True life story

[Actionjick]

I had another break up with my bipolar girlfriend Tiffany. I was kinda mad and didn’t want to talk to her until I calmed down- silent treatment. She tried to call me dozens of times and got desperate and found a tee-shirt I left at her place. The tee-shirt was from the guy I worked for, L&M carpenters and had Dom’s phone number on it.
A couple of days later I show up for work in Chicago. It’s 6:45 in the morning and nobody wants to be there. I notice Dom laughing crazy in his van and he motions for me to come over. He says, with his head face down on his arm through tears of laughter, “Bobby, you gotta hear this !” and holds out his phone, containing himself so I can hear. It’s a message from Tiffany and the nastiest message you ever heard, two minutes of “Bob thinks you’re and asshole and Bob don’t like you and Bob thinks you’re an idiot …. Blah blah blah.”
Dom goes “You ain’t happy here, I’M GIVING YOU A RAISE, two dollars/hour !”
After work I stop by Tiffany’s apartment and yelled at her through the 2nd story window “ YOU TRIED TO GET ME FIRED BUT I GOT A RAISE INSTEAD ! I’m too good ! I am great ! I am great ! “


LOLOLOLOL

I seriously tear up with joy every time I read this. The buzz from yelling up to her window must have been incredible.

 

[Actionjick]

Lol was going to post a story but read Bob's post again and totally forgot what I was going to post.

 

[bendizoid]

I seriously tear up with joy every time I read this. The buzz from yelling up to her window must have been incredible.

Cherished moment of complete and total ironic vindication

 

[Actionjick]

On the destroyer I had a shipmate named Christian. Short, black guy from Cincinnati with a great sense of humor. We both worked in the after engine room and hit it off immediately. His favorite saying was " the blacker the berry the sweeter the juice. " . That still makes me smile.

We were in the shipyard at Long Beach and I was sharing a cheap, cockroach infested apartment with a shipmate for $110 a month. Trust me it was better than the barracks. Anyway on a day off I am unfortunately sicker than sh!t with a sinus infection. Bad.

Suddenly there is a knock at the door. I open it and there stands a grinning Christian with two of the ugliest women I have ever seen and they appear ready, willing, and able. I explain to Christian and the ladies that I am incapacitated and unable to be a gracious host. I tell Christian that he has to shoulder the burden himself and they depart for adventures only to be imagined.

Trust me the ladies lack of good looks was not the deterrent. I was a sailor and not adverse to paying for it so declining a freebie was not something to be taken lightly. It's still one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me. Or tried to. Thanks Chris!

 

[bendizoid]

I was in the Boy Scouts and one summer of my junior year of high school our Troop, Troop 100, went to scout Mecca: Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. We took this train across the country with some other troops. I remember listing to ‘Rock Lobster” for hours because one of the guys in another troop had this ‘jam box’ and that’s all he played.
Anyway, we trekked across the mountains and Mt Baldy and did a 10 day excursion in 7 days. We carried all our food and gear (50-75 lbs/person) up and down switch backs until eventually, after 6 days got to the ‘Tooth of Time’ this massive (seemed like a mile high) shear cliff. We dangled our feet over the edge and checked out the Incredible view, all the way the ‘The Plains’. This is when the real story happens, at least to me. We went down behind the Tooth of Time where the cliffs aren’t quite as tall and shear but massive cliffs non-the-less. For some reason the adults took off and left us there by ourselves (good grief) and eventually we got bored, My friend Chris decided to do a little free hand cliff climbing up the back face. I decided to climb next to him, maybe 30 feet away and up the face we went. It was all good and fun until I got about 100’ up to a part where I couldn’t go up anymore and was stuck. So I’m stuck on the cliff and realize ‘GOING DOWN IS HARDER THAN GOING UP ! I CANT SEE MY STEP !” Then I looked down and started shaking, total fear. The area was the most jagged death rock area ever, no soft spot to land on, only razor sharp boulders and doom. My strength left me as I panicked, feeling kinda vertigo like I was falling backwards. I clutched to the Tooth of Time to stop the dizziness and realized ‘YOU GOT ABOUT 30 SECONDS BEFORE YOU GET TOO WEAK AND FALL OFF ONTO THOSE WICKED, NASTY ROCKS’. Then something amazing happed: I got pissed off . ‘I AM NOT GOING TO DIE TODAY, MOVE !! ‘
I made a move and slid down, face against the stone, fingernails biting the rock, knees getting scraped. I kept moving, ignoring the pain, hop/sliding my way back down to the bottom not stopping lest the debilitating fear returns.
Lesson, and I hope everybody who reads this takes it to heart: If you find yourself weak and paralyzed with fear: get pissed off. Scared goes away real quick when you get pissed. It’s simply a useful survival tool, I mean being pissed off is not the way to go but sometimes it has it uses.

PS I’m reminded of this US Marine landing on Iwo Jima, when after the quiet and all Hell broke loose, he reminisced: “At first we were pretty scared but then we got mad”.

