I did a summer contract in forestry, up north, in the mountains, middle of nowhere. We had to get into an area that was beyond a pipeline blockade - meaning a group of indigenous leaders were blocking a pipeline from being built on their land.

The higher ups negotiated with them while we spent days off gaining bad reputations in town.

When we were allowed through, they welcomed us individually and explained their reasons for being cautious. They told us that people dressed as (or actually were) cops tried to convince them they were on public land and force them to leave, they had people pretending to be blockade protesters who came in and tried to burn down their buildings, they had people blow up their signs, they had helicopters drop off equipment and workers beyond the blockade in the night. Taking all this with a heavy pinch of salt, we got through to work.

Not an hour after we started, black goddamn helicopters showed up. About ten of them. They hung out all the first day, there were fewer the second and only one for the next two. And they were low, I could feel the wind from the rotors at times.

I don’t know why. We discussed it over plenty of drinks without coming to any good conclusions. I don’t know if they thought we were with the blockade and wanted to intimidate us, or why the pipeline people didn’t talk to the forestry people to figure out we were just labourers. As it turns out that kind of thing does happen in real life.

A bunch of us took big shits in the open where they could watch.

I had sex once.

Not a movie, but there was a period of time when my parents’ house had them living upstairs, my older brother, his wife, and their young son living in the converted basement, and me temporarily staying in a guest bedroom after I had just gotten out of the Army. And we all worked at the family pizza restaurant together.

It was the perfect TGIF sitcom scenario.

We snatched a few Neighborhood Crime Watch signs from our rural neighborhood.

If anyone happens to have a recording from 1998 of when the Daily Show came out to rural PA and interviewed the state troopers and crime watch committee about it, we’ve been trying to find that recording for years. It was definitely during the Craig Kilborn years and I believe Steve Colbert was the field reporter who did the segment, but I’m not sure, because all those Daily show guys looked the same to me back before they got famous.

Jay Leno also did a Headlines bit on it, but that’s not nearly as fun.

Once i had a bike accident. The car was parked and the driver opened the door milliseconds before i drove by.

The bike smashed into his door and i went flying onto the other lane, where luckily no cars were driving at the time.

The movie like thing was that i landed rolling a few times and ended up on my feet without any injury or whatsoever. The bike was trashed, as was the car’s door. The driver was also pretty shocked about what happened. I was just wondering why nothing happened to me.

Ok, i was young ( 26 ) and I’m sure my body wouldn’t be so lucky nowadays.

Standing in a convenience store when a car comes crashing through the front, and broken glass flies all around all the customers including me. None of us got hurt, but it was scary AF. Car was being driven by an elderly person who confused the brake pedal with the gas pedal.

My husband had to evict his coke dealer at the apartment building he worked at.

Walked out of the shower with a towel around my waist, facing a tweaked guy with a gun. Took my wallet and ran out of the apartment. Good times.

I saw a lady slip on a banana peel irl outside of the Disney store in Dublin, Ireland. I didn’t even know it was possible. I felt really bad bc I couldn’t go help her up because I was laughing so hard and had to go into the Disney store so it wouldn’t look like I was laughing at her. I was just more shocked that it actually happened.

Once I saw a car flying off the street in an accident.

It was going at good speed on the Autobahn, came off the road a little to the left, and the driver lost control. It went over to the right side crossing all lanes at once, then bumped the guardrails there a few times, started to spin and finally jumped up high and off to the right.

All the people in the car survived.

Been in several car accidents. Rolled a car down a hill. Was hit by a car and went over the bonnet, roof and landed on my feet behind the car bruised but OK.
Got run over by another car dislocated my knee and my heel burst open, the lady in the car gave me about 20 chocolate penguin biscuits for the shock, then I got on a bus and went to my mates house for a joint.
Done illigal bridge swings off of railway bridges and damns and abseiled away from the cops.
Climbed onto the roof of a moving steam train dressed as Indiana Jones walked along the carridge then climbed back in through a window, scaring the crap out of the people in there.
Then met the girl of my dreams, had kids settled down (a little) and lived happily ever after.

