the street.
I didn’t let the lie slip ever, because every day and every conversation had just meant that it would be even worse if anyone ever discovered I wasn’t French. If I had friends come over (I don’t have many so it wasn’t too bad) they knew to never speak to the neighbors because of my strange situation. Most of them found it amusing, at least.
Things were going okay and I wasn’t too worried about being exposed anymore because I’d gotten so used to it. I’m not home that much and when I am I rarely leave the house for any reason, so I only had to do it for maybe five minutes a day when I was out on my street. If anything, it was a nice way to spice up my day when I got to take on my French persona.
French Me somehow had much better social skills than the real me, even if his English was a bit limited. But then there was the day it all came crashing down. I was walking to my car and saw one of the neighbors coming towards me from the opposite direction with someone else next to her I didn’t recognize. She stopped to say hi, as she normally does, and then she says to her friend “this is the guy I was telling you about".
You might be able to see where this is going. Her friend hits me with a question in French that I didn’t understand a word of, and I knew he was actually French straight away because his accent was way better than mine. I didn’t know what to do and I just froze. Every second that went past just made it so much more painful, and after way too long of a pause I just decided I had to come clean.
I told her I wasn’t actually French and couldn’t speak French and then I tried to play it off like some kind of practical joke I’d been doing on everyone. Nobody was buying that. I fast-walked straight to my car and then let the embarrassment just swallow me for a while. I haven’t spoken to any of my neighbors since, some of which I’d struck up a friendly relationship with over those 10 months.
I make sure nobody is around now whenever I leave the house, and I do a loop around the block in my car if any of my neighbors are walking down the street when I get home so that I never come into contact with them. Every time I think about the day I was discovered the embarrassment physically hurts me. I have to get out of here.
10. I Got Stumped!
When I was in middle school, I was playing baseball with some friends in front of the school. It had two gardens on either side of its entrance, and we were on the left side, which had a tree stump that wasn’t actually cut but had probably fallen over. Either way, the tree stump was incredibly jagged and dangerous. I was about to learn that the hard way. While trying to catch the ball, I tripped on a root.
My face landed right in the middle of the jagged stump. I had no time to react. I didn’t cushion my fall, I didn’t even have time to block my face. I knocked out two teeth and got cut on multiple parts of my face before class even started. I had blood flowing from my mouth and was absolutely screaming. I was shaking and in shock.
I think I was even crawling, while in a panic, and I probably looked like an animal after it had been wounded. My friend had to drag me to the nurse. Mind you, we were like eight years old, and this kid immediately saw me faceplant into what was basically a morning star made of wood, yet managed to drag me while I was crying and in shock without losing his composure.
I don’t remember needing any hospital visits because besides my teeth being knocked out I luckily hadn’t been pierced, just cut in the face. All I remember was holding my mouth with my hand, seeing a bunch of blood and saliva on them, and screaming while he put my other arm over his shoulders and lugged me across a bunch of frightened, shocked children. It was an unpleasant experience.
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11. Independence
I had just told off my ex-boyfriend, who had been trying to tell me I had become too dependent on him and wouldn't be able to leave. "Screw that," I said, "I am independent. And I don't need you for anything!" Then I dramatically turned to get into my car and drive off...but I had locked my keys inside. Oh, but it gets worse.
The car was still running. I felt like a complete idiot. He had to call and pay for a locksmith because I had no cash and the dude didn't take cards. I will never forget that grin on his face. Dumbest moment of my life.
12. I Just Ran...I Ran So Far Away...
I was about five or six years old. It was a beautiful day out and I was stuck in the car with my mom going shopping. I kept bugging her to take me to the park, and finally, she relented. It turned out to be a horrible mistake. We first stopped and got lunch at a food truck that was there. I walked to the nearest picnic table which was about 50-60 feet away. I sat down and started eating when a bunch of seagulls landed all around me.
One landed on the table, screeched at me, and charged at me. Then the WHOLE FLOCK charged at me. I screamed and ran for my mom, who came running, while the massive flock chased after me. I hid behind her and she started to beat them out of the air with her purse. After she smacked a few, they flew over to my food and started to eat it. We ate in the car after that.
13. Loyal To The Bone
This weekend, I was at one of my best friend’s weddings. The bride, my friend, is diabetic and forgot her insulin when we went to the church, so technically, diabetes is the villain of this story. No problem. I volunteered to go back to her house to pick it up. I like a mission. Me against diabetes. After a morning of bridal stuff, my adrenal glands were more than happy to kick some dust off.
The bride says the back door is unlocked, so I dash to her house, drifting the corners (in my mind), finding the apex in the road. The back door is not unlocked. No doors are opened, but I am NOT taking the L on this. All of us bridesmaids had gotten ready at her house earlier, and one of the other bridesmaids was leaning out her window on the second floor at the time.
I gaze up at her window, praying that it’s still unlocked. I know this house. I went to high school with the bride, snuck out of that window onto the roof, and clambered down the tree beside the house many times. Only this time, I am in a strapless, tight, mermaid-style dress. Driving a stick in this constricting skirt was challenge enough. There is no way on God’s green Earth that I can climb a tree.
It’s barely above freezing, but this is a DefCon 2 situation. I’m in the backyard, and there is only one house that can see me. I accept the crazy-low odds that the grandparents that live next door will notice me. Decidedly incorrect assumption. Because apparently, Gramps has assigned himself the position of overwatch. I kick off my heels, sling off my jacket, and toss the Morticia Addams-style bridesmaid dress over the fence.
I pat my old friend, the tree, and begin to climb. I’m sure I sloth-climbed it, but the adrenaline pulsing through my veins has me convinced that I ninja warriored it. The window is unlocked **Oorah**! Once I open it, I ungracefully fall into the room from the roof. I don’t care because the distinctly male movie announcer voice in my head is sexily broadcasting the trailer for the movie I’m acting out.
The crowd cheers when my icicle toes hit the hardwood floors. The room looks like a girl’s purse exploded. Curlers, hairdryers, make-up bags, and clothes cover every square inch of the carpet. I super kung fu hop over the piles to the dresser where she said her insulin bag would be. It’s not there. I look through the piles, shaking like a scared dog from the cold.
Nope. To the bathroom. Nope. A massive rock drops into my stomach when I can’t find her insulin. The clock is ticking. I launch down the stairs, two at a time, and run through the house as my eyes scan every surface. I find it on the kitchen counter, a full floor away from where she thought she left it. Booyow! I’m back in the game. I pump my arm and grab the bag.
I make sure I can lock the kitchen door from the inside. I mentally check—yep, I left all of my stuff outside. I step into the garage, shutting the door behind me. As I’m jiggling the locked doorknob, I hear the Woop Woop of a patrol. I slowly turn and do some weird half raise of my hands. There are two…TWO officers in the driveway.
All official and stern-looking. In a split second, I flash on images. I’m in the back of the car, handcuffed, search warrants are getting issued. I see the courtroom, a stern judge, and an unforgiving jury. In a moment of catastrophic cognitive dissonance, I swear I heard my brain misfire. The only thing that zaps me back to reality is that, I kid you not, my chest was frozen.
I’m going to have the pleasure of explaining this to the officers while wearing nothing but my fancy thong and lacy, strapless bra because genius me didn’t want panty lines. I could have vaporized on the spot from the humiliation as the officers approach me. I don’t even know what I said. I virtually shoved the bag of insulin at the older officer and vomited out the preposterous details of this Texas-sized oof that landed me in my skivvies, coming out of a house that I technically broke into.
They try to keep a straight face, but then I start to laugh. It begins as a small embarrassed chuckle, but then it takes on a life of its own, commandeering all of my self-control and flinging it into the icy wind with the ashes of my dignity. I howl. Tears run down my face and I shoot inhuman sounds at them. I can make no sound other than drawn-out vowels.
God, it’s embarrassing. They are trying to ask me questions, and instead, they get Mutley the dog. All I can do is wheeze, or tear and shake from the cold. Finally, I beg them to let me put my clothes on. One gallantly swings his arm to tell me to proceed to the backyard to recover my assortment of clothing cringingly clinging to the fence.
They are gentlemen about it as I jump and shimmy into this contraption of a bridesmaid’s dress. They ask me if there is anyone that I can call from the family to confirm the story. I call the bride. She doesn’t pick up. I call the bride’s mom. She doesn’t pick up. I call the love of my life. He picks up on the first ring. God, I love that man. He doesn’t know why I left the church but immediately goes into solve-this-fast mode.
He gets the bride’s dad. It gets sorted. My guy is waiting in the parking lot when I pull up. Panic rolls across his face when he sees me, thinking I have been crying. I laugh the rest of my make-up off with him when I tell him the story. We’re getting married soon, and I think the bride should have to perform a commensurate task of climbing a tree in freezing weather in her underwear.
I’m definitely taking suggestions. This all happened in a decently small town. This story has ripped through the gossip mill like Taco Bell through the colon. My oldest brother is apparently friends with the “young” officer that I could never make myself look in the eye. Yep, never living this down, and I’m never more grateful to have moved away.
14. That’s On Me
With a 15-year-old boy in our house, my husband and I have grown used to the *knock knock* *laptop screen slam* "JUST A MINUTE!" *scramble scramble* "....Ok" dance. We have grown used to silently replenishing his room with tissues almost daily. We have grown used to herding the two younger ones to the downstairs bathroom while they wonder why their brother is taking so long in the shower.
We have even grown used to the occasional tightly bundled sheets or towels in the laundry hamper with a sticky note on top reading "wash separately". But there was one big thing we did not anticipate. We did not anticipate that the minute everyone else was out of the house, the living room would become fair game. Having driven halfway down the block without my phone, I decided to just walk back to my house because parking in my weird driveway takes more time than the walk.
I unlocked and opened the front door in the span of a couple of seconds. This was my mistake. How could I be so careless as to expect to be able to just open my own front door? What was I thinking? I should have knocked. I should have pointedly jangled my keys for 30 seconds before unlocking the door. I should have worn a cowbell.
Anything to prevent me from seeing my darling offspring, my beautiful baby boy, my only son, pants down, humping the couch through a strategically placed towel. WHY?
15. Cut And Run
Last summer, my boyfriend and I were on a road trip from New Mexico to Mexico. We have a Honda Element converted for living in, so I crawl in the back to nap while he's driving. He stops at a gas station in the desert of Arizona and while he's pumping, I get out to use the bathroom. Come back out, don't see him, and walk around the parking lot to have a look.
I jokingly think to myself that maybe he drove off, not knowing that I got out to use the restroom, but brush that off. I sit on a bench outside twiddling my thumbs, realizing this may now actually be the case. I reach for my phone to call him, but of course, my phone is in the car. I go back inside to ask the cashier to use their phone, but she says they don't have one.
Obviously, they do, but whatever. So I start asking random people in the store to use their phones, which makes people visibly uncomfortable because we're in the middle of nowhere and they think I'll take it I guess. I go back outside and continue asking strangers for their phones. I realize I don't know my boyfriend’s number by heart so I just call my phone repeatedly, hoping he'll answer.
He doesn't. I use one person's phone to log into my Facebook to find my boyfriend's number, but alas, his phone is out of battery when I call. I resort to explaining to everyone whose phone I ask to use my situation. Some don't believe me, others feel really bad, and one man offered to buy me a hotel room for the night in the next town over, thinking that my boyfriend left me on purpose and I was just being modest.
It's been about two hours now. The store clerks through the windows have been looking at me suspiciously for a while, I'm still sitting on this bench in the desert, and have no idea what to do and start bawling my eyes out. A patrol car pulls up and the officer comes to me and lets me know the store clerks called them because I’ve been loitering, haggling people for phones outside of their store, and crying.
Yep, that’s what I’m doing. I explain my situation and the officer is as confused and sympathetic as all the other people. She tells me I can't stay there so she can either take me to a truck rest stop in the town over or go to the station. I ask her to take me to the rest stop, although she’s not convinced that my boyfriend legitimately left me there on accident.
We're driving down the highway when on her radio, another officer says he's at the gas station and there's a guy there looking for his girlfriend. I just crack up and she does too. She flips the car around and takes me back. And there my boyfriend is standing outside of his car, banging on the windows and nearly crying because he couldn't believe he'd actually done that.
He said he was passing some really cool scenery far into the drive and went to wake me up to see it too when he realized I wasn't in the car. He flipped it around and drove faster than he's ever driven in his life to get back to the gas station. He said he wondered why so many people kept calling me but didn’t feel comfortable answering my phone.
He thought for sure that was the end of our relationship and the trip was ruined.
