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This thread has dredged up some heretofore apparently repressed memories that I am not entirely sure I would have liked to remember. When I was about six or sevenish, my brother (who is two years older than me) and I used to go over to a neighbor friend’s to play. He lived on the corner of our cul-de-sac, and the road that went past it wasn’t extremely busy, but was a pretty well-traveled street, long and straight for about 800 yards. It’s kind of important to note that the speed limit was around 15 mph in a decidedly suburban neighborhood with plenty of small kids (like us). One day, we were futzing around in his yard when we heard incessant beeping, like a car horn beeping, coming from the very end of this road. And it’s getting closer and louder, and fast. Curious, the three of us head to the corner right as this middle aged lady comes speeding by in her old, yellow VW Bug, her hand hammering away on the horn, the biggest, happiest grin on her face, staring right at us. It was a moment straight out of the movies, where a split-second moment is slowed down to a few frames and it’s ingrained into your mind presumably forever. Then it was over, and my brother, our friend, and I were left with an ethereal, lingering sense of, “Well that was weird,” and that was the end of that. Many years later, while walking home from the bus stop after college down that same street, two guys in a large pickup pull up next to me and the guy in the passenger seat dangles out of his window, a camera in hand, and asks me, “Can I take your picture?” Naturally, my mind screams that this must be the guy that my parents and elementary teachers have warned me about all these years, and I politely decline. They drove off, but I spent a good half hour walking in circles around my cul-de-sac, desperately trying to throw them off in a paranoid bid to remain un-raped and not dead in pieces. I realize now I probably should have reported them and their license plate, but such incidents are entirely uncommon where I grew up and I was so sheltered, I had never before been solicited in that manner. I was flustered and scared. And this story brought to you by my sister’s friend, who for context, is black. This man, who I’ll call J, was taking a piss at a urinal one day, when he suddenly becomes aware of a skinny white boy a couple urinals down just staring at him with the intensity of Marty McFly at his young father at the Soda Shoppe. J shrugs it off and continues his business, but this dude is relentless. Finally, it becomes too much. “What?” No reply; staaaare. ”What?” “Are…are you black?” Balk. “Excuse me?” “Are you black?” This time with a kind of hushed reverence. “…Yyyes?” The way my sister related this story to me, the white dude gets this look of total excitement on his face, like Christmas came exceptionally early. “Can I see your tail?” And there is Total Silence, both between my family and my sister, and J and Honky Boy. Now J is a reasonable, well-liked person. I’ve met him, and loved the little time we shared together. He later inferred that this person grew up in a place with no African Americans, and that the people who raised him were racist fuckwits, because this young man, with genuine, sincere curiosity and absolutely zero ill-intent, had just asked a black man if he had a tail. J took him aside and gently explained that no African Americans had tails, no human race had tails, and that he should probably never ask anyone that question ever again. They parted on friendly terms. This took place while all persons involved were in their latter years of post graduate school, so around their early thirties. This poor, misinformed boy had lived over thirty years of his life under the impression that all black people had tails. 
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Aug 14, 2012 18:04
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empty sea posted:Even though I think it's horrible that he actually thought black people had tails...it's still almost sad because now his world is a little less exciting and magical. If I had actual real-time wit and humor (as opposed to thinking up things after the fact), I'd have told J to tell the guy that not all people of his race had tails, but that he'd had his cut off at birth like Son Goku. Then Honky Boy could have gone home and disproved his parents, but then say that he'd also met a Super Saiyan! 
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Aug 15, 2012 03:24
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AHungryRobot posted:So this just happened. I have three cats, one brown, one black, and one white. The white one's the oldest and the biggest of the three and always has to get his way. The black one is passive and kind of stupid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP3gzee1cps
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Apr 17, 2013 02:33
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Early this morning, I woke up to something briefly crawling along my arm. "No big; we'll get along fine as long as it stays off my face," I think, and go back to sleep. I wake up proper several hours later and go to the bathroom, where I notice something stuck in my hair. Thinking it's probably a clump of cat hair, I bring it closer to my face. Ground into several strands of hair, is a slightly pressed, not-quite-dried, ex-spider. The only way I could tell it was a spider was the body with several eyes, as it had significantly less legs than it should have. I'm sorry, spiderbro.  At least you didn't walk over my face.
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Feb 25, 2014 18:01
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Phy posted:Are you sure it was a dead spider and not a shed exoskeleton? It'd be way creepier if a spider chose your hair as a great place to go BoyBlunder posted:You're cool with something crawling on your arm during your sleep? kinmik has a new favorite as of 18:36 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 18:34
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You've never gone  kinmik has a new favorite as of 19:05 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 19:01
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JibbaJabberwocky's experience reminded me of a similar occurrence that happened when I was a kid. For a few summers, my parents enrolled my brother and I in a summer fun program that, among other things, allowed us to go sailing in a sheltered bay. Standard procedure when we were out there was to capsize the boat and teach us how to upright it again while remaining calm. What I didn't find out until several years later was that this deep, dark bay was a nursery for hammerhead and bonnet head sharks. As we were wallowing next to the overturned boat, a kid next to me lets out a terrified bellow and shrieks that something brushed his leg. Someone then screams "Shark!" and the next thing we know, there's a dozen kids screaming bloody murder and crying while scrabbling at the belly of the boat as the adults are quickly trying to take control of the situation. Thankfully, no one was hurt at all, because we were more likely to hurt ourselves in our self-induced panic and confusion than sustain injury from a curious, two-foot shark pup.
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Jun 10, 2014 17:05
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Shroud posted:snip  I could read any and all stories you have to tell about your experiences.Here's a little more for all you ocean goers. Not mine obviously, but too good not to share. Dude completely unwittingly captured this image.
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Jun 11, 2014 17:45
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Maybe his kid was doing an art project? I once helped a neighbor with his grade school project whose criteria was to only use "natural objects". He was looking for a boat and I suggested these. The only place to find them was alongside a busy freeway and I imagine to anyone driving by, two adults, a teenager, and a kid scrounging around on the ground and picking stuff off the ground into plastic bags looked pretty drat out of place. My WTC moment is finding that photo and wondering who'd pay money to use that particular image.
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Jul 8, 2014 14:14
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razorrozar posted:If I was blind, I wouldn't be posting. But also, I'd get one of these.
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Jul 11, 2014 16:27
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