[SPEAKER_00]: What's your craziest story do you need to tell?
[SPEAKER_00]: Story one, I am 26, and I am adopted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have nothing to do with my biological family except for a half-brother, who I reconnected with last year, and we are friends on Facebook.
[SPEAKER_00]: About a year and a half ago, I spent six months working as a pizza delivery driver.
[SPEAKER_00]: While there I met a man, probably in his 50s or so, we got along well.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a driver just to have something to do since he is retired now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I quit the job after six months, but a couple of months ago, I came back in the guy was still there.
[SPEAKER_00]: About a week ago, my brother tagged me on Facebook, as well as my coworker.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few days later, I asked my coworker how he knew my brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: After a misunderstanding, since my brother has the same name as his father, and he thought I was talking about my brother's father, we figured out that the coworker is actually my uncle by marriage, or at least he was.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was married to my biological mom's sister for about 20 years, until their divorce a couple of years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy used to babysit me when I was a baby, and he has pictures of my brother, and my biological mom that he gave me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is currently looking for baby pictures of me because I do not have any from before I was adopted, and my mom and dad would be extremely happy if he can find them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story two, I do not know how interesting this is.
[SPEAKER_00]: But a few years ago, I would go to college in the morning and leave around midnight because I did not have a personal computer and needed to work on homework at school.
[SPEAKER_00]: One time on the last train ride home, where I had to catch two trains and two buses each way to get there and back.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were coming into the last station where I would get off.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was this Asian guy acting a bit strange the whole ride.
[SPEAKER_00]: He got up and stood in the middle of the car.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the train breaked, coming into the station, he fell flat on his face from a full standing position.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lay there until the train stopped, then stood up, dusted himself off, and walked out of the open doors like nothing happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ended up seeing this guy do it about five other separate times, and since I was used to it by that point, I actually enjoyed watching for the reactions of the uninitiated writers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Plenty more slightly weird things happen on my late night subway rides home, and I really enjoyed the entertainment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 3, this happened in either the late 1990s or the early 2000s.
[SPEAKER_00]: My granddad had a brief relationship while on holiday with a woman from carabody, and it resulted in a child, my aunt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Several years ago my family decided we would go and visit her in carabody, which for those who do not know is right on the equator.
[SPEAKER_00]: To get there we had to fly from Fiji on a tiny 50-seater, twin-proplane, with one toilet at the front.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a kid with a lot of food allergies and had eaten something that did not sit right, basically a mild case of food poisoning.
[SPEAKER_00]: About half an hour into the flight my stomach gave me that feeling where you know you will not be able to stop what is coming so I got up and went to the toilet and halfway up the aisle everything went wrong when I let out what I thought was just gas but it clearly was not.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time I got into the toilet and locked the door my underwear was
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried to do the right thing and did not want to block the toilet.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I threw my underwear in the trash and used the toilet.
[SPEAKER_00]: But between the amount and the toilet paper I had to use, the toilet still ended up blocked and the smell was terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in there for a good 15 minutes and the entire plane started to smell awful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I cleaned up as best I could, but the toilet was finished and started to overflow.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I slowly walked back to my seat while the whole plane stared at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Back then, airplane toilets used more liquid and chemicals than they do now, and with the opening blocked, there was nowhere for anything to go and no vacuum to clear it, so the more the lever was pressed, the worse it got.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to tell my dad what happened and he spoke to the flight attendants who had to deal with the mess as liquid started splashing onto the floor.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we finally arrived in Carabody, the plane had to be grounded and fully cleaned and disinfected,
[SPEAKER_00]: I only remembered all of this because my dad brought it up the other day in conversation, and he thought I had flushed my underwear.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had to explain that it was all toilet paper and the situation itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 4 When I was about 10, my family moved from the city to a very small town in northern Australia, with only a few hundred residents.
[SPEAKER_00]: We started school and after a few weeks we made friends with the other kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: They kept telling us about this club in town called the Nature Rangers.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way they described it, it sounded like some off-brand boy scouts with camping, hiking, and similar stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: They also said they gathered at their Ranger Hall on Fridays to have movie nights with popcorn and hot dogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: My younger sister and I begged our parents to let us join, so on Friday night we got dropped off at the hall.
[SPEAKER_00]: We lined up to go inside and all the kids were joking and laughing, but when they opened the doors and we started walking in, the whole mood instantly shifted and everyone went quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I walked in, I looked around and saw signs all over the walls saying things like, sinners must burn, the devil is coming for you, and Christ is your only savior.
[SPEAKER_00]: The one that stood out the most was a huge mural of Australia and gulfed in flames, with only our northern towns spared, which was a real eye opener for us city kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happened next got even weirder and felt like something out of a movie about fanatics in the deep south of America.
[SPEAKER_00]: We sang strange folk songs, listened to fire and brimstone sermons, and were told to give our faith to the Lord Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: One song that stuck with me years later when something like, he's under my feet, he's under my feet, Satan is under my feet, and it was paired with a dance we had to learn.
[SPEAKER_00]: My sister and I kept looking at each other, wondering when it was going to be over.
[SPEAKER_00]: After all of that, we were ushered outside and the boys and girls were separated.
[SPEAKER_00]: The girls were told to stay at the hall, while the boys were taken by this creepy old guy they called Brother Joseph, who was trying to get all the boys into his white van to take them for a drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the moment I knew we were done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I quietly slipped out of the line, grabbed my sister and told her we were leaving.
[SPEAKER_00]: By then it was late at night, so we snuck off into the dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our house was on the other side of town, so we crept from yard to yard, hiding in trees or bushes, whenever we saw car lights.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we got about half a kilometer from home, I told my sister to run and we sprinted the rest of the way, burst into the house and told our parents everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: They always say they had never seen a so scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a story we laugh about now, but at the time it was seriously unsettling.
[SPEAKER_00]: We lived in that town for another three months, and the other kids never mentioned nature ranges to us ever again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story five, my father used to live in Kazakhstan around 2006.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day he was at a bar with a co-worker when a tall, heavily built Russian man walked in.
[SPEAKER_00]: He decided he wanted to sit near my dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: But instead of choosing an empty bar stool, he went up to one occupied by a small woman and literally threw her off the chair, saying he wanted that seat.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad saw this and immediately tried to intervene by yelling at him and asking what he thought he was doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Russian man responded by threatening my dad and saying he was going to beat him up when he left the bar.
