Most Stressful, Emotional Life Event

[Judge Roybeanbag 11819]

14 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Grandpa was a piece of work.   I remember riding in his truck and the conversations.   He was a medic in WWII.   He would get mad when I told him he was a nurse.   “I wasn’t a fucking nurse”.  “Yes you were, I have your nurse bag right here”.  “That’s a war bag, son.” Call it what you want, looks like something a nurse would carry.  “ Look you little shit, you have no idea.”  You’re right I don’t.   Then we would pull into Praseks and eat. He may have been a nurse, but he was a badass.  

I inherited the name Bernard from that old man.  God bless him.  

[Sandman 3403]

2 hours ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Grandpa was a piece of work.   I remember riding in his truck and the conversations.   He was a medic in WWII.   He would get mad when I told him he was a nurse.   “I wasn’t a fucking nurse”.  “Yes you were, I have your nurse bag right here”.  “That’s a war bag, son.” Call it what you want, looks like something a nurse would carry.  “ Look you little shit, you have no idea.”  You’re right I don’t.   Then we would pull into Praseks and eat. He may have been a nurse, but he was a badass.  

My buddy was a medic in Afghanistan. When his unit would go door to door, he was the breacher that went in with a 12 gauge. He got to go home on leave when his son was born. Fast forward to today, his son is 13 and playing the new Call of Duty game. My buddy is watching him play and his son had built a breacher class, complete with a 12 gauge and whatnot. He tells his son "Hey, that's me. I did that in the war.". He said his son looked at him and scoffed "Pfft, you were just a medic". 

[cactusflinthead 27598]

Scrolling through the catalog of things that have happened to me and around me I can't point to one that was worse than all the others. Divorce, loss of a child, loss of family by their own hand and disease, the results of my own choices, and nearly dying from the widowmaker and friend getting plugged.

Like the farmer said. Maybe. 

 

[Lidig8r 1870]

5 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

It's hard to read these and not think of your own experiences as either "shit, I should just shut up, I've had it easy," or "if I mention anything I've been through, it'll sound like I'm trying to one-up people -- 'oh YEAH?  You think YOU had it bad?  Wait till you hear THIS ONE!'"

Of course, the reality is that whoever you are, life has managed to kick you in the nuts one way or another.  And it's pointless to compare your pain to someone else's, because it really isn't about relativity.  You don't tell a guy who had one leg blown off by an IED "yeah, man, you're lucky, I met a dude who had BOTH legs blown off by an IED!"  Likewise, you don't tell the dude who lost both legs "man, I bet you wish you were the dude who only lost one leg."  Both experiences crossed the threshold of "traumatic and stressful shit that left a serious fucking scar."

Maybe some of the interesting ones are those that you didn't realize were quite so stressful at the time.  Like the pregnancy my wife lost between our two kids.  Bleeding.  She knew something was wrong.  Went to the hospital, and yep, she'd lost the baby and needed a procedure.  Meanwhile, our toddler daughter was at her part-time nanny's.  I call the nanny to ask can she please stay late, we don't have anyone else to watch her while I rush to the hospital.  "Of course, she's safe here.  Go."  I go to be with my wife through the procedure.  By the time she's in recovery, he mother (coming up from Houston) was there.  So I leave her to go pick up our daughter, knowing my wife will be coming home shortly after.  I ask her if there's anything she wants when she gets home.  She says "biscuits.  Fresh biscuits.  Like, from Jim's."  So, I pick up our daughter at 10:00 pm, way later than she's usually up.  I go in to pick up a half dozen biscuits to go, at the Jim's at 183 and Burnet.  It's 10;00, so it's pretty slow in there.  Waitress goes to get them, comes back and says "you know, all the biscuits we have are a bit old, so I asked the cook to put in a fresh batch.  Why don't you have a seat at the counter." I do.  I plop my 1.5 yr old daughter up on the counter.  The waitress brings her toast and jelly.  She brings me a cup of coffee, without me asking for any of it.  And I sat there at that counter with my smiling, happy daughter, and a kind waitress doting on her.  And I saw and felt the child we had just lost.  I was just hollow in that moment -- it took me months, years, to realize how hollow I really felt.  In a few minutes, we had a box of fresh biscuits, and we headed home.  I've never forgotten that moment, an intersection of childish purity and innocence, my pain, and a stranger's kindness, at the formica counter at Jim's at 10:00 on a weeknight.  The loss of that was a slow-burn for me.  It still hits me sometimes, in a random wave.  Thing is, it wasn't even a pregnancy we were ready for; my wife got pregnant much too soon after our first, we were a bit thrown, and still weren't sure how we were going to handle #2.  So, maybe there's some guilt in there as well - maybe because we were wrestling with wanting that child, as he died....yeah.