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16. Taking A Bad Route
At the time, I was working at a furniture factory where we made the pieces for California Closets. We had a router mounted to a table from underneath that cut wood in a specific shape based on the jig that had an industrial vacuum hose attached over the top of it. They would both turn on with the flip of a single switch. I was using the router, and the sawdust wasn’t being sucked up.
That's when I did the stupidest thing I've ever done. I went to check the suction by sticking my hand in the area where the router and the hose met. The router, being connected to the same switch as the vacuum, was still on. My middle finger took the brunt of it. I broke the bone on my finger and in the split second my fingers were in there, the router hit it three times. It was just fantastic.
17. The Sharpest One In Class
I am a teacher and had a pencil holder in my classroom filled with 30 sharp pencils. They were all facing upwards. I dropped something and quickly went to pick it up but face-planted into the pencil holder. Luckily, I was only pierced by about three of them. One was about half a centimeter (about a quarter of an inch) from my eye. I still have the lead marks under my skin.
18. Fun Gone Wrong
Today I messed up by pranking my office à la Jim from The Office. I thought it would be funny to put a Bluetooth speaker in the ceiling and play sounds of cats over it. I found an eight-hour video of cats meowing on YouTube that was perfect. I paired an old phone to the speaker, tossed the phone in a drawer of an empty desk, and tucked the speaker under a ceiling tile.
It was perfect. You could only hear the cats if you listened real close. It sounded like there was a cat in the ceiling, but you really couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from. I went to my office, got busy with work, and forgot about it until I went to break. I walked into the break room and several people were talking about the cat that must be in the ventilation system.
I chuckled to myself while I grabbed my coffee and made a loop through the accounting department to see if there were any more people talking about the cats in the ceiling. What I saw made my blood run cold. To my horror, half the ceiling tiles were removed and there were two maintenance men on ladders looking for the cat. They were real close to the speaker but hadn't found it quite yet.
I just reversed out of there and went back to work. They eventually found the speaker, and shortly after everyone got an email from the big boss reprimanding the guilty party and asking for any information on the culprit. A conspiracy theory emerged by the end of the day: Several of them don't believe that it was a prank at all.
They think the maintenance people lied about it being a prank. That management made it up to get people back to work, and that maintenance is planning to set out traps. One person claimed they absolutely heard the cat yesterday, and I kid you not, a couple of them claim they still hear it. This is completely my bad.
19. The Floor is Lava
I remember organizing my room when I was 10 or so. I had a lava lamp on the verge of falling off my cabinet; I didn’t notice until I heard a loud shatter on my floor. For some reason, my brain thought it would be a good idea to pick up all the shards. I jabbed my foot with a huge piece of glass and passed out from the pain.
I woke up in a hospital bed and realized the shard was gone from my foot (was stitched back up) and getting relieved looks from my family. Turns out when I passed out, I hit my head on the cement floor (I was living in my parents’ basement), cracked my skull partially open and was bleeding profusely. I got taken to the hospital. My family thought I was a goner.
20. Back In Action
My husband had a weird dimpled spot on his back. He went to the dermatologist multiple times, but was simply brushed off and told not to worry about it. The derm even burned off a nodule that was bothering him at his beltline, but repeatedly said it was nothing and was visibly irritated with us for being anxious over it.
We waited for nearly 10 years before going to another dermatologist. Big mistake. Since our experience with this one was so negative, we were hesitant to go and see another one. But the new derm immediately diagnosed what turned out to be a sarcoma, which had had ten extra years to grow thanks to the first doctor’s incompetence.
My husband now has a 18-inch scar snaking down his back from the removal of the tumor and the reshaping of his back. I now have months of experience with wound drains, tunneling, bandages, triage, and the laundry that comes with massive wound healing. I would like to take that first dermatologist who was so freaking patronizing with our concerns and shove his face deep into his own behind.
Don’t ever let a doctor dismiss your concerns like that!
21. Delivery Route Danger
While delivering newspapers one frigid winter day, I slid on ice and rolled down a hill, across a road, and into a snow-covered bush. I was bruised and banged up, but I was 13 years old, and therefore indestructible. So I picked up my newspapers and continued on my route. For the next few weeks, I healed up and thought I was okay. I had no inkling of the nightmare I was in for.
Soon, my right knee started hurting. I went to the doctor who said it was just growing pains and told me not to worry about it. So I limped around for a few more months and tried to ignore it. The pain got so bad, I could hardly stand on my leg, so I went to a different doctor. He did some x-rays and also told me it was nothing.
He told me to use crutches for a few months to take the pressure off of it and see if it'll heal up and stop hurting. A few months went by using the crutches and it still hurt. Three years passed. I finally went to a sports physician who knew a thing or two about this stuff, and he found out that I had actually broken part of my bone at the knee joint.
He called it osteochondritis. Basically, a small chunk of bone broke off on the weight-bearing edge of the joint and was floating around in a sack of fluid, until I took the wrong step. Then the broken piece would stab back into the raw hole. Imagine piercing yourself in the knee with a red hot ice pick and you'll get an idea of what that felt like.
The doctor decided to do surgery to place two screws to hold the bone chunk back into place. I was on crutches for another six months. It hurt like the devil but it did heal. It's been over 20 years since then and now I don't have any real issues with my knee, except on days when it's going to rain and I can feel a slight ache in it.
22. Flipping The Switch
I’ve been living in this house for the past 11 years. In my bedroom, there’s a ceiling fan that I always have on to try and make my room colder. My room has always been insanely hot compared to the rest of the house and I never understood why. Flash forward to today when I’m talking to a friend that said they found out their fan can switch directions to heat the room in the winter. I immediately realized my screw-up.
When I got home I took a closer look at the fan, and hiding by the light is a little black switch. I hit the switch and what do you know, my room is about 10 degrees colder in minutes. I’ve been sleeping in a sauna for the past 11 years and had no idea. Every day in the summer waking up sweaty was because of a tiny black switch.
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23. Waffle House Woes
I once ate at a Waffle House twice in one day. Then I didn't poop for five days. I truly thought I was gonna rupture an organ. I was in serious pain and my coworkers suggested that perhaps I should see a doctor, to which I replied, “The only doctor I'm gonna be seeing is the medical examiner". I took a couple of doses of laxatives and prepared for the worst.
I was so constipated that the laxatives merely brought me back to normal. Thankfully, my organs were still intact.
Wikimedia.Commons
24. Spick And Span
I’m a surgical tech, and we were doing a skin graft on a burn patient. In those types of surgeries, you have two different operative sites if you're taking the skin graft from the patient and not using cadaver skin. This means I have two different surgical teams going and only one me bouncing back and forth and assisting both the teams.
This was also at a university hospital, meaning I have attending surgeons, residents, and medical students all working alongside. If you work in surgery, you know that unless you're the tech, YOU DO NOT TOUCH THEIR TABLE OR ANYTHING ON IT. As we're doing the skin harvest, you have to keep the skin moist until it's ready to be transplanted on the site.
I wrap mine in damp sponges and keep it on my table. I bet you can see where this is going. I turn back to my table and the sponge WITH THE SKIN IN IT is gone. I look everywhere and finally stop everyone from working to ask who has the damp sponge that was on my table. A resident told me my table was "too cluttered" and he threw the sponge in the trash. I saw red.
I've never had to scold a doctor so bad in my life. Not only did he touch my table, he threw away an item that needs to be accounted for after surgery, and it had specimen in it. Since the skin was no longer sterile, we had to use cadaver skin, and you know who pays for that? The PATIENT. So, a note to all the baby docs, please don't touch your scrub's table unless we okay it.
25. Double Life Exposed
So this took place maybe half an hour ago, and to be honest there's still a chance there will be some kickback for this today. I work in a call center to make ends meet currently. It’s no career but it’s a pretty nice job with some decent people and it’s easy. All we do really is facilitate switches for people looking for better deals on household stuff, usually their internet provider or supplier of gas/electricity, etc.
We have agents in the field who make sales, then call us for verification with the customer, simple right? Not today. See, usually it’s company policy not to do call-backs. Nobody wants annoying call-center calls right? So unless the customer specifically requests a scheduled call-back, we just don't do them for that reason and others.
I had a customer two days ago looking for a pretty pricey internet switch, going from some basic setup to a full TV/Phone/Internet package, the works, all the channels, anytime calls to numbers including international, 500+ mbps wifi, and it came to over £100 a month. I inform the customer, who's an impatient-sounding guy, that because of the price increase he'll need to have a quick credit check run on him and it'll mean the call takes a little longer.
The guy gets all annoyed about being busy and says he "can't waste all afternoon on the phone to some call-centre" so would it be alright if I called him after the weekend to go through it then. Seemed straightforward enough...This is pretty common, people are always up for the sale until they realize they'll need to spend more than one whole minute on the phone.
But I scheduled the call anyway and asked if there was a specific time he wanted me to call. He says any time is fine and follows with "If Emily answers, just ask her for me, she'll make sure I get the phone" and gave me a home phone number. Fast forward to today, and I make a grave error. See, the application I had from the customer had his home phone number already filled in.
It turns out this was NOT the same number he'd given me for today's call back. I called the number I thought was correct, and a woman answers. I say without thinking; "Oh hi, I'm calling for Steve to confirm his broadband switch, we spoke the other day? You must be Emily!" .....cue uncomfortable pause. She says, "This is Steve's wife, Amanda. What do you mean I ‘must’ be Emily?"
I apologized, and said, "I'm so sorry, when I spoke to him the other day he said if Emily answered to just ask for Steve?" And she just goes, “I knew it, I freaking KNEW IT" and slammed the phone down. After checking the application against the post-it note I'd jotted some info down on the other day, I realized Steve must have given me the number for where he was going to be today, and I'd instead called his unsuspecting wife at home.
Nobody's called into my workplace yet, but if they do I don't think they'll be happy.
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26. As Seen On TV
When I was a kid, I wanted to imitate a TV show where they did different challenges in an old facility fort. One challenge had the contestants jumping on a contraption that made cannonballs fly and hit some targets. I built my contraption with a wooden plank that I balanced on a rock like a seesaw. Then I put a rock on one side and jumped on the other side. I didn't realize what was going to happen until it was too late.
The rock flew right in my face. Half my face was blue for quite some time after.
27. Aw, Bloody Heck
For those of you who don't know, a menstrual cup is a soft and flexible medical grade silicone cup that you can leave in “there” for up to 12 hours to collect the blood and pour out. As you can imagine, a full cup has a fair amount of blood. This is important for later. This morning at 5 am, I felt the need to go to the toilet.
I noticed that a little blood had spilled out so I knew it was about time to empty my cup. This usually doesn't happen to me, but I guess overnight I had more blood than usual. Groggy at 5 am with the lights off, I take my cup out and dump it into the toilet. It was messy, and I finally discovered that I had an accident with how much blood came out.
I chucked my cup in the sink next to me, ready to clean everything up, but at this moment, my boyfriend peeks into the bathroom to see if I'm okay and what I'm doing awake. From his perspective, he just sees blood all over my hands and in the sink. The lights were off and he just can see me from the flash on my phone. It looked like a horror scene.
He freaked out and fainted at the door. Me, being concerned without thought, jumped up to aid my boyfriend who had just collapsed on the floor. I then instantly realized I had blood all over my hands, and now all over him and the floor. He wakes up a moment later, freaking out not knowing why there is blood everywhere. I explained it to him and was left with a shocked boyfriend and a literal bloody mess I had to clean up at 5 am.
28. Shear Madness
When I was little, my mother and I were gardening. I asked her what the knob in the middle of the shears did. When she didn't answer, I turned it in any way. The shears didn't seem to change in any noticeable way until I tried to close them and I found out that it was to make the blades easier or harder to open. I put in the usual amount of force I needed to close them, but it was now drastically too much.
I closed them so quickly that I lost control and they cut my upper lip in half. It's a cool scar.
29. Goal!
A couple of years ago I was down at our local soccer grounds, while one of my daughters was training. I was playing around with my other girl by the goal post. The ball went into the goal, and through a hole in the net. I tried putting my foot through the hole to get the ball, but my daughter ran around and got it. She ran off with it, and I went to give chase, but my foot was still in the hole in the net.
I up-ended myself, came down hard on my chest, and fractured four ribs.
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30. A Change in Your Morning Dental Routine
When I was 10 or so, I woke up before everyone in the house (it was like 7 am) and decided I would sneak into the pool. I was waist deep in the water before I saw the alligator on the other side of the pool.