[SPEAKER_00]: My father tried to brush it off, but then he noticed that the man's friends had started together with about four large men inside the bar and another four waiting outside.
[SPEAKER_00]: At that point, my dad started to get nervous and decided to call the head of security for the company he worked for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keeping in mind that my dad was the managing director for Kazakhstan at the time, the head of security told him to stay at the bar and wait for him to arrive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after some very tense drinking with his coworker, around 30 bodyguards suddenly poured into the bar, informed a human corridor from my dad straight to the exit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of the country they were in, all of the bodyguards were armed with pistols.
[SPEAKER_00]: They formed a wall of people on either side of my father, and the head of security escorted him to his car, where two black BMWs were waiting to escort him home.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not the most insane story ever, but hearing my dad tell it was intense.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he later admitted that the urge to flip off the Russian guys was huge, but he did not want to risk it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story six, I was traveling in Honduras where the girl I was seeing, along with her sister and a few other people, and we were all staying in a hostel.
[SPEAKER_00]: During the September 15th celebrations in the small town, there were a lot of festivities going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Later that night while walking back to the hostel, we started fooling around a bit and ended up making out in the town Plaza.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could not go back to the hostel to take things further since our friends were there, but it was very dark outside and the Plaza had columns and areas that felt relatively private.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we decided to go ahead there.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were between a couple of the columns with her leaning back against one and both of us low to the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked at her and she had this strange expression on her face and was trembling intensely.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first I thought she was having the strongest reaction I had ever seen and then I felt a very odd sensation running through my legs as well and for a brief moment I thought the same thing was happening to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The feeling was hard to place but also familiar and then it clicked that it was electricity.
[SPEAKER_00]: I realized I was being electrocuted through my legs, and that she was too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I pulled both of us away as fast as I could.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I look back at the column, she had been leaning against.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw exposed wire sticking out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was crying and panicking because she thought she was going to die and could barely move.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it took a bit for both of us to calm down and understand what had just happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story seven, I am a pretty avid cyclist, which means that whenever I have the time, I ride my bike out of the city where I live and into the mountainous suburbs to challenge myself on some of the local climbs.
[SPEAKER_00]: On one of these rides, after I had just gone up and down a huge mountain, I was on the road heading back toward the city center.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was already fairly tired and he still had about 40 kilometers to get home when I suddenly noticed traffic stopped in the opposite lane.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I saw next completely caught me off guard, because there was an ostrich in my lane, right in front of me, running after the car ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: This made no sense at all since the country I live in is not exactly known as an ostrich habitat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I slowed down and followed it for a bit, watching it chase the car, while trying to decide whether or not I should overtake it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am no expert on ostrich's, but I do remember reading that they can run extremely fast and that they can be aggressive toward humans, and I really did not want to become the victim of an ostrich attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, it was starting to get dark and I wanted to get home.
[SPEAKER_00]: After hesitating for a while, I decided to go for it, pushed as hard as I could, and passed the ostrich without incident.
[SPEAKER_00]: I made it home safely, but to this day it remains one of the most surreal experiences I have ever had, encountering an ostrich in the middle of a bike ride.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 8, I am from Belgium, and traveled a lot with my parents when I was younger, and later when I was still together with my ex-girlfriend, we traveled quite a bit as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Neither of us had ever been to the United States, so when we mentioned this to a couple of friends, a few beers later we were already planning a trip together, especially since another mutual friend was studying in Philadelphia for a year, and we could visit him.
[SPEAKER_00]: We first went to New York and Philadelphia for a few days, then flew to Los Angeles, rented a car, and did a road trip through California, Nevada, and Utah.
[SPEAKER_00]: During the trip, we often joked about some of the ridiculous things we had heard or seen people do in America, especially in smaller towns.
[SPEAKER_00]: After visiting Sequoia National Park, we were looking for a place to eat and spend the night because it was getting late.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we found an old farmhouse where we could stay in renovated cabins.
[SPEAKER_00]: The elderly woman renting it out told us to eat at the Pinehurst lodge, which was basically the only restaurant bar in store for miles in this tiny town with an extremely small population.
[SPEAKER_00]: We went there, had an amazing meal, decided to stay for drinks, and played some
[SPEAKER_00]: While we were playing a very large older man approached us, wearing a denim shirt with George W. Bush and an eagle on it, a thick mustache, and a rough look that made us think he might cause trouble, but he turned out to be one of the kindest people I have ever met.
[SPEAKER_00]: He asked if we were having fun, joined us, bought us moonshine, which we found hilarious, and we bought him beers, and we had a great evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: At one point the phone behind the bar kept ringing, but no one paid attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Around 1130 a woman suddenly stormed in, holding a gun.
[SPEAKER_00]: March straight up to our new friend, grabbed an empty beer bottle and smashed it over his head.
[SPEAKER_00]: She yelled at him and started hitting him while we stood there in shock.
[SPEAKER_00]: He calmly told her to relax, turned to us, shook our hands, told us to look him up if we ever came back so we could hang out again and then went outside with her.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bartender then casually explained that it was his wife, that he was very social, and that she had already called ten times asking when he was coming home.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we said we would leave as well since it was late, she told us it was safer to stay a bit longer because the shouting outside was still going on, and the woman was angry at us too, and apparently it was not unheard of for her to shoot at people she blamed.
[SPEAKER_00]: We stayed another 30 minutes, listening to them argue outside, until we heard a truck start, and saw a white pickup speed off, followed seconds later by another one, both racing down narrow mountain roads.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bartender then mentioned that the woman drove their children to school on the bus, and we all agreed this would never happen back home.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we would absolutely go back to the pinehurst lodge again someday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 9, when my mom was pregnant with me, she and my father divorced and he gave up all parental rights.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have never met him or spoken to him, and I have only seen a few pictures.
[SPEAKER_00]: About two years ago, I was working at a healthcare facility where I floated between different offices around the county, depending on who needed help.
[SPEAKER_00]: One particular morning I was checking the doctor's schedule and saw my father's name listed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was scheduled to be in the office next door to where I was working, and I remember thinking how surreal it was, assuming I probably would not even see him.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the time for his appointment came, he walked directly into my office straight up to me and said that he had an appointment with Dr. X.