I also haven't talked here much about my mother's passing, to anyone.  Not even my wife.  My mom died of lung cancer.  Processed into hospice care at home on a Thursday evening, with an estimated few weeks to go till the end.  Saturday morning, my dad texts me "SOS."  I rush over there (fortunately, they had moved to a place 5 minutes away from us).  Bottom line, my mother was actively dying.  Her lungs were simply done.  It was awful, the gasping for breath, etc. etc.   I tended to her the best I could, while I told my dad to call 911 -- we had a DNR, but I also wanted something palliative done if possible.  And I sat there with my suffering mother, unable to help her, unable to take away the pain and fear and awfulness of the moment.  There's more to that moment, that raw moment.  Really don't want to write it here, or anywhere.  AFD eventually showed up, and did an incredible job of bringing peace.

My dad still tells himself the lie that he needs to tell himself about that day: "It was good how she went.  At home, at peace."  I know that's not how it was.  And I know he does too.  But I never argue with him when he says that out loud.  Which he does, quite often.  I just agree with him.

I went home after they took her body away.  I took off the t-shirt I was wearing, stained with my mother's blood from her last breaths on the front.  I shoved it in the back of the closet.  It's still there.

And...this.

Shit, realizing the pain that my fellow travelers have felt breaks my fucking heart.  I can't help but want to be John Coffey in The Green Mile - I want to absorb everyone else's pain, to take it away from them.  And to put it on me.  Which is at once narcissist savior bullshit and self-destructive and a failure to value myself as I should.  I also suspect that I'm far from alone in that respect.  A shitload of people are empathetic.  And most people are much better humans than I am.  So we just all carry our own pain.

Sometimes, though, we have the opportunity, and maybe the obligation, to help carry someone else and the baggage of their pain for just a moment.  Just enough time to catch their breath.  Until they can get their feet under them and renew their walk beside us, lugging their blue Samsonite rolling bag of pain while we tote our black Land's End garment bag of loss.  Heso, and the rest of you...we can't carry your shit for you.  But we can damned well let you know that we see it, and we give a damn.

Fuck me.  I am in tears reading this one.

The strength in the human heart, in the soul can be so inspiring.

Thank you to all who have opened up and contributed on this incredible thread. For me, it was like giving me a new suit of armor, a new sword and even greater steely resolve.

Sometimes, in the most unexpected places, in the most unexpected ways, a light comes to you. And on a website filled with some of the most irreverent, assholish, reprobates known to human kind... comes this incredible gift.

Again.. thanks to all.. And Hook 'em.

[TwiceHorn 31438]

6 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

It's hard to read these and not think of your own experiences as either "shit, I should just shut up, I've had it easy," or "if I mention anything I've been through, it'll sound like I'm trying to one-up people -- 'oh YEAH?  You think YOU had it bad?  Wait till you hear THIS ONE!'"

Of course, the reality is that whoever you are, life has managed to kick you in the nuts one way or another.  And it's pointless to compare your pain to someone else's, because it really isn't about relativity.  You don't tell a guy who had one leg blown off by an IED "yeah, man, you're lucky, I met a dude who had BOTH legs blown off by an IED!"  Likewise, you don't tell the dude who lost both legs "man, I bet you wish you were the dude who only lost one leg."  Both experiences crossed the threshold of "traumatic and stressful shit that left a serious fucking scar."