31. The Plan That Went Astray
One time in grade school I was in gym class. There was a table against the wall that had wheels. Usually, everyone in the class would sit on the table while we waited for our coach. One day I wanted to fake hurting myself to skip class. So, when everyone got off the table I was still sitting there and slowly leaned back against the wall, carefully pushing the table from under me.
The table moved really fast and I fell behind the table, which was my plan. What wasn’t in my plan was to land on my arm and twist it so badly to the point where it became dislocated. After that, I had to go to the school nurse, who put ice on it. I don’t remember how my arm came back, I just assume someone came and relocated it.
32. A Vegas Bride
This happened a couple of hours ago. I proposed to my long-term girlfriend a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, due to the nature of my work we have to move soon and having a real wedding before then would be impossible. I got off work early today and after getting home, my fiancée asked if we could go get some paperwork notarized for the courthouse wedding that we planned to have in a month or two.
We hopped in the car with a form we printed off the county website and drove to the closest UPS. The notary checked our IDs and had us sign and then she signed, notarized the form, and said congratulations. Cool, now all we have to do is go to the courthouse on a day of our choosing to be wed. My fiancée called the courthouse afterward, double-checking to see if we needed to bring anything else.
After calling me her boyfriend, the lady on the phone corrected her by saying “husband". She then told my fiancée our state no longer requires a ceremony with the judge at the courthouse. That form is literally the marriage certificate and she is now married. Whoops! We had a honeymoon picnic at a park near a lake. I’m married, I guess?
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33. If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Touch It
I was in a Staples store once and I saw this new-age stapler that looked like it was hanging open. I thought it was broken, so I put both hands on it, with both my thumbs on the part that the staple comes out of, and tried to pull it closed again. The stapler was not broken, and it fired a staple into both my thumbs and stapled them together.
34. Hot For Teacher
This was several years ago now, but I still cringe about it every now and then. When I was a freshman at university, I had a huuuge crush on one of my lecturers, who was honestly just a regular-looking, middle-aged man. I was so obsessed with him that I often stalked him online, including on LinkedIn, where I made a profile just so that I could stalk him.
I’m talking really often. It was creepy. Years later when I joined the workforce and actually started using LinkedIn seriously, I realized that people actually get notified every time someone views your profile. He used to give me odd looks when I would pass him around campus and I used to be paranoid thinking, oh god he knows that I fantasize about him bending me over his desk in his office.
But then I’d think nah nah nah, how could he possibly know that? He must’ve been thinking, hey there’s that weird girl who used to look at my LinkedIn profile daily. He even saw me at my graduation and made a very deliberate glance at me. He. Knows.
35. Scarred By Social Media
I was following a celebrity/Instagram hack that was trending about taping your bust to give it a cinched look, especially in low-cut tops. I tried it. It ended up being an excruciating mistake. When I removed the masking tape, it ripped out a good chunk of my skin, leaving a nasty scar that ran from just underneath my armpit all the way to the lining of my underboob on both sides. It took almost three weeks to heal. I couldn’t wear a bra and had to wear loose clothing because the slightest chafing would cause the scab to tear and the wound to reopen.
36. Your Own Worst Enemy
My boyfriend suffers from pretty low self-esteem. Like it's not like he's too bothered about his looks, but he rates himself a 5 out of 10 at best. Obviously, I think he's gorgeous and handsome, but even though I've been saying this for years, he does not believe me. I came up with the stupidest plan to prove him wrong. For some reason, I decided to show him that other girls would find him attractive by making him a tinder account.
I set him up an account, make him a bio, and just start swiping right. After a day, he got around a dozen matches on tinder. After I showed this to him, I saw how he immediately became more confident and thanked me for the whole gesture. Cue my surprise when a couple of days later, I check the tinder account I had basically forgotten after 24 hours, and I could see lots of messages sent to lots of the girls my boyfriend had matched with.
I confronted him and he denied it, but I mean these messages even included promises to meet each other. Obviously, we broke up and out of curiosity I checked the tinder account again after a week and this breakup has clearly not slowed him down one bit. So now the tinder I made for him not only broke us up but is now helping him navigate his newly single life. Wow. I played myself.
37. The Difference A Letter Makes
A nurse assisting in the imaging center obtained an order for an anti-anxiety medication called Versed to be given to a patient getting an MRI. This patient had issues with claustrophobia, so this was necessary to obtain good images with the patient. The nurse went to search for the drug in the pyxis machine. Then it went so, so wrong.
So she has to type the medication name in like a Google search in the screen to pull the drug. She types in only "Ve," which pulls up relevant substances by alphabetical order, and without looking, she clicked the first medication and gave it to the patient. Almost immediately, the patient suffocated and passed, right there on the spot. It was only afterward they found out what happened.
When the nurse typed "ve," the first medication alphabetically wasn't Versed, it was Vecuronium. The difference being an anti anxiety medication versus a paralytic medication, which paralyzed them while conscious and suffocated them.
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38. Hand Washing Hazzard
I was doing the dishes by hand and dropped a glass. I instinctively put my foot out to catch it, forgetting that I had bare feet. The glass cut my foot open about an inch. It looked deep but didn't bleed a lot. I figured I needed stitches. I tried to put a shoe on, and my big toe didn't work. That's when I realized it was much worse than I had thought.
As it turned out, I had cut the tendon leading to my toe. I needed surgery and spent two nights in the hospital and five weeks in a cast.
39. A Fatal Mistake
I once had a client who was a nurse that had administered a fatal injection and ended the life of a baby. It was a long story, but I got her off any charges of negligence despite being very disturbed by what had happened. It happened many years ago, but this case will stay with me forever. Here is the full story, for all of you who might be interested.
It was after hours in a small rural hospital. They were understaffed and under-equipped. In the pediatric ward, a baby was very ill with gastroenteritis and hadn't responded to weeks of treatment. The baby was losing weight despite everything. There was no doctor on the pediatric ward that night, or, in fact, in the entire hospital.
When the lab phoned the baby's blood work results in to the nurse on duty, she said that the baby was going to pass soon if he didn't receive urgent treatment. The nurse phoned the doctor on the telephone. He wasn't supposed to go in that day, having already worked long hours that day. He was just supposed to be available for phone calls.
The doc gave instructions for a sister to give the baby an ampoule of potassium chloride. She wrote down the instructions. But the doctor made a fatal mistake. They didn't specify that it should be given orally, which was what was meant. But because the doc specified that a sister must give it, the nurse assumed that it should be an injection, as she herself wasn't qualified to give injections but a nursing sister would have been.
The nurse called the sister from the maternity ward and asked her to come by and carry out the instruction. She explained the urgency. The sister was very busy in the maternity ward, but came to the pediatric ward and gave the injection. The baby passed from immediate cardiac arrest. The partners in my firm didn't want to touch the case, as they thought it was impossible to win.
But in our law, negligence has a specific definition. I won the case for the nursing sister by arguing that my client was trying her best, with only the instructions and resources at hand, under circumstances where she had been told the patient would pass very soon if the treatment wasn't given. She was an amazingly dedicated person and what happened had completely devastated her.
It was to the point where she wanted to quit nursing. I hope she changed her mind after that. There is one other point, though. The one good thing that came out of this tragic event was that I mentioned to a local Rotary Club member that the hospital in question desperately needed some telemedicine equipment, knowing that the club had such a project.
Shortly after that, they were able to make a donation of equipment to the hospital. I even coincidentally saw that doctor in passing years afterward and the doctor was so grateful for that equipment. It definitely changed the situation and made it far less likely that a tragedy like this one would ever again be repeated at that hospital.
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40. Dumb Dad
My dad got trashed and tried to jump over the fence at Yankee Stadium with his friends. He failed and an iron spike punctured him. He remembers being rushed to the hospital and bleeding everywhere. Everyone thought he was going to pass of blood loss...He didn't, but he also made several more stupid mistakes such as riding a motorcycle without a helmet and breaking several ribs etc.
Honestly, he is still stupid and I'm surprised he hasn't lost his life yet.
41. Hung Up On Boredom
This was the consequence of deliberate planning and execution conducted by a very stupid 12-year-old me. My mom worked at my school and often stayed late, so I was stuck there too. I raided the school snack cabinet and supply closet to find some way to occupy myself. I found chocolate pirouette sticks and ate them all.
The popsicle craft sticks were also now gone. I had glued them all together to make a bunch of throwing stars and ambushed my little brother. I found a good length of rope in the supply closet and decided to head out to the playground to do something. At the playground, I found that the rope was too short for a rope swing.
My little brother chose to chase lizards instead of coming to the playground with me, so I couldn't tie him up to the flagpole. That's when I had a truly terrible idea. I decided to make an elevator. I would tie a loop in one end, throw the looped end over the monkey bars, put my feet in the loop, and pull on the tail end of the rope until my feet reached the top of the monkey bars. A simple pulley of sorts.
I situated myself according to the design and attempted to actuate the elevator. I was not moving. I was obviously not pulling hard enough, so I yanked the rope hard. I landed on my neck, with my feet caught in a noose, up in the air like a caught mackerel. I learned a very important lesson about the physical properties of the natural world.
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42. Work Smart, Not Hard
This happened a few years ago. I was pretty efficient at my job and faster than my colleagues at getting reports done. We mostly wrote reports that had the same calculations and said very similar things. So I created a large database, linked it to Microsoft Excel, let excel calculate everything for me, automate various sentences for me, and then exported it to Microsoft Word.
The end result? In only two hours I could push out what took my colleagues eight hours.
I decided to work only 2.5 hours a day, spending the other five doing anything I wanted to, YouTube, day trading, reading up investments, or looking at silly memes. It was awesome. One day, a colleague took a romantic interest in me. Since I had nothing better to do and was single for a while, I gave it an honest shot.
The relationship went fairly well. She was lovely, really smart but, like me, really lazy too—except that it didn't seem to bother her that her work performance was close to the bottom of the pack. In order to both impress her (and help her), I showed her what I do, and how it could be used to speed up her work. She didn't seem to take an interest at the time.
After some time I broke up with her. We tried our best but I wasn't feeling it as much as she was and I felt it would be better to end it sooner than later. She was already saying she loves me and I wasn't even close to using the word love. The breakup seemed somewhat peaceful. And then the other shoe dropped. Two days later, I got called into HR at work for a disciplinary hearing.
To my horror, I was presented with screenshots of my activity of the previous days: memes, trading activity, news reading, YouTube, and even a tally of how many hours I actually worked vs. how much I spent. Turns out, my ex shared my screen via Microsoft Skype when I went on a break, recorded all my actions for the day, and then reported me to HR.
I should've actually worked my hours in, I shouldn't have tried to impress my ex, and I definitely should have noticed my screen was being shared.
43. It’s the Little Things That Trip You up
I scored an interview for a dream job. I did all of my research about the company, bought a new suit, the whole shebang. I gave the man interviewing me a firm handshake, answered all of his questions easily, and felt pretty confident. After finishing the otherwise flawless interview, we shook hands again, and I said, "Thank you sir". To my horror, she replied: "It’s Ma'am".
44. Keep It In The Family
So I have an uncle who has always been VERY vocal about his disapproval of my sexuality. There is not a family gathering that goes by where he doesn't say something jerky about homosexuality or me specifically. Well, this weekend in between family gatherings I was looking to meet somebody. I started chatting with an older man because that's how I roll.
A lot of older guys don't like to show their faces because they aren't out, so I don't think much of it when he doesn't show me his face. We actually hit it off great and after receiving a few pictures I wish I could unsee and sending a few I wish I could take back, we decided to meet up for well... you know. So I'm at this coffee shop down the street waiting for my man to show up…and you know who walks in.
It is at this moment I realize my screw-up. I've been flirting with my gay-hating, closeted uncle. He tried to play it off like a random encounter but I wasn't letting him get away with that. After some pressing, he finally admits that he is the man I've been talking to and I told him I don't judge him as he does me. He apologized for the hurtful things he's said to me over the years. OH, but it got awful real quick.
He kept talking with me like he was still INTERESTED and I had to make it clear that was NOT going to happen. I had to get up and walk out and after multiple texts from him, I had to go ahead and block his number. I can't believe this guy had the nerve to judge me and treat me as less of a human being all these years when he's a total creep and a massive hypocrite. Always get a face picture, people.
45. Lit Up By Curiosity
When I was 17, I was with my mom at a used car lot. We got into what I believe was a Nissan sedan, and I noticed that it had a lighter with the actual lighter part still attached. I wasn’t thinking, so I pushed it in and waited a bit. I pulled it out and said, “Do you think it still works?” I pressed my thumb into the red hot coil on the underside.
My mom laughed so hard she immediately called my aunt, told her what just happened, and then they both laughed at my misfortune while we did circles around the car lot.
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46. Not Getting The Picture
My sister had her gallbladder out. It was a totally routine surgery, yet two days later she woke up at 4:00 in the morning in searing pain. She went to the ER by ambulance. I’m a nurse, and I met her there. The ER doctors were all apparently convinced that she was a pill-popper and did not even conduct a physical exam beyond taking her vitals.
They injected her with a calming medication to shut her up, because she was just yelling “Help me! Help me! I'm dying!” over and over again. They did eventually do an MRI, but said it was negative and sent her home. She didn’t want to leave and insisted that something was terribly wrong. Their reaction chilled me to the bone.
They said they would call security and have her thrown out if she didn’t leave. At this point, I’d like to mention that she had no history of substance use or heavy drinking. She continued to get worse at home, and the next day went to a different hospital. They did a workup and found that the metal clip that closed off the bile duct had cut right through the tissue.
She had a large bile leak that was literally burning all her abdominal organs. She had to have three surgeries to fix it and was hospitalized for nine days. She was left with chronic pain from adhesions and chemical burns. When the new hospital finally acquired the MRI from the original ER visit, she was told that the leak was small but clearly visible in that image.
So those people failed to realize that the issue really was something serious.
47. Midnight Run
I was camping in a hammock and had to go pee at around 2 AM. When I came back, I went to hop into my hammock to go back to sleep. Instead, I ended up hopping OVER my hammock, which I had hung at the edge of a small ledge. I fell backward and broke my wrist. I went into shock. I slept it off and hiked out the next morning.
48. I Take It All Back
So last Thursday night, I saw everyone tagging their stepdads in this Budweiser commercial. Without watching it, I sent it to my stepdad. About an hour later, my stepdad and mom call me and ask if I’m hinting at something. My stepdad is like, I know you had intent. I’m like HUH??? Then it hits me. IN THE COMMERCIAL THE ADULT CHILDREN ARE ASKING THEIR STEPDADS TO ADOPT THEM.
So he starts crying, thinking I want this. Now I can’t tell him that I didn’t mean to. Friday he squeezed me so tight and said he wants me to take his name and make it official. All I can think is wow, that sounds like a huge hassle. But I can never say anything about it being an accident. So now I’m being adopted and changing my name. I’m 31!
49. My Granny, What A Foul Mouth You Have
I was doing varicose veins surgery on a very posh British middle-aged lady with a very upper-class accent. There was an anaesthetic that we used that sometimes induced some hallucinations either going under or coming out of anesthesia, and we often heard some funny things. Anyway, this lady was in recovery and just coming out of the anesthetic.
The team were around waiting for her to wake up, and she gagged a little on the tube in her throat for breathing, so we knew it was time to remove it. She gagged, we removed the tube, and she smacked her lips and said loudly, in her incredible accent: "That's the best bit of punch I have had in years!" The whole recovery room just fell about laughing. Luckily, she didn't remember it.
50. The Travelling Pants
I tried to walk from my bedroom to my washroom, which was directly across a hallway. I decided to do this without buttoning my pants. My pants fell down. I ended up tripping and kicking the door frame hard enough to crack my baby toenail. This happened five minutes before I had to leave for work. I walked with a limp all night.
51. The Vampire’s Kiss
This morning, I decided to surprise my girlfriend with a proposal in bed. Not the most original or romantic approach, I know. Initially, the plan was to pop the question over dinner last night, but alas, the build-up towards the big moment got the better of me. However, today I woke up determined to do what needed to be done.
So, there I was, on one knee next to my girlfriend's side of the bed, waiting for her to open her eyes and see me holding the ring. The moment I attempted to wake her up she groaned and rolled over, leaving me with nothing to look at but the back of her head. My heart was beating hard enough to hear. I leaned over my girlfriend and gently tapped her on the shoulder.
Instead of waking up like a normal person, she hissed in her sleep like a vampire before elbowing me in the face. I stumbled back and dropped the ring. My girlfriend woke up during the commotion and the first thing she saw was me bleeding from my nose. Not gonna lie, when she rushed over to comfort me, I flinched. The hissing thing she did scared the heck out of me.
After all the drama calmed down, I managed to recover the ring without her noticing. Speaking of recovery, my nose still hurts. Tonight I'll try again. This time I'll make sure to propose while my girlfriend is wide awake and still human.
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52. The Dud
Driving over an IED in Iraq. Its battery had gone bad in the heat. If the battery was alive, I wouldn’t be. I was in a rural area. I didn’t see some disturbed dirt in the dirt road that we were driving on, but my lieutenant in the passenger seat almost pooped his pants because his life flashed before his eyes. He literally curled into a ball in his seat.
I asked him what was up. And he said he was sure that there was something back there. We were currently escorting troop carriers to drop off a foot patrol in the middle of nowhere, so after we completed our drop off, we went back on his order to check out the spot. My truck was the only one with an RF jammer, so I took the lead up to the spot my lieutenant had seen.
I thought to myself, “Holy heck, how did I not see that?” I was the “demo” guy since we didn’t have enough EOD in the area, so I went up to it and saw the pressure plate and wires. I dug it up and there is was. A battery with the battery acid all leaked out. They didn’t bury it deep enough, and it was the middle of summer. About 130 degrees out. Not good for the battery.
Under the battery and pressure plate was a box, about the size of a footlocker, filled with explosives and accelerant. If it had gone off my whole truck would have been dust. We had to do a controlled demo since EOD was busy, and after we took it out, half the road had a 5-foot-deep crater in it.
Krakenimages.com, Shutterstock
53. It’s A Wash
Right off the bat, I want to say that I am in no way shape or form making light of ending life. This was not a prank gone wrong, or something I did on purpose, but rather a very unfortunate series of usually perfectly benign activities that led to me accidentally terrifying and mortifying my wife. This happened a couple of weeks ago. I tripped and sprained my ankle.
It's been bothering me enough that I've been taking Epsom salt baths in the evenings after work. In addition to helping with the sprain and swelling, I also find it incredibly relaxing. Say what you want about a grown man taking a bath, I enjoy a good soak. I also deal with a condition called angiokeratoma. It's basically blood vessels that have expanded and cause a few small (albeit slightly unsightly) dark spots in a rather sensitive area.
I call them old man spots. They're harmless, and most of the time I don't even notice, BUT every once in a while...I'll irritate one of these small bumps and it bleeds a ton. Additionally, it takes FOREVERRR to get the bleeding to stop. It’s not like I can elevate my balls, let alone put a band-aid on. Well, on the day in question, I get a text from my wife that she's going to be working late.
So I get home and decide to soak my ankle and enjoy a little peace and quiet. It's not really important how I did it, but I ended up nicking one of those spots. After cursing a reasonable amount, I start the lengthy ritual of holding toilet paper against it and checking every so often to see if it's stopped. Even after the bleeding stops I have to be very careful for the next few minutes to not get it started again, almost like scratching off a very fresh scab.
I finally get it stopped and a short time later proceed with my bath. I put on my headphones, closed my eyes and relax. I wasn't asleep but I was really zoned out and relaxed...until I was snapped out of it by my wife screaming in absolute terror. I've never ever, ever heard her or anyone scream like that. It scared the living daylights out of me, and I jolted awake and nearly flew out of the tub.
I shouted "HONEY? WHAT?? She didn't answer me. She was in a heap on the floor, bawling. It took me a second to figure out what was going on before shouting "Jesus Christ!” I could see what it must look like to her. I had apparently NOT stopped the bleeding as well as I thought I had, and my wife walked in on me eyes closed, slouched over in a bathtub full of very bloody water.
It took me a long time to calm her down, and I don't think that's something you just get over. Hopefully one day we can laugh about it, but it won't be any time soon.
54. It Burns!
I was once given someone else's medicine...while in the hospital...via an IV. The nurse realized after I had finished the bag that she screwed up—but that’s not the worst part. Then she hid the bag in the garbage. The night nurse brought it to my attention because he was confused as to why someone else's used IV bag was in the garbage can in my private room.
I was on a severe liquid restriction at the time too, so there was an extra couple hundred milliliters of fluid that I should have not had. A few other things happened during that time in that hospital, too. I was left in my own excrement while in a coma for hours. That resulted in it eating away and breaking down my tissue on my coccyx.
I was restrained and severely burned as a result. They didn't use the pads like they're supposed to, or ask family. My skin blackened. I almost lost my hand. Oh, I should explain that I was restrained because I was coming in and out of the coma. I tried to scratch an itch and accidentally pulled out my nose feeding tube.
My PICC line was pulled almost completely out and I was given a lot of potassium. Now, if it's pure potassium, it will burn. Since I was on a fluid restriction, it couldn't be mixed with saline. My arm would swell and burn red. It was so painful. But they kept on doing it. It took about a week before someone realized "Well, this doesn't look right".
55. Insured Losses
About 10 years ago, I got a part-time job that miraculously offered health insurance. Unfortunately, the paperwork they gave me when I started only listed the insurance rates for full-time employees, which was something like $60 a paycheck. I didn't even realize there would be a difference for me until I got my first paycheck and it totaled about $20.
I called HR in panic mode certain that there must be some mistake only to be informed that for the number of hours I was working, health insurance was $400 per paycheck. And no, I couldn't cancel my enrollment unless I had a "qualifying life event". I took home $20 paychecks for four months until open enrollment ended when I could finally cancel.
Luckily, I had another job at the time so I wasn't out on the street, but it certainly taught me a lesson about carefully reading paperwork.
56. I Was Almost Fin-ished
When I was a kid on vacation, my parents bought a whole catfish to eat for dinner. They told me to carry it home, so, being the excitable 7-year-old I was, I started swinging it and skipping like Mary Poppins, until I jabbed myself with the side fin of the catfish. I ended up with a sizable hole in my leg and some blood, but I put a bandage on it and continued. Then things took a turn for the worse.
Over the next few days, I started throwing up and got a high fever. I had gotten an infection from the catfish. I spent the rest of my vacation drinking Gatorade and eating plain bread because anything else made me projectile vomit.
57. Blood Under The Bridge
My mother-in-law took her grandchild's, my daughter's, life. She was two years old at the time. My husband and I let her babysit the baby while we were busy with job-related things. It was summertime and they were staying in the mother-in-law’s house that has a pond next to it. My daughter loved water; bath-time was her favorite time of day.
They were playing at the edge of the pond and then the mother-in-law remembered she had to take clothes out of the dryer, so she left a two-year-old alone next to the quite a large body of water. My daughter’s childlike curiosity plus her love of water resulted in her getting into the deep part of the pond and drowning. All because she considered clothes in the dryer an important enough reason to leave a toddler unsupervised.
When she realized what happened, she started to panic and call for help. Her neighbor heard her, they got into the pond and called an ambulance, but it was too late. Imagine what it’s like for a parent to come home to the person you trusted your child with and they tell you your child is gone. Somehow though, it got worse than all that.
Throughout it all, she was begging us not to involve the authorities into this. She kept repeating it was an accident and she “doesn’t know how it could have happened,” “was only gone for a moment,” ”feels even worse than we do” and “calling the authorities won’t bring her back". We did call them, of course, and she was charged with negligence and sentenced to three years behind bars, which, in my opinion, was too light of a punishment.
Now recently she was released, and my husband was the first person she looked for contact with. He never once visited her while she was behind bars. It doesn’t matter that she served her sentence, neither I or my husband will ever forgive her for this. Besides, she hasn’t asked for forgiveness; all she gave us were excuses and more excuses.
In the courtroom, my husband told her she’s not his mother anymore and that he never wants to see her face again. Our marriage was damaged too, we were depressed, we fought a lot, and there were times when we were on the brink of divorce. We separated for a while, and I left for another country thinking that this was it for us. However, my husband came to look for me and we managed to save our family and continue our life together.
I couldn’t bring myself to have any more children for a long time but eventually, I got pregnant again and last summer we welcomed our son. He’s nine months old now. Obviously, we weren’t going to tell my mother-in-law we’re parents again, but then my nightmare happened. She saw us walking with a baby stroller and realized that once more she has a grandchild.
So she tried to get in the contact with my husband. First, she reproached him for not visiting her, cried about how hard it was for her to spend all those years behind bars, that she shouldn’t have been there because she’s too old for that, how could he do this to his own mother, how could he abandon her, etc. Then she was like, “But I saw you have a new baby, I’m so glad I have a grandchild again!”
Then she went on about is it a boy or a girl, when will she be able to see them and meet them because she wants to take care of them so much. My husband told her immediately that she doesn’t have anything, this is our child, and ours only. Our son doesn’t have a grandmother, we’ll be telling him this as he grows up, and he will never ever in a million years be anywhere around her.