[SPEAKER_00]: My heart started racing because I knew it was him the moment he walked through the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told him that Dr. X's office was next door, and he thanked me and left.
[SPEAKER_00]: A little while later I walked over to the other office to deliver some faxes, and as I was leaving he followed behind me, so I held the door open for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said thank you, and that was the first and only interaction I have ever had with my father in my 30 years of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 10.
[SPEAKER_00]: About 19 years ago, when I was three, my mom, my dad and I came home one day to find that our cat nubs was missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The entire family tore the apartment apart looking for him, but there was no trace of the cat anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though all the doors and windows had been locked, my mom decided to make missing flyers and kept looking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, until she finally accepted that her cat was gone, and had somehow disappeared.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then last year out of nowhere, my grandma casually mentioned that she was the one who lost nobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: She explained that back then, while we were out shopping, she had gone into the mall across the street and used my baby stroller to carry extra bags.
[SPEAKER_00]: While she was walking through the mall, Nubs who had apparently been hiding in the Mesh Storage pouch under the Stroller, woke up, jumped out, and ran off without her noticing.
[SPEAKER_00]: to nervous and embarrassed to ask anyone for help.
[SPEAKER_00]: My grandma simply left them all and came home without saying anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: About half an hour later, we all got home, and she even helped us search for the cat.
[SPEAKER_00]: To this day, it still makes me emotional to think about what happened to my mom's favorite cat.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for years, it felt like he had vanished into thin air, but now we finally know the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a long story from the early 1980s that involves what I can only describe as Kentucky justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: My family lived just outside of Cincinnati on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, and my father's older brother lived nearby as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had four daughters and one of them around 18 years old started dating a guy who was a bit older and convinced her to move down south with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: My uncle approved and she moved with her boyfriend into a remote Kentucky holler where his
[SPEAKER_00]: After some time passed with no word from her, my uncle began to worry.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day his daughter managed to call him from a pay phone at a grocery store, crying and saying she was being mistreated by her boyfriend's family, held against her will, and forced to work constantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before my uncle could get any more details, the call was cut off.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is important to know that my uncle was an avid hunter and gun collector.
[SPEAKER_00]: He explained the situation to his wife and other daughters, packed up his old's mobile Delta 88 with his favorite firearms, and drove straight into the holler where the boyfriends family lived, an area with no street names, just dirt roads and family land.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time he finally found their farmhouse, it was dark, and the boyfriends family was on the porch firing shotguns into the air,
[SPEAKER_00]: My uncle stopped his car about 50 yards from the house, opened the trunk, and calmly laid his rifles across the hood of the car, facing the house completely unfazed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a very large man with a reputation for a violent temper, and he shouted up to them that if his daughter did not come down in five minutes, he would come up there himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: The boyfriend and his brothers immediately ran inside, and less than one minute later, my cousin came running out with her single suitcase.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same uncle once had another encounter years later, while driving across an old narrow bridge that could only fit one vehicle at a time.
[SPEAKER_00]: When three men in a pickup truck refused to back up and started yelling at him, my uncle got out of his car to confront them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when one of them shouted that there were three of them, my uncle calmly asked if all three of them knew how to swim, which was enough to make them back up and let him cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 12, I saved a man's life and I never saw him again, and even 10 years later, this is still the craziest thing that has ever happened to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: In high school, I worked as a lifeguard at a country club for a few summers to earn some money, and it was a pretty comfortable job since it was members only, which meant a big part of it was learning names and being polite, mostly greeting people in the mornings and listening to harmless complaints.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the Fourth of July weekend, there were more people at the pool than usual because each member could bring a guest, and there was a middle-aged man I had never seen before jumping off the diving boards.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was over six feet tall, probably around 230 pounds, and he kept doing flashy jumps off the low board to impress his friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: On one jump, he took a running start and slipped at the very end of the board, and because his momentum was already leaning backward, his body flew off awkwardly, and his head rotated back and slammed straight into the diving board, a sound I can still clearly remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was sitting about eight feet up in the lifeguard chair watching the diving well, and hoping I would not have to act, even though I knew something was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not see any blood, which felt like a good sign.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I watched his body sink in counted 1,000, 2,1000, 3,1000, with no movement at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I blew three short blasts on my whistle to signal for the backboard and jumped in with my boy, keeping the entry as calm as possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: My training took over and I dove about eight or nine feet down to reach him and he was completely unconscious with no movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a big guy but in the water he felt lighter than expected as I grabbed him and kicked us both back to the surface.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lifted him onto the buoy and moved to the edge where the other guards had already placed the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: We worked together to line him up and strap him in and as they lifted the board out I climbed out and looked
[SPEAKER_00]: I shouted for someone to call an ambulance and made a decision, because I assumed he likely had a neck injury, but he also was not visibly breathing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The board kept his head stable, but I knew I had to act so I started chest compressions.
[SPEAKER_00]: What no one really prepares you for is how it feels, because you can feel bones and cartilage shifting onto your hands, and it is something I have never forgotten.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did one round of compressions, gave two rescue breaths, and went back to compressions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after several more, a bit of water came out of his mouth, and he started coughing.
[SPEAKER_00]: At that point, the other guards immediately took the board and rushed him away so fast that it almost felt unreal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I rolled onto the concrete with a loud ringing in my ears, my heart racing, and just sat there trying to process what had happened, feeling like I was in a trance.
[SPEAKER_00]: The entire incident probably lasted about six minutes, but it felt much longer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was taken to the guard shack, dried off, and brought to the main building where the manager sat with me, asked what happened, had me sign paperwork, and sent me home for the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It took hours for everything to fully sink in.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I came back a few days later, I was told the man was okay, and I was thanked by the member who had brought him, but I never saw that man again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even now it remains the most intense experience of my life, and while I know I might not have done everything perfectly, I followed my training and did what I could.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the end, he survived, which is what still matters to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 13, I did not have a car when I was at university, which made going out with my friends a bit annoying, so I often stumbled home half drunk in the middle of the night or early morning and waited for the first train to leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night I was visiting friends and the only way home that laid, sometime between one and two in the morning, was a train that followed a remote country route.
