What's been the craziest moment of your life?
I saw this asked on another instance, thought I’d ask it here and I’ll post my response from there in the comments as I think it felt cathartic.
Doesn't need to be a life or death situation, just any moment in your life where you found yourself saying "Holy shit, I can't believe this is happening!"
The neighbours raised a fledgling starling that lost its mother. When it was big enough it decided the whole world was his best friend and would socialize quite a lot with us. I have a million pictures of him on our heads or shoulders or yelling at us through the kitchen window to come outside and find him some bugs.
Anyway he was absolutely in love with car rides. Yes, a wild bird liked a road trip. The guy who was feeding him used to bring him to work every morning to feed him routinely so he got very used to the car, and he LOVED it. So when we got home from work he'd sit on the roof of the car and yell until we came outside and took him for a ride somewhere. I had many car rides around the neighborhood that summer while he sat on my shoulder and yelled gleefully in my ear.
Dude that’s the sickest(as in best) thing I’ve ever read and I’m not gonna lie I was kinda expecting a terrible turn at the end.
Would love to see some pictures this starling, or videos. It’s on my bucket list to make friends with a bird, particularly crows, and you literally had that. Not only that, the dude loved road trips… like what.
Sorry about his mum though.
That's so cool. I never had a relationship with a bird like that
Me neither! The force of his personality was absolutely unreal. For such a small creature he was extremely happy and demanding and humourous.
I found out that my dad had a secret girlfriend who was my age. A student of his. He also had a secret job, working as a consultant for Putin’s science advisor.
I am sorry you had to find out about your dads secret life, I can’t imagine what that felt like.
As for the Putin thing. I have so many questions.
Without getting into traceable details, government science advisors often work with large universities so that’s where the connection is.
Putin has a science advisor? What is this the 1930s?
I don't understand ?
The strangest moment of my life was probably when I found myself doing DMT with a Willie Nelson impersonator in his mobile home. He had a pit bull which was running around with an erection.
I could list a few.
Christmas when I was about 10 I found out my dad wasn’t really my dad. Thanks nana. The man who raised is my dad to me still.
Leading on from the last one. Later in life my biological father got in touch and giving it all the life complicated spiel. I was indifferent but figured sure I’ll meet. Turns out he was back with my mum and now I’m back at home and he ain’t ever act like a dad, and now he doesn’t see if other daughters since he got back with my mum. Dudes a joke.
as you might have noticed I’ve had a tumultuous childhood. Mum spent my formative years flipping between my non-bio dad and the man who I have a half brother with, who I ain’t seen in 30 years. So I spent the time sat in the back of a car whilst she called men to her friend or went in pubs to pour pints on their head.
one time we came home and saw burglars robbing our flat. Probably something to do with my half brothers dad.
one time as a young adult, the man that raised me was out getting drunk in his mates house. My mum made me break the door down and she went in all guns blazing grabbing a golf club and going ham.
Fell in a canal at night off my box on Xanax and thought I might die. Threw out my stashed and literally nearly died from withdrawals.
surprising not been assaulted many times cause I used to be a righteous mouthy cunt when drunk, i don’t drink at all as I saw how it broke my dad, well my mum did but alcohol didn’t help.
watched as my mum and dad had a loveless marriage and at the start he used to hit her, then later she bullied his ass for decades. Like take his wages and refuse him money for cigs.
on way to school vacation and got told my dad was going prison for driving drunk whilst banned.
saw my tea dumped on her head.
it’s all coming back now. One time my dad tried to drive the car into our house but it got stuck in the bushes.
That’s just a few, but yeah it’s no wonder I’m fucked, not an excuse as I’ve made progress and got a good job now. Not sure I’m happy but I’ve just shut off the stuff I grew up around as what else can I do.
Do you feel like going through those things made you more angry or more compassionate as an adult? It's really crazy what childhood trauma does to the brain.