We’re 100% on the same page about this. The loss of our daughter still hurts and we’re going to do everything we can to protect our son from her. He doesn’t need an irresponsible grandmother who would likely endanger his life just like she did with his sister. My mother-in-law was shocked to hear this and began to wail about us being so evil and cruel towards her, that we’re going to hold that against her forever even though she paid for it and we cannot be so heartless to prevent her from seeing her grandchild.
But what was she thinking? What was she hoping for? That we’re really going to let her around our baby? That we’ll ever trust her with babysitting again? Honestly, I’m not sure if I can leave my son with any babysitter. I don’t trust babysitters anymore, because if a grandmother can be careless enough to let a child perish, who knows what an unrelated person could do.
So my husband told her firmly that she’ll have no access to the baby and he doesn’t want to talk to her either so she should do something useful with her life and leave us alone. My mother-in-law wasn’t having it. That evening, she came to our house, asking to see her grandchild again. We didn’t let her come in, obviously, and she got mad, claiming that as a grandmother, she has rights to meet her grandchild.
We told her that she lost all her rights to our children when she let our daughter drown. If a trust is broken, it cannot be repaired and there are some things that just cannot be forgiven. She escalated it from that point. She told us that she’ll go to court and she’ll demand permission to meet the baby. I’m not sure if there is such a thing but if it’s true, I highly doubt she’ll get it considering her record.
If we need to go to court and prove she’s not the type of grandmother you should let around your child, we’ll do it. If she comes back again, we’ll call the authorities. If we need to leave this country and go live somewhere else just to be away from her, we’ll do it too. Nothing’s impossible. I’m amazed at her lack of shame. She knows very well she tore apart our lives three years ago.
No parent should bury their child, but we had to because of her, and now she comes to us as if she’s the best relative ever, as if nothing ever happened.
58. Off To A Strong Start
I’m not a doctor, but the patient. When I was born, I was my dad's third child. He had two from a previous marriage. He knew something was wrong with me because of the way I was breathing. Apparently, I was taking very rapid, short breaths. When I was three months old, they noticed there really wasn't any change in that.
The first hospital that he and my mom took me to, they said that there was nothing to worry about and that babies just breathe like that sometimes. But my dad was 100% certain that they were wrong. They took me to a second hospital, and they said there was definitely something wrong with me. But they didn't have the technology to help, since it was back in 1986.
They recommended us to a third hospital, which was a couple of hours away. Finally, the third hospital took me right in and performed surgery on me that day. Turns out I had five holes in my heart. They tried to go through my rib cage, but it didn't work. They had to crack my sternum and go directly through my chest. They took my heart out of its body and patched the holes.
I'm doing wonderfully medically today, and I am forever in their debt. Not financially, though, thanks to some helpful children’s charities!
59. Full Of Hot Air
This happened a year ago, but I just remembered this horrific event and the poor victims that never fully recovered. I was set to go on a 10-hour road trip through the interior of British Columbia, and with me were two of my cousins and my uncle. However, before our 6 am start, I decided the night before to wolf down these chocolate chip Fiber One granola bars that had something like 75% of your daily fiber intake.
These things were crazy good and I ended up eating an entire 8-pack of them in one sitting. After that I went to sleep and woke up in the morning to a bloated stomach but felt fine otherwise. 45 minutes into our ride, the cramps began. My stomach grew larger and larger and I ended up needing to remove my seatbelt, and undoing the zipper on my jeans to give it more space to expand.
My cousin next to me couldn't believe what he was seeing, he said it was like the blueberry scene from Willy Wonka. I couldn't hold the gas in any longer and asked my uncle to pull over. He did and I struggled to get out of my seat as every move was agony. I waddled to the back of the car and let her rip. A thunderous roar escaped me like a jerk racing his Harley Davidson around the block on a Sunday morning.
The gas hissed out of me as my stomach grumbled, shuffled, and shuttered. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this lasted AT LEAST 15 seconds. Little did I know that I had just broken the seal. I would proceed to experience uncontrollable and obnoxiously powerful farts that lasted 10-15 seconds on average, with only a brief period of relief between them.
The fact of the matter was that I was now experiencing major flatulence every two to three minutes, and we couldn't stop the car every few minutes to escape the smell, so we decided to roll all the windows down and allow me to let loose whenever I needed. However, we had no idea that this would become a much longer ordeal than we initially thought.
Truth be told, I couldn't stop for nearly seven hours, and each one just HAD to be more epic than the last. By the time hour two rolled around, my behind was sore and aching, and my insides feeling like shards of glass were ripping through me. And the smell had become so overpowering that we had to stop at a gas station and buy as many air fresheners as we could.
I took one of the air fresheners and sat on it in the hopes that each toot will be freshened up. Instead, it just smelt like rotten eggs and pine. My cousins and uncle resorted to using Vicks around their noses to stop the smell. The pain from constant tooting brought me to tears at one point and I realized how ridiculous it must look to see a grown man crying while tooting non-stop. At hour four disaster struck.
I stopped tooting, but I was still swelling with gas. I knew I was plugged up and if I didn't do something soon, the pain was going to become unbearable. We stopped at a Coffee Shop and I ran in to use the bathroom. I gingerly sat down on the toilet and gently pushed but the pain was too much. I resorted to pushing on my stomach to help things along and suddenly I felt this wave of pressure hit me that made my rear-end cheeks break into a cold sweat and start to tingle.
Suddenly, and without warning, poop rocketed out of me like a cannonball and plastered itself to the back of the toilet bowl. With that came this tidal wave of what could only be described as peanut butter oatmeal. I could feel the muscles in my abdomen squeezing my intestines so hard that it actually hurt. It was like when you are throwing up and you can feel your stomach violently squish itself to push everything out, but instead, it was my rear-end that was throwing up.
Once everything was pushed out, it was topped off by the longest toot in my short, pathetic existence, one that I could never accurately give the length other than say well over 20 seconds, and that I could literally feel and see my stomach shrinking as it happened. I destroyed that poor coffee shop bathroom and I frequently wonder what happened to the person who wandered in after me.
From that point forward, the toots were just as frequent and long, but they felt cleaner and less restricted. It began to feel like I was airing my colon out, blowing out all the accumulated dust. My ribs and rear-end ached horribly, but I was starting to feel euphoria wash over me that I assumed was just the endorphin rush my body was giving as a way to protect my fragile mind from this ridiculous ordeal.
However, the smell permeated my clothes and the seat behind me. The family had gone through almost an entire container of Vicks, and they appeared to have survived the ordeal too but I could tell that a part of them was broken that could never be fixed. It was as though they felt gross by having to breathe in my butt-breath for seven hours, and I knew my uncle was upset that his car's interior would never smell the same again, as it already smelled like hot garbage by this point.
We eventually arrived without further incident, and we refused to speak of this event. Things were never really the same between all of us after that, and I have a feeling none of us will ever touch eggs ever again. They already ate enough of my farts, they don't need a reminder. I should have never eaten that much fiber. I had no idea it was capable of that.
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60. Gone By Chocolate
I woke up and went to the fridge to drink some chocolate syrup directly from the squeeze bottle, and pushed a bunch of air out into my lungs, instead of that delicious chocolate. I dropped to the ground in my boxers, choking nonstop for a solid 20 seconds. All I could think was how they'd find me deceased on the floor in my boxers.
61. The Wrong Kind Of Surprise
This happened Sunday night. My oldest son is in the Marines and hasn’t been home in almost a year. He took 10 days' leave so he could come visit. At first, we did not tell his mother in case the leave got denied. When it was approved, he just decided he would fly in and surprise her. I tell the wife I am going over to a friend’s to watch the game as a cover to pick him up.
I get to the airport and actually watched the second quarter of the game waiting for his plane. He gets off the plane and we talk for a bit waiting for the luggage and then he goes to change into his dress blues. Now the whole time I’ve been texting my wife saying I was bored, the game sucked, and I wasn’t going to stay much longer.
We discuss the plan on how to surprise his mother on the drive back to the house. We go back and forth from having her open the front door to see him on the porch to just having him walk into the house. We settle on him waiting a few minutes after I go inside, as I wanted to get the whole thing on video. I walk in and the house is quiet. No one in the living room.
A little odd but it is after 9 pm, maybe by some miracle my other kids are actually already in bed? Alarm bells start going off in my head when I open our bedroom door and the first thing I notice is the flickering candlelight. What I did not know was that the entire time I was gone, my wife set in motion her own plan for the evening.
She got the kids settled by letting them keep their tablets after bedtime. Took a nice hot bath, re-did her makeup, and when I told her I was on the way home lit the room with candles and put on her lingerie. So there I was, staring at my wife giving me her best come hither look, with our 21-year-old son outside not 30 feet away, waiting to surprise her.
A handful of reactions to this scene are acceptable. Pulling out your cell phone and sending a text message is not one, but I had to do it. The text told my son to stay outside. I had solved the most immediate problem of our son walking in and seeing his mother like that, but I was drawing a blank on how to fix everything else. So my brain latched onto what has to be the most stupid plan I have ever had in life.
I told my wife to get dressed because she would never believe what the neighbors were doing and she had to come to see. The look of confusion on her face was priceless. It took me five minutes to convince her to put on some sweat pants and a sweatshirt to go to the front door. Finally, after dodging all her questions and getting her to open the door, there was our son in his dress uniform.
She was ecstatic. The noise brought all the kids out and everyone was happy. Except, well, me. The wife excused herself after a few minutes and took off the lingerie under her sweats before anyone noticed. It goes without saying I did not get any action that night. Also in trying to salvage the whole surprise, I forgot to video it for my free internet points.
62. Happy Endings
I was enjoying my alone time in the shower when I slipped on some soap. I fell in an awkward position and hurt my ribs. They weren't broken, but they were bruised for a few days. I remember thinking, "Darn, if I had landed on my neck I'd be a goner or severely paralyzed". To make things worse, I still lived with my family at the time. So if I had passed, they would've seen my body with my junk still in my hand.
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63. Anatomically Incorrect
I’m a third-year medical student on my gynecology clerkship “assisting” on a laparoscopic hysterectomy. In this procedure, the abdomen is pressurized while the surgeon inserts several instruments to remove the uterus. If you can imagine, maintaining pressure in the abdomen after you remove the uterus is difficult because, you know, air just freely escapes.
As this was my first laparoscopic surgery, I soon found out that my role was to place a rubber stopper up there to prevent air from escaping. Like many of you, I had no idea this role even existed, but I quickly accepted my new job as sealer. I approached from the bottom of the table and stuck my hands underneath the sterile drapes that covered the legs.
I placed the rubber ball in and stood there trying not to make eye contact with anyone in the room. After several minutes, the pressure in the abdomen continued to decrease. The attending physician, frustrated at this point, walked around next to me, ripped the drape in half to reveal the pelvic area, and said, “Do you know where the intimate girl part is? Get that stopper out of her rear-end!”
Thank you for reading. I’ll go bury myself now.
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64. Lost Connection
I was in my junior year of high school. I woke up at 6 AM with a bladder ready to burst. The night before I got plastered out of my mind. The thing was, my bedroom was upstairs and across the house from the only working bathroom. I knew I wouldn't make it in time, and on top of that, a journey of that length would make it impossible for me to fall back asleep.
But my stupid half-asleep teenage self had a plan. The window in my room led out to a roof I could pee off of, so in my jelly-brained haze, I ran to the window. However, when I was climbing out, I slammed my foot into the wall. It hurt like mad, but all I could think about was peeing. I did what I had to do. The sweet relief quickly drowned the pain out.
I came back inside and promptly went to bed. I didn't even think to look at my foot, but later when I woke up again, I realized that it had bled all night and my big toenail was sorta half disconnected. I could pull it off the bed of my toe a little bit, but it couldn't fully disconnect yet. It was like a wiggly tooth.
Since I couldn't pull it off, I hoped it would reattach. For a while, I bandaged it every day hoping that would give it time to heal. At night when I would check on it, it would always pull slightly farther off the toe, but still never quite enough. After a few agonizing months, I stopped using the bandage. It was clear it wasn't going to reattach.
One fateful day I was at the beach, running barefoot through some wet sand. My legs bore deep into it, sometimes sinking at least eight or so inches. At some point or another, while enjoying the sun, the toenail had finally decided to part ways with my foot and me. I noticed after coming back to the dry beach that it was gone. Part of me felt an overwhelming relief, but part of me wondered if it would even grow back. Sure enough, it took a year but it did.
65. Spelling It Out
One of my favorite video game series of all time is the Yakuza series. The narrative, gameplay, everything about it I absolutely love. I bought Yakuza 0 a few days back, as it is the only game in the series I have not yet played. I bought it off the PSN Store for $9.99! I'm absolutely in love with it. So yesterday I was having a conversation with one of my online gaming friends.
I was telling him all about the game, how much I loved it, etc. Well, he expressed interest in wanting to play it too! Money is pretty tight for him, so I offered to PayPal him the money to get it. He did his usual polite, "Oh no it's fine I'm sure I have some extra money I can use to get it". Well, I PayPal'd him the money for the game plus a little extra for food or whatever he wanted.
PayPal gives you the option to send a message along with the money. Me, in my infinite wisdom, sent the message "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY YAKUZA MONEY". Apparently, when sending money to someone online, using the name of a syndicate is not the best thing to do. PayPal does not send the money and tells me my payment is pending while it undergoes an investigation, and that the process will take no more than 72 hours.
Fast forward to tonight, I get an email from PayPal saying that they have now restricted my access to my account and that I have to go through steps to resolve the process. I follow their link, and there is the payment in question. In the text box provided, I then have to explain to them the context of the message and that the money is for a game called Yakuza 0, and that I, a US Citizen who does not have a passport and has never been out of the country, am not a member of the Japanese Yakuza.
I am now waiting for PayPal to review my written statement and hopefully, this is all resolved.
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66. Push Up Pop Out
I ran down a hallway, jumped, and grabbed my Iron Man pull-up bar. I used my momentum and touched the ceiling with my feet. It was super cool. I went to do it again, but beforehand, I told my sister, “HEY CHECK THIS OUT!” I then proceeded as normal. My feet touched, but the bar popped off the door frame. I fell upside down on three stairs.
67. NOT Cool Beans
This is a true thing that happened and is happening, and now there is more to it because I actually got broken up with over it. With all that is going on, my girlfriend and I had stocked up on supplies, including some canned goods. I ordered a few weeks ago 30 cans of beans. 10 are black beans, 10 are kidney beans, and 10 are pink beans.
Also, I ordered 15 cans of chickpeas. I thought this is a reasonable amount of beans and chickpeas to have every now and then and would last for quite some time. However earlier this week, I opened the cabinet because I wanted to make a vegetarian chili using two cans of beans, but all of the beans were gone. What the heck? I asked my girlfriend and she told me she buried all of the beans in the woods.
At first I thought she was joking, but she explained, no, she had buried the beans in the woods. What? I asked her to explain and she told me she was afraid that "if things get bad" we might have to worry about "looters or whatever" and that the beans would be in danger. I said I thought this was completely ridiculous and unlikely. She became angry at me and said she "is protecting our beans".
According to her logic, the beans are safely buried in the woods behind our apartment complex, and if we ever need some beans she will go to the "stash" and dig up a can or two, but would prefer if we save them all for "if things get worse". I said why only bury the beans, why not bury our more valuable items? She said the canned food was most valuable for long-term means, and that since we get fresh food in our online grocery deliveries, it would make sense to continue to stockpile beans.
She intends to go bury more beans in the woods every week. This was too insane for me and I got very upset. I demanded to know where the beans were buried, and she refused to tell me. She said if I knew she was afraid I'd dig them up, I said darn right I would. She said, "I will never jeopardize the beans". The following day I tried to put my foot down.
I'm not usually a foot downer but there are rare issues where compromise is out of the question, and I foolishly decided this was one of those issues. I demanded to know where the beans were buried and I told her if she was going to bury beans I paid for in the woods that I would move out. We fought about it and I kept insisting. In hindsight, I should have just let it go and created my own hidden stash of beans in the apartment.
This would have given her time to maybe cool down about this bean burying scenario, but I blew it all out of proportion. Yeah, it's weird to bury beans in the woods but why did I have to press it? What's the harm at the end of the day? In the grand scheme of things? But I kept demanding her to take me to the beans, or at least draw a map or something, and finally, she BROKE UP WITH ME.
Over the beans. I have lost the love of my life because I couldn't let the beans go. I am in disbelief. She moved out. Not only am I heartbroken but I am now paying full rent instead of 50% which is a huge financial issue for me.
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68. And The “Eyes” Have It
I was a junior doctor working in the neurosurgery department back in 2008. One of the senior registrars I worked with told me his most unfortunate moment in the operating room. In order to have a patient’s head stabilized for surgery, he used a frame that had a set of three spikes that held the head in place. Due to the angle he needed to approach from, this required the patient to be face down.
As he was placing the head of the anesthetized patient onto the frame, the unimaginable happened—the head slipped and his eye landed on to the spike, perforating the eyeball. Panicking and thinking that his career was now over, he then started poking at the eyeball, trying to work out what was what until the anesthetist told him to stop.
They then called the ophthalmologist who came to tidy up what was now a completely ruined eye. After the surgery, he went to explain to the patient what had happened. Understandably fearing the worst—anger, distress, and tears—he received the response of, "That's OK, I was blind in that eye anyway!" from the patient.
Luckiest guy ever.
69. Halloween Horror
My wife told me I could use a normal blade to carve a pumpkin and that I didn't need a carving kit. I was used to using a carving kit. I was carving the first pumpkin, and three cuts in, I cut my finger to the bone. I had 4-year-old kids watching me as I horrifically bled all over the place. It was a special Halloween indeed. It was dumb and I’m never listening to her again.
70. A Student’s Worst Nightmare
To start the semester, I ended up missing the first week of school because I was on a last-minute trip with my friends. It was completely unplanned and actually, a few of my friends who had graduated helped chip in to buy my ticket since I technically couldn't afford to go. Anyway, I came into class a week late and it is scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7-8:15 pm.
On both those days, I have classes all day until 2 pm, so I usually go home to eat and grab a snooze before the night class. So my first Tuesday home I ended up oversleeping and turning up to class five minutes late. As part of my degree, I have to take microeconomics which all I knew about it previously was that it's about the economy and money.
When I get to class, they're talking about supply and demand curves shifting so I just take a spot in the back, not thinking twice. This goes on for 3.5 weeks. I came to class. Took notes. Then did the weekly assignments. On the course syllabus, it had a date for the midterm, which is February 1st. So the class before the exam, January 30th, I decided to stick around after class and ask some questions.
Now I was doing all the assignments and thought the course material was relevant but it was ALL theory-based while the class was heavily math-based. I understood what was going on but there was obviously some disconnect. I explained my concerns about the midterm to the professor and the conversation went like this. Prof: "What do you mean theory? All the assignments are filled with math. Are you using launchpad?"
Me: "No the assignments are online. Like the website we bought the textbook from. What’s launchpad?" Prof: "Pardon? I don't have a textbook for this course". Me: "It literally says in the syllabus, look!" Shows syllabus Prof: "Wait, what class are you supposed to be in?" Me: "What do you mean...? This is ECON 202 right?" Prof starts laughing... Prof: "Haha this is ECON 301, you have to take 202 before you take my class. This is a new one, I've never experienced this before".
Me: "Well this is awkward. I better go see my actual teacher and explain". I then just grabbed my stuff real quick and sprinted through campus to go explain the situation to the other guy. I caught him just as he was leaving the lecture and explained my predicament. I even showed him my ECON 301 notes to prove I couldn't make this up.
He just laughed and said the same thing, "This is a new one for me". Turns out all the assignments for both classes were due the same day. Same with the midterms. They were relevant because it was obviously a level above what I was supposed to be doing and the only thing I got wrong was the building code. They were both classroom 112, just different buildings.
So basically, I just spent the last two nights forgetting everything from this class all month and learning the real material. Wish me luck!
71. Poolside Pain
When I was 12, I got in an argument with my dad at a pool. The emotional preteen that I was, I stomped my foot down in anger. Then the pain hit. There was a gap between the cement and where the pool railing was attached to it. When I slammed my foot down my big toe was forced into the gap. The nail on my big toe had ripped completely from the front and was hanging on by a thread towards the cuticle. My toenail has never grown the same since.
72. A Modern Romeo And Juliet
I am currently stuck in my girlfriend’s room while she and her family are having dinner downstairs. I haven't eaten since morning nor showered and I need to take a poop. Back story to this morning, I haven't seen my girlfriend for over a month plus. I woke up to my girlfriend's call around 11 am saying that her parents went out to get something.
I thought okay I'll come over, return her camera I borrowed, and maybe we can sit in my car around her neighborhood and hang out awhile. It was a little rushed as her parents just left her house as I left mine. I'm about 20 minutes away from her place. She assured me her parents will be out for at least an hour and a half as they need to get lunch.
I drove as fast as I could and picked her up from the front of the house and we drove to the park nearby to hang out. After a couple of minutes, I ask if she brought some water as I asked her about it before I came and she said no. She said why don't you come in and take some water since her parents will still be far away. I said yes (obviously) and went in, drank water, and we sat on the couch for a while to cuddle.
I was a little paranoid but I haven't seen her in a long time so I needed it. About 10 minutes in, we hear a car outside her house—and it was her parents. They were only out for 40 minutes. We started to panic. Luckily, I parked away from her house and took my slippers in. I contemplated just owning up and lying that I needed to use the toilet but her mom is really difficult.
She would assume my girlfriend was lying and get her trouble and I haven't even met her parents officially as her boyfriend yet. If you are from an Asian family or have heard of Asian parents being strict about relationships, it's true. We both ran up to her room and I hid behind her door. Mind you, her room is really small. It’s about the size of two single beds.
I can't hide under the bed as she has to keep her door open and you can see straight under her bed from the stairs. The only place possible is behind her door. I stood there frozen as she went down to greet her parents. I could hear them coming in as I hugged the wall as tightly as I could. She came back up freaking out, but I said it's okay. Let's just try to formulate a plan.
She said okay and she went down to eat with them first. I then had to stay as silent a possible with no fan or air-conditioning so I sweated my behind off. At 1 pm, she comes back up and we try to listen to whether her parents are coming up or not. They usually sit downstairs after lunch and nap, which they did. This gave me a little bit of relief as I could sit down on the floor.
The space in between the door and her table is super tiny, which is uncomfortable, but I'm not complaining. 2 pm. Her dad comes up to shower and her door is right next to the bath area. I can hear the water rushing. But good news, my girlfriend is in the room doing her work so she can look out. It’s weird as I'm just standing up behind the door and looking at her look back at me.
After his shower, her dad leaves to go to his store, which leaves her mom downstairs. She gets on a long phone call, which gives me a bit of room to relax. My girlfriend and I make out a bit to calm our nerves and I gotta say it did help. For the next three hours, her mom stays downstairs and we try to formulate a plan, but everything involves the timing of her parents which is impossible.
Can't jump out the window cause it's grilled and she doesn't have the key...Around 5:30 pm-ish, her dad comes home and almost COMES INTO HER ROOM. He asks her to print something and she quickly walks to her door to stop him from coming in. I hear his voice right outside the door. Thankfully, he walks away and goes down to watch TV.
And I swear to god the universe wants us to suffer because right after that her mom comes upstairs and hangs about the common area. My girlfriend had recorded a zoom meeting so she tells her mom she has a meeting and plays it, closing the door giving my legs much needed rest and I sit. 7 pm, her mom calls her from downstairs that it's time to eat.
And that's where we are at now. It’s currently 9 pm at this sentence and I can hear her family talking to each other. She has to turn off the lights and fan and air-conditioning so I'm freaking drenched in my sweat in the dark. I'm sitting down but I've got pins and needles in my feet now. I would stand up but because the area is so tight, I don't want to risk any noise.
Oh, remember how I haven't eaten and need to poop. That's attacking now. My stomach is growling. I'm so scared to be caught because my parents are gonna slaughter me, too. My girlfriend and I will discuss our plans for me to escape when she comes up...
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73. Line Of Sight
This was one of the more bizarre things I've witnessed in an OR. So, the surgeon brought in a bad pair of glasses. Here we are, total hip replacement, and the surgeon is going to town with what I lovingly call the human grater, which is a doohickey to make sure the new hip socket will fit in. Picture a cheese grater wrapped around a golf ball on the end of a power drill. It's not pleasant.
Anyway. Dude's grinding away at the guy’s hip and suddenly yelps in surprise and stops, backing quickly away from the table. We're all like, what the heck? Well, his glasses spontaneously broke in half. They were the type that didn't have rims, just lenses with a bar across the nose and bars for the ears. So the metal crossing the nose snapped at the screw.
The surgeon quickly starts stripping off his gown, the rest of his equipment, and leaves the room. Comes back with a roll of tape. Him and the circulating nurse can't get the glasses fixed, so he just holds them to his face and has her run the tape around his head a few times. Then he suits up again and goes back to acting like nothing happened.
All in all, it only added like 10 minutes to the surgery time, at least that I could catch directly. I hadn't been with that surgeon before, but I can't imagine that was his best performance after the glasses broke, seeing how they were now taped across his eyes at weird angles. But yeah, don't buy $5 readers for the freaking operating room.
74. Freight Train Fumble
There was a freight train that ran on the tracks behind my house. My brother thought it would be cool to try and jump on it like in the movies, so I went ahead and tried. I waited for the train. I went up close and tried to run it down as the last car passed. That was a no-go. The train was going too fast to try and catch the last car.
So we waited for the next train. This time, I ran next to the train as the cars were passing and grabbed a ladder to get onto a car. I was successful. I jumped off and tried again. This time when I jumped off, I was facing the wrong way. I slammed my back straight into the ground and ended up with a three-inch scar on my back.
75. A Slip Of The Tongue
I’m currently sitting on the toilet playing chess because I don’t want to show my face until it loses three shades of red...I was going through some project details with one of the engineers at my work before she left to go to a job site. We wrap up, she gets up to leave, and I attempt to say, “go spread your wings". But right as the word “go” comes out of my mouth, my brain decides now would be a terrific time to switch things up.
I go to say “go stretch your legs”...And before I knew it I was having an out-of-body experience watching myself tell her to “go spread your legs". I will never forget the look on her face. I immediately told her what the heck brain just did for that combination of words to come out of my mouth as she is on her way to a worksite full of men.
Thankfully she believed me (seemingly) and laughed it off. Doesn’t make it any less embarrassing, unfortunately.
76. High Flyer
When I was in 4th grade, I was OBSESSED with riding my bike. I’d wake up at 6 AM and just go. The rule was, every 10 laps around the block I had to run to the front door and check-in. For Christmas, I got a speedometer for it. One day I was blasting down this hill at 30 km/h (18 mph.) It was the fastest I had ever gone as a nine-year-old. I was flying.
I then realized I had a huge turn coming up. If I went straight, I would fly into this canyon, and thus into oblivion. If I turned, I would scrape my knee and I knew that wasn’t a cool feeling. So I decided to run right into a stop sign. I got a severe concussion and broke my arm. The cherry on the top was the hot neighborhood boys who were two years older heard the bang and came to investigate.
They found me all crumpled up. They were only in the 5th grade and instantly knew I was in trouble. They made a splint for me out of wood they found and carried me home. They even wheeled my broken bike home. When I got to the hospital and was explaining everything, I realized one simple thing. I could have used the brakes.
77. Kind To Be Cruel
My dad grew up with his family slamming him for not being his father's biological son. The rumor was that grandma had an affair with a man named "Tillery" when she got pregnant with my father. My grandparents always denied it, but the rumors have always hung around my dad. Grandpa was a Native American man, grandma was white, and dad was their only supposedly biological child; his siblings were adopted.
My dad was blonde as a kid but got darker as he's aged, and he looks like grandpa, so because we all believed 100% that he was biologically grandpa's son, we decided to finally set his fears aside and prove it with a DNA kit for his 61st birthday. The kit came back today after nervously waiting several weeks, and there's a lot of matched relatives, with the name "Tillery". No native American DNA results at all, no one with his father’s family's name.
He's crushed and I feel awful. This has to be the worst thing I've ever done to my dad.
78. Back To Basics
My mother was having intense spine surgery, and her idiot surgeon apparently couldn’t do math correctly, because he left two sponges inside of her, which meant she’d have to have an entire other surgery again to remove them. My mom was 20+ years sober, so she refused most of the pain medications after her first surgery.
When the hospital realized and had to confess they messed up, she had a mental breakdown over facing all that pain again. She got a lawyer and they settled ASAP for about $50K. My mom thought that was fair, but my godfather is a retired federal prosecutor and said it would have been $100K easy with another attorney. This happened about 15 years ago.
My mother has a master's in biology and knows, well, stuff happens. It's a testament to her character that she decided the settlement was fair for an accident. Yet another example of how extraordinary my mom is and how under-appreciated this retired high school biology teacher remains. I lover her so much, and I'm so glad she's OK.
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79. Sweet Disaster
I went on a blind date with a sweet guy that my friends all said was perfect for me. We order a small snack for our coffee and as it's arriving at the table and we're chatting, he pulls out his Nokia phone. Trying to make a lighthearted joke, I say, "MAN, that has got to be the oldest phone I've seen in a while". I really dug it in, trying to break that awkward first date wall. Well, it turns out that it was not a Nokia, it was something much more embarrassing. It was his insulin pump.
80. I Should Have Just Gone To School
My mom would randomly ask me if I wanted to stay home from school. I think mostly she just wanted someone to hang out out with at home. Well, I was probably about 12 when this happened. I woke up and she asked if I wanted to stay home. I was stoked and of course, said yes. I got back into my pajamas and wrapped myself up in a blanket.
I went and grabbed a freezy popsicle out of the freezer for breakfast and went to sit down. I was so excited about doing nothing all day, I jumped into position onto the couch and somehow managed to jab my eye with the freezy. I didn’t want to bother my mom at the time, so I pretended I was fine. When my mom woke up, she saw my eye.
It was all red and swollen and decided to take me to the doctor. I had a gnarly scratch across my eyeball. It went across the cornea or something like that. I just needed some eye drops to fix it, but my mom was probably more embarrassed about the story than me. We laugh about it now, but I still have no idea what I was thinking at the time.
81. Shower
This morning I woke up with my girlfriend after a night of drinking together. I say good morning to her and her response was, “Do you remember what happened last night?” And I’m like, “Oh yeah that was such a fun night!” Her answer changed my mood instantly. She’s like, “Well, I’m sure you don’t remember peeing on me then".
I am just so taken aback by this. I thought maybe I had peed the bed or something, but no, it was worse. Apparently, and I have no recollection of this at all, she got up to go use the bathroom and like a minute later I stumble in there and she’s sitting on the toilet and I just pee like she wasn’t even there. Obviously, this is a surprise to her, I mean who expects that!?
But she said that she just took care of me and got me back to bed. Luckily she’s really great and we can just laugh about it. What a way to wake up, though.
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82. That Poor Kid
I suppose I have one for this as a resident doctor. It was a horrible ordeal to witness. We saw a kid in the emergency room for difficulty walking. He had been slowly losing the ability to walk over months, and also had random unexplained projectile vomiting episodes. Looking at his records, he had seen his doctor several times and the doctor had X-rayed one hip, then the other hip, then gave some Zofran.
We find out through the exam that he is blatantly ataxic. He had bad coordination and couldn't even stand up. He failed all our bedside neurological examinations for cerebellum function. It was obvious to me, and I'm not even that good at this yet. So, we did a CT scan. And sure enough, there was a big huge tumor in his cerebellum. It was obstructing fluid drainage in his brain too, raising his intracranial pressure and causing vomiting.
We had to call in the neurosurgeons overnight for an emergency drain, and he went to the ICU. Later, he had more surgery for the tumor. My supervisor got pretty emotional about it actually. The kid had really declined further over the last few days before his parents brought him to see us, which is what initially prompted the visit. So he looked really bad for us, though I'm not sure what he looked like before.
To any med students reading this: 1. Do an exam. 2. It's okay to cry sometimes.
83. Say Hello To My Little Friend
Yesterday, I got onto a subway train around rush hour so it was quite packed. I squeeze in with my brother and find a spot to stand. I notice a little dude (about six or seven years old) in the seat next to where I'm standing squish up against his mother to make room for me. He looks up and smiles, his eyes inviting me to sit down next to him.
As a larger human, 6'3" and almost 200 lbs, the tiny half a seat that he had opened up wouldn't quite fit me. Still, I couldn't let his kindness go unnoticed so I decided to half-cheek it, to be sure he understood what he did was really nice. As I sat down, I thanked him for making room and told him I really appreciated the gesture. We high-fived, and in hindsight, I should have ended it there.
I noticed he had his backpack with him so I asked how school was that day. He told me it was just all right. Then I asked the fatal question. "Do you have a lot of homework over the weekend?" He let me, the stranger, know he had a big math packet that he had to get done. Unfortunately for him, his mother was listening to our conversation.
Her eyes lit up when he told me about the packet. She yelled "Oooo boy!! You told me you finished that yesterday! Guess who doesn't get to play his video games this weekend?! You, ya little liar!!!" His head sunk into his chest, as did mine right along with him. A few stops later his mom dragged him off the train by his little jacket.
He looked back at me as they departed, a look that said "Bro, I thought we were cool, how could you do me like that???" His look of betrayal is going to haunt me for days. Hang in there little buddy! One weekend may seem like an eternity at your age, but time flies!
84. An Idaho Mountain
When I was in high school, me and a few friends all lied to our parents and told them we were spending the night at each other's houses. What we had really done was backpacked up a snowy Idaho mountain in the middle of winter without telling anyone where we were going. We were all fairly inexperienced in winter backpacking.
The friend in charge of bringing food brought chicken he'd cooked at home so we could eat it cold in case we couldn't start a fire. Luckily, I'd brought a can of chili and didn't partake in the chicken. I woke up the following morning to a fresh foot of snow and my friends vomiting out of the tent. We'd left our boots outside and they were completely frozen through, the shoe laces of my boot were pointing up and out and had zero bend.
Me and one other friend weren’t sick and had to pack up the tent; the most freezing cold work I've ever done. I gave one of my sick friends my gloves because he couldn't find his. We were about three miles into the hike and the trail we’d taken in was totally covered. None of us were familiar with it enough to know it by memory.
I took all but one pack and ran down trail to the car, making my best guess on which way to turn and marking those choices with ski poles. Got to the car, started it up to get it warm and to check if we had cell reception, we didn't. And then I ran back up trail to where they were and we carried them back to the car.
I got home and felt like total garbage. My entire body was on fire from the cold and the soreness. I felt freezing to my bones and when I got home, I started puking and was pastel white and sickly looking. My dad was mad at me for being "hungover" and I opted for that punishment rather than the insane fury it would have caused if he knew why I was actually in my condition.
85. Meet The Parents
I was on my first date with a lovely girl named Michelle. I took her to what people my age consider a pretty nice restaurant for a date. She didn't know where we were going ahead of time. A few minutes after we ordered, her face turned bright red and she told me to hide. I was confused, and about to ask why, when an older couple approached our table and introduced themselves as Michelle's parents.
After some brief, uncomfortable small-talk, her father, who had already casually mentioned twice that he was an officer, each time placing his hand where his holster would be, asked me a question I didn't know people still asked. "What are your intentions with my daughter?" For the record, my intentions were simply to get to know her and maybe start a relationship with her.
Unfortunately, the question caught me off-guard and I tend to (read: unfailingly) use humor as a defense mechanism. So I replied: "I don't know, officer. I have Intention Deficit Disorder". Michelle and her mother both burst into laughter, but her father was not amused. He dragged my date away, never to be heard from (by me) again.
86. It’s A Slippery Slope
I tried to surf on a children's sled down a very slight slope in winter. I quickly realized I was going to fall off and caught myself with my feet in an awkward manner. I broke my foot and had to have crutches for weeks thereafter. I had an operation scheduled for a month later. It was funny in hindsight, but not so fun to wear crutches during my recovery. My friends still tease me about it sometimes.
87. What Could Have Been
I used to be acquainted with another girl my age; we were both about 17 at the time. It was a typical friend-of-a-friend situation. I am queer and thought she was really cute, but never once thought that she could possibly be into girls as well, least of all me. My self-esteem was extremely low around that age and I did all kinds of mental gymnastics to explain away all of her flirting.
I once saw her at the grocery store and she became really shy and didn't approach me (she was very shy in general) but later that day sent me a message saying something like, "I saw you at the grocery store today, you looked cute". But the absolute boldest move I completely ignored was Valentine's day when we hung out as a group with our friends and she walked over to me and gifted me a hint so broad, I can't explain how the wrapper didn't burst.
She had made me handmade heart-shaped chocolates and put them in a small transparent gift bag. There was only one other thing in the gift bag, the only thing in the universe that could be gayer than heart-shaped chocolate from one gal to another: a little paper card with some kind words on it, and printed on the other side was a picture (a manga panel from the looks of it) of two girls holding hands.
And my only thought was: "Wow, what a nice girl! I have to be really careful not to develop a huge crush on her since she couldn't possibly be into me! She probably felt bad for me on Valentine's day because I'm so single and unfortunate-looking. Those straight girls really lead you on without meaning to!" Today I looked back on this situation with horrified realization, as Facebook told me she got married recently. To a woman.