Jumping my bike off curb cuts and a garage exploded behind me. I was like 9 or 10.

About 15 years ago I was giving a presentation at a technical conference. This was me giving a presentation in front of a room full of about 50 other engineers. At this point in my career this was still pretty new to me, so I was nervous. It was getting time for my presentation and I needed to do a last minute pee before I did my presentation.

I went to the bathroom, peed in a urinal, and then went to wash my hands. I pushed down the bathroom faucet and it exploded sending up a geyser of water about air a foot or two into the. Now had I really been on a TV show, my pants would have been soaked in the crotch area, but luckily in real life I stepped back and didn’t get wet. However, this was the perfect setup for a young nervous engineer giving a technical presentation to be thoroughly embarrassed. Luckily I’m either not on a TV show, or I’m not the main character.

On the lunch long time ago, I was complaining to my colleagues about surprisingly expensive pizza: “20 euros for the pizza! In some countries you would get a blowjob for that kind of money!” Few minutes later, another colleague joined us and I immediately told him: “This is 20 euro pizza!”. He answered: “What?? Did you get a blow job with it?” One female colleague noted: “I see you both visit similar kind of … restaurants”.

In college, rowing for state championship. Sitting in the bow position rowing against the best team in the state. You’re not supposed to look out of the boat because you need to keep your head inline so as not to upset the boat. But because I was at the front I could see the other boat peripherally. When the gun went off and we started rowing I expected to see the back of their boat disappear, but it didn’t. And after pulling for a couple hundred meters they were still there. We were IN this thing. We weren’t losing.

To explain a little about rowing. The coxswain basically communicates with the stroke, the person right in front of him, the strongest rower that the rest of us follow. But he has a bull horn, or at least back then that’s what we used. So he communicates with the whole boat. If he calls a “power 10,” that means we are supposed to take 10 harder strokes to pick up some speed. A good coxswain knows when to call these. Obviously you can’t pull harder 100% of the time or you’ll burn out. But this time he was calling them more often than usual sending a subtle message that we were in the race of our lives. You can also here the other boat calling power 10’s and we were matching them. The boat started to have what we call “swing.” This is when the rowers are all in sync producing a sort of harmony. The boat feels like it’s going faster. Like it’s up on plane (not a real thing in an 8 man racing shell).

As the race proceeded, we were neck and neck. At one point the boats got close. Our oars, nearly made contact with their oars. But it wasn’t our boat that was off coarse. It was theirs. We held the line as they corrected. They were supposed to beat us, but we were right there. We could hear the excitement in the voice of our coxswain. The finish line was approaching. We were all fighting from hitting the wall. Pushing harder than we ever had, knowing we had a chance. We heard the call from the other boat for a power 10 but our coxswain did not call one. I could see the back of the other boat pull slightly ahead and I thought, this is where they play their trump card. Ten strokes passed by and still nothing from our coxswain, we knew the finish line was coming up but nothing. At this point there is nothing else going through you mind. It’s just raw focus. Like tunnel vision. Then it happened. Our coxswain called out, “Power to the finish!” And then something like, “Row like hell! We’ve got this!” In my peripheral vision that boat was still right there, just like we were still at the start line. They had one of those old timey metal flag things that would rotate 90 degrees making a ching sound, then again when the next boat passed. It had gone ching-ching rapidly almost like a cha-ching, because we had crossed the finish line so close to each other. Then the moment we had been waiting for. He called, “Let it run,” meaning we could stop rowing the race was over. He kept us going straight while we all collapsed, laying backward in the boat, oars spread on the water haphazard. I could hear a guy in the other boat dry heaving. After a moment, when it momentum was spent, we were all just sitting there looking at each other asking the rowers on the other team, who one. No one knew. It was a photo finish. We had to wait for the results. It felt like forever. Our teammates were on the shore yelling something to us. There was some chaos we didn’t understand and I realized then, this was just like being in the movies.