[SPEAKER_00]: My stop was next to a small forest and an old castle.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of 13th century Central European castle you would see in history books, and I knew the way well because I had played there a lot as a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: The path went through open fields, past horse stables, down a wooded slope, around the castle grounds, then along a narrow road between two fields, past an abandoned gatekeepers house
[SPEAKER_00]: and finally under a bridge where you rejoin civilization with no lights anywhere along the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was still a bit drunk and thought about waiting for the next bus, but that would have taken hours, and since it was summer and the weather was nice, I figured I knew the path by heart and started walking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything was fine until I reached the slope, where the terrain dipped in all light disappeared, with pitch black woods on my left and a hill on my right, blocking the moon so completely that I could not even see my own feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shuffled forward slowly, terrified of tripping, and every sound made me feel like something terrible was about to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I remembered something a former teacher once said about Forrest, being safer than dark city alleys, which helped me stay calm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually the moonlight returned and I was heading toward the abandoned house feeling proud of myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: When suddenly someone jumped out of the woods directly into my path so fast I could not even scream.
[SPEAKER_00]: It turned out to be a jogger in full gear, running through the woods in the middle of the night without a light as if he had night vision.
[SPEAKER_00]: I made it home safely, swore I would never do something like that again, and then did the exact same thing a week later, minus the jogger, and I honestly do not know how I made it past 30.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 14, when I was in high school and for a few years after, my main source of income was selling weed.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day I was hanging out at home with my girlfriend, and we walked to the circle K a few houses down to buy some beer.
[SPEAKER_00]: The clerk, who I knew fairly well by then, casually asked if I knew where he could get a small bag, and I told him I would be back soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went home, completely forgot about it, and an hour or two later remembered, waited out, and went back, noting that he had already paid me, which later turned out to be very important.
[SPEAKER_00]: I waited until the store was empty, then he came outside and we stood behind the ice box talking and smoking while I handed him the bag.
[SPEAKER_00]: The parking lot was empty except for a beat up Volvo Park near the record store next door.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I had been paying more attention, I might have noticed that its windows were completely tinted, which was strange for a car like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two men suddenly got out, one tall and skinny and full denim, and the other looking like a bargain version of dog the bounty hunter in a beige sweater, and approached us asking how things were going.
[SPEAKER_00]: We looked at each other, confused, and then they flash badges.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all that we were under arrest, cuffed us, separated us, and searched us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy in the sweater went through my phone, found some questionable messages and cash, and tried to get me to admit I had been doing a lot of business that day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then they walked me and my girlfriend back to my porch, saying they had seen me coming and going, and just wanted to make sure I did not have anything serious inside, promising a lighter charge if I cooperated, otherwise threatening jail and a felony.
[SPEAKER_00]: I refused to let them in and kept asking for a lawyer, while my roommate came outside, said, hello, gotten his car and left, which made things worse because they threatened to bring squad cars, pull everyone out and wait for a warrant.
[SPEAKER_00]: I now know that was not legal, but at the time I was terrified, especially because my roommate was straight edge with a good job, and I did not want him dragged into anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: To make matters worse, I had recently bought a large amount of mushrooms at a great price, and they were sitting neatly weighed out in my bedroom, along with everything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I finally offered to let one officer search just my room.
[SPEAKER_00]: One agreed, stayed with my girlfriend, and followed me upstairs where I deliberately walked past my own closed door, and into my roommate's spotless room instead.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tore it apart, found nothing, stuck to the agreement, and walked me back downstairs while I tried not to smile.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even as my girlfriend looked convinced I was going to prison.
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite all of that, they still charged me with a felony, and then left.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 15
[SPEAKER_00]: For context, I was a 19-year-old Scottish guy in a railing around Europe for about a month.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were in Budapest for a few days, hitting clubs in parties and having a great time, and eventually it was time to leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we booked an early morning train to split at around five in the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had two taxis booked to the station and we stumbled outside half a sleep, loading our bags into the cars.
[SPEAKER_00]: While we were doing that, we saw three young guys sprinting full speed up the road yelling for everyone to run, and we laughed, thinking they were just drunk and messing around.
[SPEAKER_00]: They absolutely were not.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I got into the taxi, a guy covered head to toe and tattoos, and someone else's blood came up to my door and asked to shake my hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not wanting to offend someone who clearly looked unhinged, I shook his blood-covered hand, and he wished me well, which felt like we had gotten off lightly.
[SPEAKER_00]: He then tried to do the same with our massive Bulgarian taxi driver, who flat out refused.
[SPEAKER_00]: The driver got back into the taxi and started reversing, and that is when the guy completely lost it, and began smashing the taxi with his elbows, fists and knees.
[SPEAKER_00]: We started driving away thinking there was no way this guy would bother chasing a taxi.
[SPEAKER_00]: But apparently he was some kind of superhuman and sprinted after us faster than seem possible with this insane look in his eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The driver turned a corner thinking we had lost him.
[SPEAKER_00]: only for there to be a garbage truck blocking the entire road.
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy rounded the corner at full speed and charges again, and I was half asleep, screaming at the driver and pure Scottish panic to lock the doors, which he thankfully did.
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy started pounding on the windows, smearing blood everywhere as his knuckles split, then ripped off the wing mirrors and used them to smash the windows.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our friends in the taxi behind us were apparently laughing their heads off, while we sat there in absolute terror, convinced this was how we were going to die.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both taxi drivers eventually got out to confront him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spat in their faces through a wing mirror at them and then finally ran off.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Mattis part was that as he was leaving, he politely apologized to one of the locals who had been watching the whole thing in disbelief.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 16, I work in a supermarket as a team leader and I am pretty social, so I usually try to include new people and make them feel comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was this new guy around 17 years old who was extremely quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only spoke when spoken to, and no one really tried to talk to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I made an effort, was kind to him, and although he was distant at first, over a few weeks he opened up and became friendly with me, even though no other co-workers really interacted with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not think much of it until he quit after about three months.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I found out he was actually doing some kind of community service because he had a criminal record and the supermarket hired him because they only had to pay him half a normal salary.
[SPEAKER_00]: About a year later, I got into a minor argument with some drunk guys at a bar, which did not seem like a big deal until I left.