Maybe some of the interesting ones are those that you didn't realize were quite so stressful at the time.  Like the pregnancy my wife lost between our two kids.  Bleeding.  She knew something was wrong.  Went to the hospital, and yep, she'd lost the baby and needed a procedure.  Meanwhile, our toddler daughter was at her part-time nanny's.  I call the nanny to ask can she please stay late, we don't have anyone else to watch her while I rush to the hospital.  "Of course, she's safe here.  Go."  I go to be with my wife through the procedure.  By the time she's in recovery, he mother (coming up from Houston) was there.  So I leave her to go pick up our daughter, knowing my wife will be coming home shortly after.  I ask her if there's anything she wants when she gets home.  She says "biscuits.  Fresh biscuits.  Like, from Jim's."  So, I pick up our daughter at 10:00 pm, way later than she's usually up.  I go in to pick up a half dozen biscuits to go, at the Jim's at 183 and Burnet.  It's 10;00, so it's pretty slow in there.  Waitress goes to get them, comes back and says "you know, all the biscuits we have are a bit old, so I asked the cook to put in a fresh batch.  Why don't you have a seat at the counter." I do.  I plop my 1.5 yr old daughter up on the counter.  The waitress brings her toast and jelly.  She brings me a cup of coffee, without me asking for any of it.  And I sat there at that counter with my smiling, happy daughter, and a kind waitress doting on her.  And I saw and felt the child we had just lost.  I was just hollow in that moment -- it took me months, years, to realize how hollow I really felt.  In a few minutes, we had a box of fresh biscuits, and we headed home.  I've never forgotten that moment, an intersection of childish purity and innocence, my pain, and a stranger's kindness, at the formica counter at Jim's at 10:00 on a weeknight.  The loss of that was a slow-burn for me.  It still hits me sometimes, in a random wave.  Thing is, it wasn't even a pregnancy we were ready for; my wife got pregnant much too soon after our first, we were a bit thrown, and still weren't sure how we were going to handle #2.  So, maybe there's some guilt in there as well - maybe because we were wrestling with wanting that child, as he died....yeah.

I also haven't talked here much about my mother's passing, to anyone.  Not even my wife.  My mom died of lung cancer.  Processed into hospice care at home on a Thursday evening, with an estimated few weeks to go till the end.  Saturday morning, my dad texts me "SOS."  I rush over there (fortunately, they had moved to a place 5 minutes away from us).  Bottom line, my mother was actively dying.  Her lungs were simply done.  It was awful, the gasping for breath, etc. etc.   I tended to her the best I could, while I told my dad to call 911 -- we had a DNR, but I also wanted something palliative done if possible.  And I sat there with my suffering mother, unable to help her, unable to take away the pain and fear and awfulness of the moment.  There's more to that moment, that raw moment.  Really don't want to write it here, or anywhere.  AFD eventually showed up, and did an incredible job of bringing peace.

My dad still tells himself the lie that he needs to tell himself about that day: "It was good how she went.  At home, at peace."  I know that's not how it was.  And I know he does too.  But I never argue with him when he says that out loud.  Which he does, quite often.  I just agree with him.

I went home after they took her body away.  I took off the t-shirt I was wearing, stained with my mother's blood from her last breaths on the front.  I shoved it in the back of the closet.  It's still there.

And...this.

Shit, realizing the pain that my fellow travelers have felt breaks my fucking heart.  I can't help but want to be John Coffey in The Green Mile - I want to absorb everyone else's pain, to take it away from them.  And to put it on me.  Which is at once narcissist savior bullshit and self-destructive and a failure to value myself as I should.  I also suspect that I'm far from alone in that respect.  A shitload of people are empathetic.  And most people are much better humans than I am.  So we just all carry our own pain.

Sometimes, though, we have the opportunity, and maybe the obligation, to help carry someone else and the baggage of their pain for just a moment.  Just enough time to catch their breath.  Until they can get their feet under them and renew their walk beside us, lugging their blue Samsonite rolling bag of pain while we tote our black Land's End garment bag of loss.  Heso, and the rest of you...we can't carry your shit for you.  But we can damned well let you know that we see it, and we give a damn.

Damn.  You've made some solid contributions/posts over the years, but this may top them all.

[mininghorn88 2277]

6 hours ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Grandpa was a piece of work.   I remember riding in his truck and the conversations.   He was a medic in WWII.   He would get mad when I told him he was a nurse.   “I wasn’t a fucking nurse”.  “Yes you were, I have your nurse bag right here”.  “That’s a war bag, son.” Call it what you want, looks like something a nurse would carry.  “ Look you little shit, you have no idea.”  You’re right I don’t.   Then we would pull into Praseks and eat. He may have been a nurse, but he was a badass.  

I had a great-uncle that was a combat medic in the ETO during WW2. Prior to enlisting in 1937 he served in the CCC in the southwest. Great guy, always smiling and happy. He is the one that jumped started my WW2 military collection. During the war he was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor. He would never really say how he earned it other than to say that he stumbled upon some Germans and all that he had was a hypodermic needle as a weapon. Upon his death another elderly uncle told me that he earned the BS by liberating some US soldiers that had been captured by some German soldiers. He would not go into detail on how he did it other than to say, “just know that the soldiers were freed”. My guess was that the “needle” was a sidearm. Either way he was a badass.

[mininghorn88 2277]

14 hours ago, