A favorite on /r/askreddit, or at least it seems that way to me.
I only have one, and it’s not very entertaining.
I was on a bus going to work. A few stops before mine the bus gets cut off by another bus. The driver started yelling at the other driver then pulled over and got out of the bus to, I assume, escalate the conflict. We were near my stop anyway, so I got off before things could get hairy.
I was smoking weed in an alleyway and some homeless dude (HD1) drew a knife on another homeless dude (hd2) and demanded that HD2 let HD1 buy HD2 some meth.
Sucked because it was behind my apartment so getting out was just going inside.
When the crowd started getting surly because Billy Corgan just threw his guitar down on the stage and stormed off after somebody in the floor crowd threw a shoe and hit him in the head.
Everyone’s hair started levitating. I freaked out and insisted we all leave the mountain top lookout immediately.
Massive bolt hit our prior location about a minute later.
Funny enough I came here to tell a similar story: We were surprised by upcoming bad weather with the possibility of a thunderstorm in the alps somewhat - we saw it coming, but underestimated the speed. (That was before Smartphones btw, so no weather app).
There is a Y junction on that trail. One leads to a serviced hut (which we hate, the people operating it were assholes) and towards the “wrong” valley. It’s shorter but yeah…the wrong direction.
The other way leads through a small section of a fixed rope/via ferrata section but straight towards our cars. We thought we would have enough time.
Around 5min after entering the route (which goes further up far beyond where we enter) we find out it takes longer than anticipated and it’s a proper alpine thunderstorm. Which is coming fast now. Well, if you haven’t seen a proper thunderstorm in the mountains - they are something else. Due to the higher pressure gradients, the interference with the terrain,etc. they are absolutely terrifiying. And deadly. If the lighting doesn’t get you the cold will (I literally saw temperature drops of 27 degrees in 20 minutes). And it that doesn’t get you the stones will.
Well. Slight panic set in,but we can handle. Not our first rodeo. Until our hair started to “levitate” a bit under the helmets, on the arms,etc. And then the steel wires started to “sing”. Kind of like a Theremin.
This when we knew we were fucked. Going back up? Means exposing us more. Down the wires? Likely going to electrocute us.
So we decided to get down directly. Stupidest decision I ever was part of in the mountains. because we didn’t really know the terrain below us,but it’s around 180m to the ground and then around 500m of mountain pasturr before the forest starts. Our logic was that the risk from the steel wire is higher than the risk of being forced to weather out in the rock wall. What would have happened if we didn’t find a good intermediate stand at one point I don’t know. (None has a 180m rope with one…so you need to find a lot of intermediate stands to secure yourself. This is normally done upwards,not downards. At least we had two ropes which makes things much easier. )
We send the girl that was with us down first (as she was the lightest and the best climber). And actually made it down surprisingly quick. But fuck…that could have gone wrong. When we were basically at the bottom a lighting hit a section just above were we would have been. Pelting a section a bit to the left of us with football sized stones.
There is a scene in rick and Morty where thex are crying in their car how close the last adventure was - it was basically us in the car, we all were shaking for a day.
Cool, I never realised there could be possible warnings of lightning strikes.
I’m pretty sure we got taught about that in school, though I forgot most of it, including what you’re supposed to do…
Not very exciting, but loved hanging out on beaches on the west coast. This one went from a dock to a nice sandy beach that was bordered by a clay cliff. Well, a friend and I roll up and run quite a distance (ah, youthful energy!) exploring along the clay cliffs when the waves get weirdly big and loud. I guess the tide was actually coming in, not going out, and the cliffs weren’t climbable. Only way safely out was off the beach and back to the dock. The stretch we were on wasn’t even accesible at high tide, totally underwater. My friend was a big fella, but he tucked it in and ran with me like Ive never seen him run before. We were fine, but I remember feeling that realization strike.
Here’s one of mine.
‘04 some friends and I had planned a trip to Canada. We left right before Charley is hitting and really churning up the atmosphere. We made our way up the east coast seeing people we know along the way. Now it’s time to go through the Poconos. It was my vehicle but I wasn’t driving. So I’m watching the clouds and I’m like that looks bad. But we keep driving. I keep watching and finally I’m like no we have to get off now. So we exit and pull into a fast food place as it starts dumping hail on us. We run to the door and people were looking up. We were like what the heck. They said a tornado was spotted and headed this way.
We never saw the actual tornado but yeah that was fun.
When I was 16, I took the city bus to school and we had bus tickets that you could buy at the local corner store. The corner store was a 3 block walk from my house, and I was going there one day to buy a sheet of tickets. As I set out walking, a man in a white van slowed down to whistle/shout sexual things, which is sadly something that teen girls experience regularly - that occurrence was just another usual day.
But then, the man started circling the block over and over as a method to follow me. When I hit the Main Street he pulled into a gas station to pause and see which business would go into. And when I entered the convenience store, he parked the white van in front and stood on the front steps smoking and blocking all exit points.
I asked the convenience store clerk if he had a back exit I could run away through. He did not, but the man went to the front steps and yelled at the man and got him to leave. He parked across the street still watching, so I waited in the store until I saw ANY bus coming to the nearby stop and immediately got on. I took that to a crowded shopping mall and passed enough time until I felt that I could get back to what I was planning to do that day.
Life is disgusting for teen girls.
I’m sorry that happened to you
Till reading a couple of the posts, I’d forgotten about this:
I was about 22, and living with my first roommate. He was a decent enough guy, but got rowdy when he drank with friends. I don’t drink, but as an introvert who was trying to fit in with “normal” people, I went along with the following.
He had some friends over, they were drinking, but not a lot. One of them speaks up about a woman, his manager at work, who they all seemed to know somehow, and hated. They know where she lives, and that she’s not home, so off we all go. I’m just following along, because I want to fit in, and I’m stupid. They break into her house, I go in with them, thinking they might just fuck around and maybe steal some booze, or something. That’s all that’s going on for a few minutes, then someone says, “I’m going to piss on her bed.”, and another one adds, “I’ll shit on her bed.” That was bad enough, in my mind, but someone else ups the threat and says, “We should kill her cat, where is it?”
‘Ugh, what the fuck am I doing here?’, I think. So, I tell my roommate, who wasn’t making stupid threats, but seemed likely to go along with it, that I was leaving. Fortunately, I had driven my own car, because I learned that lesson long before this incident.
According to my roommate when he got home, they did piss on her bed, but did not kill the cat. I moved out soon after that.
Was walking from the condo where I lived to the pool hall across the street with my sister. This involved cutting through some bushes and then crossing a sort of busy street with sidewalks on both sides. We successfully made it across to the other sidewalk when a car pulling out of the parking lot turns in our direction. This was all normal. Then another car quickly pulls out of the same parking lot, overtakes him and whips in front of him forcing him onto the sidewalk just a few feet from where we were, like if he hit the gas, he would have run over us. Then an SUV rushed in from behind us along with two other vehicles. Cops jump out with guns drawn and start ordering the guy out of the car while pounding on the glass with the butts of their guns. We’re like practically one of the cops we’re so close. Obviously the police had no idea two people were going to suddenly appear in their drama from behind some bushes. Glad we didn’t get shot or run over. Could have really ruined our evening.
It wasn’t an immediate turn heel, and leave moment, but my wife and I had talked about moving out of Texas for a while. Mainly driven by our son with special needs. We had been paying tens of thousands dollars a year for therapy and constantly fighting with his school to get the services he needed. Then last year things went downhill fast. We ended up pulling him out of school because one of the teachers told us they found him in the parking lot laying under a car. Not surprised he would do that, he is opposed with cars and especially exhaust systems, but he was supposed to have a paraprofessional with him all day, so we really wondered how he got away like. Unfortunately, he has communication problems, so he couldn’t tell us. We had already been in talks with a lawyer about bringing a lawsuit to challenge the services they were offering. But his IEP already said he was supposed to have a para with him. When the lawyer told us it would cost $10-15k just to bring a lawsuit to force them to do what they are already legally required to do, we decided that was it. We were leaving Texas.
We ended up in Connecticut and it was the best decision we ever made. There are so many services here for him. He is truly thriving. My wife and I don’t immediately tense up when we see the school calling. I broke into tears during my first meeting with them because it was all about what they could do for him. Versus every meeting ever in Texas where they made us feel like he was a burden on the school.
I have some friends that are conservative and are constantly complaining about the high tax here in the northeast, but this is the exact stuff I point to when it comes up. You get what you pay for. You couldn’t pay me to move to the south.
I realized a long time ago that in the South your death might be a political stepping stone to higher office for some Republican asshole. Never live in The South
Not only do I know that my taxes are going to the betterment of the community, but in the end I actually save money. Not just with the therapy and things my son now gets through school. But the sales tax and property taxes are lower. Plus a my insurance premiums are substantially lower. My home owners insurance when from $12k a year to $2k because people don’t want to write insurance for places like Texas anymore.
Texas can be nice to stop by for a brief visit. Any longer and you start seeing some of its more problematic side.
Ten years ago I went to a work colleague’s stag-do. I got very drunk off of numerous pints of lager and shots and the night was going great, until we went to a gay nightclub.
Someone in our group got very belligerent with me when he was asking me what kind of drink I’d want. At the time, I thought he was going to seriously hurt me (the alcohol was probably clouding my judgement), so I quietly removed myself from the situation and literally ran from that place.
Unfortunately, the “friend” who I met up with after I bolted took me back to that place because he was more interested in scoring cocaine and dancing with other men than looking out for me.
My wife and I were on vacation at a beach town in Europe with lots of really cool old things to see. A local said he knew of a cool thing off the beaten path a little. Like idiots we followed him for a little bit until we realized by off the beaten path a little, he meant completely away from everyone. We noped out of that before he got us completely isolated so he and his friends could likely jump us.
In 2011, I worked in West Bromwich, greater Birmingham, UK, on Birmingham Road, where it joined High Street. The news had been reporting on riots starting in Tottenham, London, and it was said that they were spreading. One lunch time during this time, I went out to get lunch from a great Indian sweet shop called Dhillons that did an amazing Samosa Chaat, which was about 5 minutes walk down the road from our office. As I got closer, I could see a crowd and police further down the road, not far from the sweet shop, and coming towards me. Then I saw smoke, and turned around, and went back to the office, without my samosa chaat. Loads of busies with full blues and two’s on (police cars with sirens and lights on) started whizzing past, towards the trouble, and this continued all afternoon. When I left, the air was cloyed with smoke, and the street towards the sweet shop was cordoned off. The next day we learnt that the sweet shop got smashed up, and their van was torched, one of many that got hit. Nearly got caught up in a riot!
My family was about to walk into a Target in south Florida when two police cars, driving much faster than was safe for a parking lot, pulled up to the front doors. Their lights were off, but my wife and I made eye contact and turned our kids around.
Generally speaking, officers of the law exceeding the speed limit is always a “avoid this area” signal for me.
Rural Thailand. About an hour out of Chiang Mai. Bunch of the lads in the Muay Thai gym I trained out of were having fights at this event. Great experience. All going very smoothly and culturally very different (I’d say our small group were the only non-Thais there and we were with a bunch of Thais) which was great.
Now the Thais are very fond of betting on these fights and sometimes the bets are big. Spices things up. Anyway later on in the evening one lad kicks another up and down the ring but the judges call it for the other side.
The crowd went absolutely wild thinking it was a fix (honestly I think it was, it wasn’t even close). The judges were starting to get bustled away for their safety and I see some very very irate lad coming with a hammer ready to do some damage.
Funnily enough one of the other Irish lads I was with who spent a long time over there training and fighting was fully chill. I was not haha.
It was a long time ago so I can’t remember with certainty if that was the end of the night but I think it was.
I loved my time in Chiang Mai, I could totally imagine this happening
Superb city. Absolutely loved it there. Was not a fan of Bangkok tbh but CM was great.
This little event (edit: it wasn’t little actually, bad description, there were throngs there) was really in the arse end of nowhere. Absolutely fantastic experience. I threw a few words of Thai at one guy when trying to find the toilet and we instantly became besties.
Love the Thais generally. They’re so kind and patient.
Absolutely. I arrived thinking the name “land of smiles” was just tourist marketing but it’s completely true. I enjoyed having a pint of Guinness in the random “Irish” pub in CM too. It was too novel not to.
Haha. How was the pint? The rule is that Guinness usually doesn’t travel well. I don’t go to the pub very often but always drink Guinness when I do but I find it grand abroad tbh.
One of my best memories of CM was a BBQ place that was incredible. Nom nom nom nom nom.
Having had pints in Ireland and the US… not the best, haha
Hahaha. I guess it was a stretch to expect in fairness.
Wasn’t me but your story reminded me of my fiance on the bus a few years ago.
He was riding the bus with headphones on. All of a sudden he sees everyone on the bus start ducking under the seats except him. He’s like hm that’s weird what’s goin on. Like 5-10 seconds go by and he takes his headphones off and realizes someone was shooting a gun outside and a stray bullet went straight through the bus. Nobody was hurt.