[SPEAKER_00]: Five of them were waiting for me outside, and I tried to walk past without engaging because I did not want my friend dragged into it, but they stopped me and were clearly ready to beat me up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly the guy from the supermarket showed up with his friends, and I have never felt cooler in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were about six guys in their early 20s with him, and because I was his friend, they stepped in, threatened the group, and basically told them to explain why they should not seriously hurt them right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could not thank him enough, and after that, we all win our separate ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even now, when I occasionally see him, we just exchange a nod.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 17.
[SPEAKER_00]: Late one night, my friends and I decided to go buy some weed, which was unusual for us since we were more than nerdy type who met online playing video games and spent that summer playing tabletop games together.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was before it was legal in my state, we were in high school, bored, and decided to try something different.
[SPEAKER_00]: The three of us got in the car and managed to contact my friend's dealer.
[SPEAKER_00]: A guy he had met maybe twice who told us to meet him at a Taco Bell in the next town over.
[SPEAKER_00]: We went there around 10 at night, Suburbi acquired, got some frozen drinks, waited, did a quick exchange in the parking lot, and left feeling excited because this was all very new to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we pulled out, my friend realized too late that he needed to turn, ended up half an attorney lane, and decided to just make the left turn through the red lights since no one was around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Immediately, lights and sirens came on.
[SPEAKER_00]: My other friend started yelling at him for being an idiot, and I sat in the back seat thinking there was no way this was happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though we had not smoked anything, the smell was noticeable, and as we pulled over, the driver passed the weed to the passenger who wrapped it in a rag and shoved it into the glove compartment.
[SPEAKER_00]: The officer walked up, asked the driver if he knew why he was pulled over, and then suddenly commented that our eyes looked really red, which made
[SPEAKER_00]: She leaned in, asked if we had been smoking, and my friend even offered to be tested, which made her pause and walk back to her car.
[SPEAKER_00]: When she returned, she questioned why we were in that town instead of where the car was registered, and my friend explained we were visiting friends in grabbing food.
[SPEAKER_00]: She then asked for license and registration, and my heart nearly stopped as he opened the glove compartment with the red-covered weeds sitting right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: He calmly fumbled around, pulling out the wrong papers, putting them back, and somehow avoided drawing attention to it until he finally found the registration.
[SPEAKER_00]: She checked everything, warned us never to do something like that again, and let us go.
[SPEAKER_00]: We nervously laughed the entire way home.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my friend decided shortly after that, he never wanted to deal with anything like that again.
[SPEAKER_00]: But to this day, I still think about how close we were to getting arrested our very first time buying weed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 18.
[SPEAKER_00]: This story needs some context to really understand how surreal it felt to me at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up in a very small, mostly apostolic Christian town, even though my own family was not apostolic, and my life was extremely sheltered.
[SPEAKER_00]: Around 8th grade my parents divorced.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom moved us to a slightly bigger city, and I started making friends who were very different from what I was used to.
[SPEAKER_00]: During my first house party in the summer after eighth grade, I met a guy everyone called punk rock rob, who was older than us and already felt like part of a completely different world.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few months later a friend and I decided to sneak over to a girl's house to stay the night, but her parents caught us and kicked us out, leaving us wandering around the city in the winter with nowhere to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could not call our parents because we had both lied and said we were staying at each other's houses.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was when we remembered punk rock rob, who worked at a sandwich shop down the road, so we went there hoping he could give us a ride home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he invited us to go with him to an even bigger city to party at a friend's house, which sounded exciting to a kid from a tiny town.
[SPEAKER_00]: He drove us deep into a rough part of the city, and that was when the night took a turn.
[SPEAKER_00]: We slowly realized that punk rock rob was part of a group of white supremacists, which immediately made me uncomfortable, but we were stuck because he was our ride.
[SPEAKER_00]: They forced us to drink far more alcohol than I ever had before, or since, yelling and singing offensive songs in the middle of the neighborhood, like they owned the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: At one point I was chased around with a taser, someone stole my shoes, and eventually we passed out in a random house.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we woke up the next morning, punk rock rob was gone, and we were stuck in a stranger's house with no way home, realizing that in just a few hours I was supposed to be back with my family to take Christmas photos, which shows how sheltered I was, compared to what had just happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I genuinely thought I was going to have to call my very religious mother to pick us up from the middle of that situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Luckily, another friend who could drive agreed to come get us, and we avoided that conversation, but that night completely changed how I saw the world, and how quickly things can spiral out of control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 19.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a long story, but the coincidence behind it is incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am from a very small province in the Philippines, and right after college in 2007, I moved to Manila to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a job at a call center, made a lot of friends, and stayed there for about two years before realizing the graveyard shift was not for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward to 2013, when my widowed mother back in the province met a French man through a mutual friend, and they eventually fell for each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: They got engaged in 2014 and married soon after, so they could move to France together.
[SPEAKER_00]: While they were planning the move, I posted on social media asking if anyone knew Filipinos, living in France who could help my mom adjust.
[SPEAKER_00]: A former colleague from that call center job in Manila reached out and told me she had a Filipino friend, let's call her Rauhina, who had been living in France for more than 20 years and might be able to help.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told my mom to add Roen on Facebook, and they started talking regularly.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day while video chatting, they were talking about their husbands, and my mom showed her an old vintage photo of her husband from his university days, sitting on a couch with his best friend, a man he had not seen since graduating decades earlier, because life and working abroad had separated them.
[SPEAKER_00]: As soon as Rowena saw the photo, she gasped and said that the man sitting next to my mom's husband was her own husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: She rushed to her office and pulled out the exact same photo, which her husband had kept all those years.
[SPEAKER_00]: After the shock, tears and disbelief, two best friends who had been separated for nearly 40 years were finally reunited through that single post in an old photograph.
[SPEAKER_00]: story 20.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a story about Ron.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was in college I was a heavy weed smoker and still kind of am.
[SPEAKER_00]: And since my campus was close to Philadelphia, I decided one day to go into the city, explore a bit, get a haircut, and do all of it extremely high.
[SPEAKER_00]: After wandering around for a while, it started getting late, and I realized the subway would be closing soon, and I was completely lost
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked a random guy for directions, someone who looked comfortable and local.