I honestly don’t know, I was pretty fucked up until 4 years ago and things only got better as I lucked out and got a job at Apple where they really enforced that you should strive to be the best, plus everyone there was successful in some other way. It came with healthcare which led to an ADHD diagnosis, which led to cutting down on drugs and that led to retraining as a software developer and now totally drug free for almost a month. Been a dev for a year.
Had that not happened I’d still be fucked. Now I don’t know if I was in that state because of my past or not.
To answer your question, I would say compassionate, but again I don’t know if it’s because of the things I went through or just the way I am. I have empathy for days and like to think I am on the right side of history with many things.
Now as the oldest, I saw a lot more than my brothers and they are nothing at all like me in terms of compassion, activism, and genuinely always trying to understand other people. I don’t care if you’re black, white, or pink. Junkie, criminal, or bum. As long as you’re trying to be a better person I will give you time and listen.
Ultimately, I’d say I really don’t know but anger is something I’ve never suffered from. Although there could be an argument for turning any anger inwards in self destructive manners, but again with ADHD they go hand in hand too.
One thing for sure is we are who we are due to our pasts in a certain way and it can be harder for some people and easier for others to overcome it.
Edit: It just occurred to me you said childhood trauma, but I hadn’t really thought about it that much that it would be trauma. Interesting.
Holy shit man, what a ride.
I'm glad you figured some of your shit out and are making progress. I've seen more than one person just crumple under less than half of what you've been through. Big ups, dude.
Having an in-depth conversation with a crossdressing or trans street sex worker at 0100, claiming they were thirty but who looked eighteen at most, looking to do tricks for meth money, while I was outside of a bar on karaoke night on acid.
She showed me her DeviantArt page, which included a drawing of her as a queen on a playing card fellating a shampoo bottle. It was the most fucked up, but interesting drug-addled conversation I've ever had. Very friendly, eventually went down a block to another group of people because quote 'They look pretty drunk'.
Every part of this sounds made up, but I swear it's true.
Edit: For some reason, I think it's important to point out this was a Thursday night.
I find we can have the best conversations with the people we differ from the most, those are the people that have different perspectives that we can learn from.
Ecstasy was the drug for me back in the day and that shit will have you unloading everything, even stuff you wouldn’t tell your therapist. Until it wears off and you’re instantly like uhh I don’t want to talk to anybody anymore. Haha
100% agree. It's a big world out there with people of all kinds, living lifestyles you couldn't possibly imagine (in both a positive and a negative sense). Those rare moments you get to connect with those people, human to human, are always interesting as fuck.
Every time I took acid in public, I was a magnet for massive weirdos, but every time it's ended fantastically well.
(Can't responsibly recommend though, there were very real risks of getting stabbed or robbed a couple times)
Witnessing someone's bad trip. A very, very, very bad trip. The kind of incident with a "before" and an "after". Worse is that it was completely avoidable, had I been a little more concerned about others, rather than myself. I can never forgive myself for what happened that day..
Although I don’t know the details of what entailed on the night, I do believe that people should forgive but don’t forget as holding on to things like that isn’t good for you and this applies to forgiving yourself, but not forgetting so that you don’t make the same mistake again.
One time I got back from annual leave only to find out that my job had been done away with by the board over a year beforehand and my manager had spent the last year submitting fake timesheets claiming I was working a different position, so I could do the parts of her job that the assistant manager wasn't already doing. The company had assumed I knew about it as they couldn't get in contact with me when they discovered it and came down on the manager (my job was only the beginning of her fraud), but I was in the middle of nowhere and had no signal, so the first I heard about it was when I walked into the office and one of my coworkers went "what are you doing here?".
That really is insane. Do you know what happened to the manager committing the fraud?
To my knowledge she got away without any real consequences - last I heard she had the same position at one of the competitors.