88. Rush Order
At the company where I worked, there was a new trading assistant named Eli on the floor who thoroughly believed he was The Guy. He was going to take the world by storm and decided he was next in line to make partner. Only first, he was assigned the task of sending in an option exercise one Friday afternoon in order to capture a particularly large special dividend.
Poor Eli knew how to do it, but he was in a bit of a rush. He sent the fax through to the broker and then left before getting the confirmation. The fax failed and the options weren't exercised, costing the firm about $150,000. Poor Eli was met by a very angry head trader at the door on Monday morning and he got his walking papers. Poor Eli.
89. The Dog Did It
My big goofy golden retriever was an absolute liability when she was younger and we went through a bad period where she kept unintentionally injuring me. One time I was walking her and stopped to look at the scenery. She must have seen something she wanted in the distance and suddenly tried to bolt towards it. Unfortunately, I had her leash draped casually around my ring finger and she broke it pretty badly.
I had to attend weekly hand therapy for five months and wasn't able to work for ages because I was wearing a splint and needed my hands for my job. It finally healed. I gleefully said goodbye to my hand therapist and was excited to get back to normal. The next week I took my dog to my parents’ house for a visit. They had three labs, and for some reason, they started fighting.
My dog wanted to jump in so I struggled to hold her back while my parents' dogs were separated. The result was that I re-broke my newly healed finger AND broke my index, on the same hand. I had to go back to hand therapy. This time it was way worse because almost my whole hand was out of action, so it was a struggle to even drive etc. Yet the worst was yet to come.
The very next day my alarm went off and my dog got super excited because she knew this meant I was going to get up soon. She did a running jump onto the bed to say hello, but overshot a bit and landed on my face. She, unfortunately, managed to break my nose. It was really hard to breathe out of it for months. I’m pretty sure people thought I was in a violent domestic relationship or something because “my dog did it” sounded so ridiculous.
90. More Than He Bargained For
So my dad has had this didgeridoo in the house since he visited his sister in Australia 10+ years ago. My parents wanted to go out for a walk but I decided I’d eaten too much cheese and couldn’t be bothered. While they were out, the Internet went down so I was sort of wandering around, looking for something to do when I spotted the didg.
I thought to myself, in all these years I’ve never actually tried to play it. It’s more of a decoration and I barely take it in when I see it, but maybe it’s time. I pick it up and put it to my lips. I felt like I knew what I was doing and that it was similar to playing a trumpet and I wanted to play a long, loud note. I take a sharp inhale and immediately feel something hit the back of my throat.
I splutter really hard and a small white globular thing comes flying out and hits the floor. At first, I thought it was saliva and ignored it as I had a weird sensation in my throat and mouth. It felt like tingling to start with but grew into more of a tickle on the inside of my cheeks and a bit on my gums. I glance down at the white stuff on the floor…and see several baby spiders crawling out of it and in all directions.
The second I clock what’s happened I feel something tickling my top lip and knock my mouth with my hand. I have a squished spider on my lip and instantly go into panic mode. I run into the bathroom and eject repeatedly into the sink to see crushed spider bodies and some severed legs, some of which are still attached to parts of the body and are trying to drag themselves away from the drain.
I purge several times and then frantically swill my mouth out with water. I don’t think my mouth will ever feel normal again.
91. Coming In Wrong And Strong
My mom had to have a mastectomy on her left chest. They were getting her ready and came in saying, “Ok, so we’re going to remove the right one". Then we were like, “Uh no, the left". The nurse goes “Oh, hold on” and cue 15 minutes of endless right, both, left suggestions and several different nurses coming through. Finally the surgeon comes and is like “left". But that wasn't all.
The same surgeon told her the tubes they put in for drainage would be removed by the time she could go to work in a month. But just a day after the surgery, a resident came in toward the end of the day and told her he was there to take the tubes out. She said, no the surgeon said it would be a month. He pressured her and took them out. I mean, these had been stitched to hold them in place.
The next day, she is in so much pain and her chest is swollen and hard. They call the surgeon and he comes in without the resident who had been following him around. He takes one look at her and goes beet red in the face. He’s so angry. Yep, they definitely weren't supposed to take those tubes out, and now my mom is in big trouble.
He has to help drain her fluids himself, because they can’t go back and re-insert the tubes anymore thanks to the resident. He also had his resident apologize and laid into him for the mistake, but that didn't save my mom from a month of manual drainage.
92. Daddy’s Little Girl
I'm never living this down. It's really destroyed me on an emotional and spiritual level. The first thing you should know is that I am NOT a flirty, passionate person. I barely ever have “urges,” I rarely think about anything like that, my libido is comparable to that of a fence post’s, etc. However, I started noticing that I was becoming increasingly bitter towards things like that.
So I decided, “You know what, I'm going to try and explore that side of me, maybe bring it out a little more!” And so, I did... it. I bought two toys. Nothing extravagant, just basic, cheap little items, plus a bottle of lubricant because I work smart, not hard. Things SHOULD be fine, I think to myself. I'll order them and they'll come in a week or so.
No one's expecting any packages then, so there will be no issues and they'll hand it right off to me, none the wiser! And then that DIDN'T happen, can you believe it? No, what actually happened was worse. It also proved to me that my dad is a monstrous, monstrous man who lives to cause me pain. Unbeknownst to me, I was still under my trial of Amazon Prime.
I'd forgotten to cancel it after buying a Vulpix plush, sue me. Then the package shipped and arrived...the next day. Even this should have been fine, because no one in my family opens packages that aren't theirs except one little thing: MY package came in with my MOM’S packages. I didn't realize they were coming in that day, so I was still curled up in bed watching TV.
When I heard the delivery truck pull up, I thought, “oh cool” and then went back to my show. It just so happened that my mom ordered a lot of different parts for her car, and then she assumed the box was one of hers as well without checking the label since I hadn't mentioned ordering anything to her (obviously). According to my mom, she opened it, thought, oh, *my dad* must have bought something.
And then...she checked the label. And saw my name. Did she do the respectable thing and tape it back up with clear tape like nothing happened? Did she just hand it to me and walk away silently? No, she went to my dad. Because of course she did. According to my mom, she walked in, said, “Our daughter ordered bedroom toys and I don't know how to handle it".
My dad shot up in bed with horror. A moment later, he giggled and jumped out of bed, taking the box from her and saying, “I want to give it to her!” He walks into my room. I say hey to him and sit up to look at him. He tilts the box towards me to show its contents, and then we stare at each other in silence for several seconds before he sets it down next to me with the biggest grin on his face, and then calmly walks off.
I can't look my parents in the face anymore. I might actually have to move out because my dad won't stop making jokes.
93. Musical Urinals
We went to a movie. During the movie, she got up to go to the bathroom. After she left, I thought I could run to the bathroom myself, and be back before her (for some reason, I thought it would be rude to leave her alone). When I came back to our seats, she was already there but I didn't give it much thought.
I hung out at her place for a bit afterward, gave her a kiss goodnight, and went home thinking that I just had a pretty nice date. A week later, after she wouldn't return any of my calls, I asked our mutual friend who introduced us what the deal was. Turns out that when I went to the bathroom, I accidentally walked into the women's room.
I peed in the stall next to her, and she recognized the boots I was wearing. She was totally freaked out. When I finally got a hold of her and tried to explain myself, she told me she was moving to Turkey to get back together with her ex-boyfriend.
94. The City Of Dates
I had just moved to San Francisco from college and started talking to this guy on Tinder who was in his late 30s/early 40s. I hadn’t had much luck with older dates previously but I decided to be more open-minded. We got cocktails and on the date, I acted as pleasant and engaged as I could even though there was not much chemistry.
After one drink we decided to part ways, and he offered me a ride home. Once I got home, I received a message that was paragraphs long from him! He really wanted to leave the whole time but stayed to pay for my drink and give me a ride home. He also let me know I was overweight, unattractive and I had acne that was disgusting.
My heart sank after this unprompted and completely unnecessary message. I immediately deleted it and blocked him but the words still replayed in my head. Even now I still think about it, and it makes me sad that I dimmed my light because some guy decided to be awful.
95. The Bad Husband
I lost respect for this friend when it came out that he was cheating on his disabled and housebound wife. But that was just the beginning of the nightmare. She managed the finances and managed the electronic toll-road bill that showed he was in the wrong state when he was said he was at work. When she confronted him, he denied it until she then pulled out the phone bill with his texts and calls to a number in the general area of the state he had been in.
He then divorced her and tried to screw her out of her share of his Navy pension and insurance. They were married for longer than his time in the service (25 years) and was she entitled to half of it. He went out of his way to hurt her. She passed less than a year later in a nursing home while he was moving in with a completely different woman than the one he originally cheated on his wife with.
Real classy guy. He showed up to the first wife’s funeral with #2. He also claimed to go out "whaling" while in the Navy—he and his fellow sailors would apparently search out and bed the largest lady they could while on shore leave. The winner who took home the biggest got bragging rights until the next round of leave. Horrific.
96. Checking In
A foxy older woman executive happened to be walking by the front of my office, and I recognized her as a contact for my regional president. So, I wanted to be polite and said, “Can I take your clothes off,” instead of, “Can I take your coat". I turned beet red and started stammering and apologizing immediately. I am so glad that she laughed and literally patted my head, teased me, and said, “Maybe if you were my age or older, I’d give you a shot".
97. Me And My Big Mouth
This happened a couple of weeks ago. So I sometimes drive for rideshare companies to make extra cash and keep me off of the couch. I live in a touristy area that booms during summer months and vacation rental homes are common. So common that I sometimes do pick-ups and drop-offs at the same homes for different people week to week and family/friend groups of people renting the homes are the norm.
One particular day, I dropped a guy off at a beautiful home near the beach that I had just picked a guy up from just an hour or two prior. So as we arrive I mention this to the rider: “Hey, I just picked one of your buddies up from here about an hour ago". Rider: “No, must be the wrong house". Me: “Nope, he walked right out of that side door. I dropped him off at a bar. His girlfriend is still in there though, she stayed behind".
I had seen her kiss him goodbye at the door but didn't mention this to the rider. “You guys having a vacation?” Rider: “This is a family-owned home, it's been in my family for years and we don't rent it out. Nobody lives here but my wife and I and I've been in New York for work for the past four days". Awkward silence as we both come to the realization.
He got out and I drove away, scolding myself for having such a big mouth.
98. Missing Persons Report
For background, I usually make the bed in the mornings, but I didn't yesterday morning because I was running late. I went to see my dad yesterday, but my wife wasn't feeling well so she stayed home. I got back at around 8:30 and couldn't find her anywhere. I checked the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, everywhere, and I just couldn't find her.
Her wallet was there so I figured she just went out for a walk, which is normal since we live in a big city that's active into the night. I started getting worried at around 9:30 because she also wasn't answering her phone. I called a few of her friends and asked if they'd seen her, but none had. I called her parents and asked them if they knew where she was, which led to them freaking out because no one could find her.
My father-in-law told me to track her phone, so I went into her Apple account and it told me that her phone was in our apartment. I turn on the find my iPhone sound and start running through the apartment thinking I should call the authorities. I hear the sound coming from our bedroom, so I go in and start tearing the room up…when suddenly my wife pops up from the bed and asks me what the heck I'm doing.
Turns out the small lump that I thought was just a pile of blankets since I didn't make the bed that morning was actually my wife, who went to sleep early because she didn't feel well. She sleeps with earplugs in so she didn't hear me in the apartment. I had to sheepishly call her entire family, own up to my stupidity, and apologize for terrifying them.
99. Measure Twice, Cut Once
I work in the pathology lab where the hospital sends all the specimens. One day, a surgeon did a double mastectomy based on a different hospital’s pathology report. The report said the woman had the kind of cancer where both mammaries need to be removed. But when we examined her specimens, we made an utterly disturbing discovery.
We found zero cancer in either mammary. Obviously, the surgeon was beside himself and made us look through both mammaries IN THEIR ENTIRETY...It’s unheard of to submit all the tissue like this, but he needed to find cancer. I’ve never seen a surgeon stand there and watch the pathologist as this guy did.
We all felt so bad for him and of course the patient. He was so upset, cussing up a storm the whole time and screaming about “this is why I never take outside pathology reports!” Turns out, the other lab had mis-labeled her tissue, so some other lady got the all clear who had cancer, while she unnecessarily lost both parts of her chest when she didn’t need to.
All around a horrible situation, and the surgeon was sick over it all.