[SPEAKER_00]: A black man around 5 foot 10 wearing a hoodie and a hat who told me to follow him because he was going the same way.
[SPEAKER_00]: He introduced himself as ran, correcting me when I miss her to his name.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we talked on the subway about school with him saying he was studying information technology while I told him I was in communications.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we got close to my stop, he said he was getting off there too, and things started to feel strange when he began asking about going to a party together and mentioned his age, which was clearly much older than mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I figured he had helped me out, so I said I would see what I could do.
[SPEAKER_00]: After we got off, he bought me a tall beer, and said he had to make a call, and a black car pulled up where he got in the back seat, argued with someone, got out, kicked the woman next to him repeatedly, slammed the door, and yelled before the car drove off.
[SPEAKER_00]: At that point I was uncomfortable, but we sat on a stoop drinking while he loudly commented on women passing by, and I kept rationalizing staying because I felt like I owed him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took him back to campus and signed him in, knowing that if anything happened, it would be on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: We smoked, he helped clean up my computer by fixing some issues, and then kept asking where the party was, which I ignored.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually I walked amount, pretending to head toward party areas before calling it a night.
[SPEAKER_00]: He told me he had a great time, and to call him if I ever needed anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I got back to my friends, they were genuinely scared for my safety.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while I laughed it off, I knew deep down that I had been incredibly naive.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few weeks later, he called asking to hang out, which I declined, and later called again, offering to Selmy Pills, which I also turned down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 21, when my nieces were around six and eight years old, they had a pet rat named Spider-Man, who was very old for a rat, and suffering from tumors that caused him pain, especially at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: My brother asked me to take Spider-Man to the vet to see if anything could be done, and since I was living with him at the time, and exhausted from the constant squealing, I agreed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took my nieces with me, and while we waited in the exam room, Spider-Man's squealed almost nonstop.
[SPEAKER_00]: The vet eventually brought us in, examined him, and admitted he had never treated a rat before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Explaining that there was nothing that could be done and that youth in Asia would be the kindest option.
[SPEAKER_00]: He even suggested a cheap method involving household items to cause quick suffocation.
[SPEAKER_00]: As he was explaining this, with Spider-Man still in his hand, the rats suddenly bit down hard on the vet's finger.
[SPEAKER_00]: The vet yelled in pain and reflexively shook his hand, accidentally flinging Spider-Man against the wall and killing him instantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a moment of total silence before my nieces started screaming and crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: The vet apologized repeatedly, gave them stuffed animals and supplies for our other pets, and did not charge us for the visit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still take my pets to the same vet 15 years later, and thankfully, nothing like that has ever happened again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rest in peace, Spider-Man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 22.
[SPEAKER_00]: While I was working as a receptionist at a four-star hotel, we often hosted corporate events where guests stayed for one night alongside seminars and parties, and most days were completely routine.
[SPEAKER_00]: One afternoon a woman with several small children came to the desk asking for a man who was staying at the hotel, so I called his room and told him his wife was waiting.
[SPEAKER_00]: He came down, they hugged, kissed, and everything looked like a normal family interaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Later that evening, after the seminars ended, guests started drinking heavily, and as the night quieted down, I noticed two people sitting closely together in the bar area, long after everyone else had gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: It became obvious they were behaving inappropriately in a public space, which irritated me because they could have easily gone to their room.
[SPEAKER_00]: After a while they headed to the elevator, and as they passed the desk, I recognized the man as the same one whose wife and kids had visited earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of going up to the rooms, they went down to the basement, an area with limited camera coverage, so I went to check and found clear evidence of what they had been doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I returned to the desk and called the elevator, the two stepped out looking startled, confirming my suspicions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not long after they went outside the hotel and continued their behavior in public view, which completely pushed me over the edge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since I knew the man's identity, I created a fake Facebook account.
[SPEAKER_00]: Found both him and the woman, located his wife through tagged photos, and sent her a message explaining what I had witnessed, including where it happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I informed one of the managers in my co-worker coming on shift, both of whom supported me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Later, the man returned furious, and while one manager initially scolded me, the other backed me up once the full story came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I received a warning but was not fired, and I never regretted what I did, even when questioned about whether I had destroyed a family, because I believed his actions had done that on their own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 23, I dropped out of school once to join a terrible band, and the drummer, who I will call S, was going through a breakup right when I joined.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the most part, everything was normal in the way struggling bands usually are, and S seemed to be handling the breakup reasonably well until our band manager came over one night a few months in.
[SPEAKER_00]: S was venting to him about how hurt and angry she still was, and in the heat of the moment she said something she clearly did not truly mean, including that she wished her ex-girlfriend was dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: After that emotional release, she calmed down and started feeling better, and our manager told her not to worry and said he would take care of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He left shortly after, and we honestly did not think much of it and went back to writing music.
[SPEAKER_00]: A week or two later, S received a frantic call from her ex, who was on the way to the hospital with severe stomach pain, and doctors were concerned it could be life-threatening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Later that day our manager showed up and casually said that he had taken care of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was when it hit us that he meant he was somehow responsible for what was happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we questioned him, he explained that he worked in a laboratory and had access to various chemicals and that he had intentionally created a substance meant to cause a violent reaction in her stomach.
[SPEAKER_00]: His plan was for the reaction to expand so rapidly that it would rupture her internally and kill her.
[SPEAKER_00]: He admitted that he had invited her over, talked for a while, and when she mentioned having a headache, he gave her what he claimed was pain medication, even though she noticed it looked unusual.
[SPEAKER_00]: She took it anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only reason she survived was because he had not given her enough to finish what he intended, and while she was extremely sick for days, she ultimately recovered.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were horrified, immediately fired him, and cut off all contact.
[SPEAKER_00]: That remains the most disturbing and intense thing I have ever experienced in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story, 24.
[SPEAKER_00]: I moved to Amsterdam knowing the housing situation was terrible, and after failing to find anything affordable, I took a job working at a hostel while exploring other options, including camping for over a month.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept noticing houseboats everywhere and started researching the rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually learning that in the Netherlands, you do not need a license to operate a boat
[SPEAKER_00]: I started looking seriously and found a seven-meter cabin sailboat for sail in Liewarden, up north, owned by a really nice couple.