When I found out my first love had been cheating on me for 2 months and began gaslighting me, guilt tripping me and gossiping lies, while I was just standing all that in silence. I was already going through very stressful situations as leader of 2 projects that were going downhill in work... I went manic/psychotic, and had a ton of panic attacks, went through disassociation and derealization a lot. I was able to save the projects tho. 1 month later I lost my best friend due to a stupid misunderstanding while manic/psychotic. I had major depression and generalized anxiety for 1 year. To this day I have trauma from all this.
Im sorry you had to go through those things and that you still struggle today with it.
It seems to be a trend that when those closest to you are doing terrible things to you that they’ll gaslight you. Nothing worse than living with a devil, but they’re painting themselves as the saint to your mutual friends. It can really bring out the worst in yourself.
I hope you have some good ways of coping with the trauma now as it isn’t healthy to burden yourself or carry that around.
If you want to chat you can always reach out and I’ll listen with no judgement. 👊
Probably climbing up the West Ridge of Quandary Peak in CO. I was with 3 college friends. I didn't expect the altitude to affect me as much as it did, but I got pretty winded. It was a little snowy and wet, so our holds were sketchy at times. Along the ridge it's class 3 climbing, and the crux is a crack in a steep rock with a dangerous fall behind you. That was probably the biggest adrenaline rush I've ever had.
Thankfully we were greeted by some friendly mountain goats on our descent.
Here's a good video of the climb. The harder stuff starts about 9 minutes in.
That’s scary as hell, but also looks quite rewarding.
I’ve often been curious about climbing as a fitness endeavour but I fear it’s too late now and I’m weak haha.
If I tried this again today I would perish need to be rescued
But with discipline and training, this climb is very achievable! You don't need to be a technical climber for this one.
Cooool I was expecting my hands to start sweating but it looks like something I could almost do ! Nice view. Loved the drone shots
Hey, that post on that other instance was mine ;)
Would you say it was the craziest moment of your life ?
Definitely
Hey, small world. Hope you answer the other commenters request.
Seems strange that all stories here are so mild? Anyone got an actually crazy but real story?
One time I tripped but then I caught balance just in time
👏🏼👏🏼
Be the change you want to see…
Not sure if I'd class it as the craziest moment of my life, but it was like a scene out of a sitcom:
When I was a teenager I briefly worked part-time at a place that refurbished various household appliances. Donations came in through the front and ended up in back with very little looking over. We took all sorts in and the workshop floor was split into various departments based on what appliances they dealt with. I was a new hire and they were still cycling me 'round various departments, my least favourite one was when I was assigned to cleaning out used ovens.
One day this box came in and, like, we opened it up and there were various electronic massaging gizmos. So, my supervisor is pulling 'em out, he passes some of 'em to me to give a lookover to make sure they're clean and do, like, PAT tests and stuff.
I'm plodding along and he gets to work on the rest himself. I'm doing the tests on this thing that's like a plastic plate with this piece on the top vaguely shaped like a pair of cupped hands, when my supervisor calls me over to lend a hand. He's got this black tube that goes a bit wider on one end, about as thick as my wrist. It looked kinda like a torch but with a cap screwed over the bit the light's in.
His hands are a bit slippy so he's having a hard time unscrewing the cap, so he asked me to have a go. Wider end pointed away from me, I wrapped my hand around the cap and gave it a good twist. The first clue I had that something was amiss was that my supervisor went bright red. I asked him what's wrong and just told me to see for myself, so I turn the thing in my hand and see this silicone orifice looking back at me.
That was how I learnt what a fleshlight is.
Probably being held at gunpoint by a guard at a Jordanian airbase that I was inside of, doing a timed ruck march, as a US soldier.
I didn't speak his dialect, so I couldn't pick up much, but my gut said he was pissed he was on guard overnight and decided to ruin my night, too.
Only like the initial 15-30 seconds were really stressful, it was largely just annoying, since I couldn't communicate with anyone, standing there with my ruck on the ground and my hands up.