 

[Actionjick]

I was in the Boy Scouts and one summer of my junior year of high school our Troop, Troop 100, went to scout Mecca: Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. We took this train across the country with some other troops. I remember listing to ‘Rock Lobster” for hours because one of the guys in another troop had this ‘jam box’ and that’s all he played.
Anyway, we trekked across the mountains and Mt Baldy and did a 10 day excursion in 7 days. We carried all our food and gear (50-75 lbs/person) up and down switch backs until eventually, after 6 days got to the ‘Tooth of Time’ this massive (seemed like a mile high) shear cliff. We dangled our feet over the edge and checked out the Incredible view, all the way the ‘The Plains’. This is when the real story happens, at least to me. We went down behind the Tooth of Time where the cliffs aren’t quite as tall and shear but massive cliffs non-the-less. For some reason the adults took off and left us there by ourselves (good grief) and eventually we got bored, My friend Chris decided to do a little free hand cliff climbing up the back face. I decided to climb next to him, maybe 30 feet away and up the face we went. It was all good and fun until I got about 100’ up to a part where I couldn’t go up anymore and was stuck. So I’m stuck on the cliff and realize ‘GOING DOWN IS HARDER THAN GOING UP ! I CANT SEE MY STEP !” Then I looked down and started to panic. The area was the most jagged death rock area ever, no soft spot to land on, only razor sharp boulders and doom. My strength left me in the panic, feeling kinda vertigo like I was falling backwards. I clutched to Toorh of Time to stop the dizziness and realized ‘YOU GOT ABOUT 30 SECONDS BEFORE YOU GET TOO WEAK AND FALL OFF ONTO THOSE NASTY ROCKS’. Then something amazing happed, I got pissed off ! ‘I AM NOT GOING TO DIE TODAY, MOVE !! ‘
I made a move and slid down, face against the stone, fingernails biting the rock, knees getting scraped. I kept moving, ignoring the pain, hope/sliding my way back down to the bottom.
Lesson, and I hope everybody who reads this takes it to heart: If you find yourself weak and paralyzed with fear get pissed off. Scared goes away real quick when you get pissed. It’s simply a useful survival tool, I mean being pissed off is not the way to go but sometimes it has it uses.

PS I’m reminded of this US Marine landing on Iwo Jima, when after the quiet and all Hell broke loose, he reminisced: “At first we were pretty scared but then we got mad”.

Another nice story and good advice. I like Rock Lobster but in moderation.

 

[bendizoid]

Another nice story and good advice. I like Rock Lobster but in moderation.

I’ve used the ‘technique’ to overcome fear of public speaking and karaoke. Keep the anger sorta internalized until you get over it, try not to let anybody see that you’re pissed, this is not a display, it’s overcoming paralyzing fear.

 

[fenyan]

LOL I wonder how many of us have teenaged free-solo climbing experiences. I got stuck climbing around Yosemite, but not on shear cliffs. A lot of exposure though.

 

[Gamer72]

I’ve used the ‘technique’ to overcome fear of public speaking and karaoke. Keep the anger sorta internalized until you get over it, try not to let anybody see that you’re pissed, this is not a display, it’s overcoming paralyzing fear.

What happened to Chris ?

 

[pensatl1962]

I was in the Boy Scouts and one summer of my junior year of high school our Troop, Troop 100, went to scout Mecca: Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. We took this train across the country with some other troops. I remember listing to ‘Rock Lobster” for hours because one of the guys in another troop had this ‘jam box’ and that’s all he played.
Anyway, we trekked across the mountains and Mt Baldy and did a 10 day excursion in 7 days. We carried all our food and gear (50-75 lbs/person) up and down switch backs until eventually, after 6 days got to the ‘Tooth of Time’ this massive (seemed like a mile high) shear cliff. We dangled our feet over the edge and checked out the Incredible view, all the way the ‘The Plains’. This is when the real story happens, at least to me. We went down behind the Tooth of Time where the cliffs aren’t quite as tall and shear but massive cliffs non-the-less. For some reason the adults took off and left us there by ourselves (good grief) and eventually we got bored, My friend Chris decided to do a little free hand cliff climbing up the back face. I decided to climb next to him, maybe 30 feet away and up the face we went. It was all good and fun until I got about 100’ up to a part where I couldn’t go up anymore and was stuck. So I’m stuck on the cliff and realize ‘GOING DOWN IS HARDER THAN GOING UP ! I CANT SEE MY STEP !” Then I looked down and started shaking, total fear. The area was the most jagged death rock area ever, no soft spot to land on, only razor sharp boulders and doom. My strength left me as I panicked, feeling kinda vertigo like I was falling backwards. I clutched to the Tooth of Time to stop the dizziness and realized ‘YOU GOT ABOUT 30 SECONDS BEFORE YOU GET TOO WEAK AND FALL OFF ONTO THOSE WICKED, NASTY ROCKS’. Then something amazing happed: I got pissed off . ‘I AM NOT GOING TO DIE TODAY, MOVE !! ‘
I made a move and slid down, face against the stone, fingernails biting the rock, knees getting scraped. I kept moving, ignoring the pain, hop/sliding my way back down to the bottom not stopping lest the debilitating fear returns.
Lesson, and I hope everybody who reads this takes it to heart: If you find yourself weak and paralyzed with fear: get pissed off. Scared goes away real quick when you get pissed. It’s simply a useful survival tool, I mean being pissed off is not the way to go but sometimes it has it uses.

PS I’m reminded of this US Marine landing on Iwo Jima, when after the quiet and all Hell broke loose, he reminisced: “At first we were pretty scared but then we got mad”.

Great story and very good advice, especially useful in times like this. I’ll probably be fine because I’m really p*ssed off right now.