[SPEAKER_00]: It took me two and a half hours by train to get there, and three days to get back by water.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the first time in my life I had ever been on a boat like that, and instead of sailing it properly, I relied on the small engine to get back to Amsterdam.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the way, the rudder broke, so I had to improvise a repair just to keep moving because I had to work the next day.
[SPEAKER_00]: The engine died twice while I was out on open water near the coast, leaving me stranded.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as night approached, I made a risky decision to try to cross to the next marina.
[SPEAKER_00]: The conditions got rough and I was terrified the rudder would fail again, or the engine would quit, but somehow I made it through safely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have now been living on that same boat for the past few months, and it all still feels unreal considering I had never done anything like that before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 25 I once had a job cleaning hotel rooms and on my third day I was still being trained while shadowing a coworker.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our last room of the day was a king suite and when we walked in it looked mostly normal, just messy with beer bottles, pizza boxes, and even a squash sitting on the counter.
[SPEAKER_00]: As soon as we open the closet by the door, the worst smell I have ever experienced hit me, and inside was a brown stain sheet rolled into a ball, even though the sheets were supposed to be white.
[SPEAKER_00]: My co-worker handled that part while I focused on changing the bedding, vacuuming, and cleaning surfaces.
[SPEAKER_00]: All while hoping I would not find anything worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: While scrubbing the kitchen floor, she commented that there was a strange residue everywhere, like something sticky had been spilled.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I finished my tasks, I remembered she had told me we could keep abandoned items if they were not valuable.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I grabbed the squash from the counter, thinking my mom might use it as a decoration.
[SPEAKER_00]: I picked it up with bare hands and immediately noticed a greasy film on it, assumed it was rotting, and smelled it, only to realize it carried the same unmistakable smell as the sheet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I walked back to my co-worker and told her exactly what I had discovered, and suddenly everything made sense, from the stained linens to the floor and the squash itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was scheduled to work for another two weeks, but instead I walked out of the building that day and never went back.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the story of the legendary and deeply unsettling squash that ended my hotel career.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 26.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is basically the story of my experiences from when I was around 12 or 13 up until now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I used to live in a nice green two story house with my family of five.
[SPEAKER_00]: My father was the only one working, and he had been a mechanic for as long as I could remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always at the same place, where his boss was a man I had known since I was a little named Frank.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time I had a crush on a classmate named Ainsley, even though my friends were trying to set me up with a girl named Christina.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talked to Christina a bit during a biology field trip, where we tried to catch snakes together, but I was too shy to keep the conversation going unless she started it.
[SPEAKER_00]: and she was very quiet and always looked angry, so nothing really came of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then our bad luck started.
[SPEAKER_00]: Frank was diagnosed with cancer and eventually passed away, which meant my dad lost his job and our family suddenly had no income.
[SPEAKER_00]: After a few weeks, my mom got a job at a grocery store and managed to scrape together just enough money to cover one month of rent, giving us four weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told my friends Angel and Jose that we might have to move away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Around that same time, my dad suddenly got very sick out of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Refused to go to the hospital and started throwing up everything he ate, eventually becoming bedridden, and vomiting even plain water.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was clearly not getting another job anytime soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: During all of this, Ainsley and I started bonding more, but she had a boyfriend, so nothing ever happened despite me telling her how I felt multiple times, though she was genuinely worried about my home situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few more weeks passed, we could not pay rent, and we received a warning notice.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad could barely stand or talk, so my mom finally forced him to go to the hospital, where he stayed for a few days while my brothers and I stayed home from school.
[SPEAKER_00]: Terrified.
[SPEAKER_00]: It turned out he had diabetes and had gone weeks without insulin or food.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the doctors said that if he had waited one more day, he would have died.
[SPEAKER_00]: With no money for rent, my parents decided it was best to move out of state to Wisconsin to live with our grandparents, where rent was cheaper and my grandpa also had diabetes and could help my dad adjust.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though this was the second time a hospital had saved his life, my dad still hated seeing doctors.
[SPEAKER_00]: I made new friends in Wisconsin but slowly lost touch with my old ones, though ainsely stayed in the back of my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I focused on building a relationship with my grandparents, who I was meeting for the first time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even though I was agnostic, I attended church with them and joined a youth group.
[SPEAKER_00]: There I befriended a kid who was really into fandom stuff, which initially weirded me out, but also introduced me to things I later learned to avoid.
[SPEAKER_00]: For a while things stabilized, my dad earned some money again, my older brother was homeschooled, and I took music classes, practicing guitar and flute, which became my main comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still, there were constant arguments in the house, especially between my dad and grandpa, and between my grandpa and older brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the tension where everyone down, school was miserable for me, I made bad choices, felt like I was always in the way, and eventually withdrew into myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad eventually convinced my mom to quit her job so we could leave, and we moved into the basement of a man I used to call my uncle, Tim.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was never enrolled in school during that time, and spent most days in the basement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Binge-watching anime, playing with Tim's youngest child, and spending weekends with cousins I barely got to see, which were some of the few bright spots.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually another man named Alex moved in, who we later learned was a recently released substance dealer, and he began convincing Tim to kick us out, causing constant tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents eventually sent me and my younger brother to live with my grandma for a month, where we discovered bed bugs and quarantined ourselves in a single room completely isolated.
[SPEAKER_00]: With nothing to do but sit on a computer, I slowly grew comfortable with silence, darkness, and being alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that also fed growing paranoia, especially after watching disturbing content online late at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we reunited with our family, that paranoia stayed with me, and I felt unwanted and constantly judged, building a deeper emotional shell than ever before, one filled with the constant fear that everyone hated me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 27 This is the story of the oatmeal man.
[SPEAKER_00]: My high school baseball team was riding a school bus from Louisville to Indianapolis for a tournament when a guy pulled up next to us on the freeway, waving and trying to get our attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: We assumed he was a parent or someone we knew and wave back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once he had my attention and my seatmates, he clipped his shirt collar to his steering wheel with some homemade contraption, leaving a huge opening in his shirt.
[SPEAKER_00]: He then grabbed two massive buckets, each holding about two gallons, filled with what I can only hope was cooked oatmeal, and poured all of it into the opening in his shirt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone on our bus, including the coaches, started screaming in confusion as this man's swerved across lanes, even using the emergency lane to stay next to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he reached into his shirt, grabbed a handful of the chunky mess, smeared it all over his face while laughing, and waved at us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally he unhooked his shirt, which snapped back against his neck and sent oatmeal flying all over his windshield and driver's side window.
[SPEAKER_00]: He casually waved goodbye, exited the freeway, and we never saw the oatmeal man again.
[SPEAKER_00]: To this day, it is still one of my favorite and most surreal memories.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a fair chance I will regret putting this on my main account.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here it goes, and it is 100% true.
[SPEAKER_00]: The worst situation I have ever been in.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was in the army, a friend and I went out and grabbed some pizza, and it was easily the best pizza I had ever had up to that point, and I ate an entire pie by myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: My buddy was supposed to meet up with a girl he had met online, who had a friend that was interested in me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So things were looking good, but they said they could not hang out in town and asked if we could just follow them back to their place because it was only about 20 minutes away.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were young, dumb, and confident.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we agreed and started driving deep into the haulers of Kentucky.
[SPEAKER_00]: about an hour past and they pulled over, and the girl I was supposed to be paired with casually went to the back of her truck and relieved herself in full view, which somehow was not a deal breaker.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at that moment all I could think about was that I also desperately needed to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got out, went to the back of my car, and tried, but nothing would come out at all, and it hurt worse than anything I had ever felt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So after a few painful minutes, I gave
[SPEAKER_00]: We followed them another half-hour and finally arrived at their house where their roommate turned out to be an absolutely fabulous drag queen, actively preparing for a show with a massive beehive wig and full makeup.
[SPEAKER_00]: By then, all I could think about was needing to go to the bathroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once inside, I unleashed what I am certain was the largest event of my life, completely filling the bowl well above the waterline.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only then did everything else finally release, and it became painfully clear that the reason I could not go earlier was because of what had just happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did my best to clean up, knowing there was no possible way to fix the situation, and that flushing would only make things worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, I heard shouting outside as my friends attempt to negotiate a three-way completely fell apart, followed by yelling for us to get out of the house, which felt like a miracle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I grabbed my coat, told my friend we were leaving immediately and we ran to the car.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we started driving away, their drag queen roommate came sprinting out of the house, screaming about what had happened to the bathroom, and I drove off laughing harder than I ever have,
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 29.
[SPEAKER_00]: This happened around 1996 or 1997 when I was about 14 or 15 living in a small town in Minnesota.
[SPEAKER_00]: My group of friends and I had already been smoking weed for a few years and one day a close friend claimed he knew of a field of weed growing on a farm nearby.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time we were obsessed with cheach and chong movies and the idea of finding a real weed field was impossible to
[SPEAKER_00]: just to see it and maybe grab a couple of buds.
[SPEAKER_00]: We waited until the weekend and drove out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just three of us, my friend who knew about the field and my girlfriend's younger brother, who was a year younger than us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We parked on the road past the long driveway and walked toward the barn and cornfields with the house sitting a short distance from the road and the barn far back behind it.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we got closer, we found chopped up weed plants on the ground, but no buds just stalks and leaves, which made us think they might be drying the plants in the barn.
[SPEAKER_00]: The barn was two stories tall, and the first level only had a tractor and old equipment, so we split up quietly to search.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went upstairs and looked out over the cornfield just in time to see a pickup truck flying down the driveway from the house toward the barn.
[SPEAKER_00]: I yelled for everyone to run and did not have time to go back down the stairs, so I sprinted and jumped straight out of the second level opening.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember being in the air longer than I ever had before, hitting the ground hard, rolling instinctively, and taking off toward the cornfields while feeling pain shoot through my legs.
[SPEAKER_00]: The others landed behind me, and once we were in the corn, we split up, completely on our own.
[SPEAKER_00]: The truck barreled past the barn, turned sharply into the field, and started trying to run us down, making several passes before finally leaving.
[SPEAKER_00]: We regrouped once it was gone and walked back to the car, only to find the police waiting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had left a growing guide on the car floor, which the officer had seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: But after questioning us and giving a warning for trespassing, they let us go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will never forget the feeling of flying out of that barn, and even now years later, I still wonder how high it really was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story 30, I was 18 years old, deployed to Afghanistan in 2004 as a cavalry scout in the army, and our platoon ran four humvies.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night we set up a hidden vehicle checkpoint after dark in a dry riverbed north of Kandahar, and we had been told that locals usually stayed home at night, so anything moving around after dark was considered suspicious.
[SPEAKER_00]: The checkpoint was quiet until we were about to pack it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we spotted two sets of headlights in the distance heading straight toward us.
[SPEAKER_00]: They drove right into our position.
[SPEAKER_00]: We jumped out and surprised them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pulled the drivers out and started questioning them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The trucks were completely loaded with chickens, huge wire cages stacked to the top.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the drivers were absolutely terrified.
[SPEAKER_00]: Convinced we were going to execute them on the side of the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: which honestly made sense given their experience with foreign soldiers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They explained that a police checkpoint in a nearby mountain pass was actually being used as a toll point where armed men were robbing anyone who passed through at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had gone through that same checkpoint earlier that day and only seen two men with rifles acting calm and claiming to be police with proper paperwork.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our lieutenant decided we would follow the chicken trucks up the pass with night vision and no headlice to see what really happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we followed about a hundred feet behind them, they reached the checkpoint and through night vision I could see at least ten armed men where there had only been two earlier and they were anything but relaxed.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them shoved the barrel of a rifle straight into the driver's window and started aggressively demanding things, which was more than enough proof for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We switched on our lights and rushed the checkpoint, and the man with a rifle instantly tried to pretend he was just waving the trucks through.
[SPEAKER_00]: We secured the area, rounded everyone up, and my lieutenant sent my buddy and me to check out a strange rock formation uphill from the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: As soon as I got close, I could tell it was hollow, and when I looked inside, I saw about a dozen man lying on mats, starting to scramble to their feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: We yelled, aimed our rifles, and somehow managed to shock them into surrendering.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside the cave we found rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, explosives, and piles of stolen goods, along with stacks of different currencies, watches, clothing, and shoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: These guys had been robbing people nonstop.
[SPEAKER_00]: We detained them and waited for instructions.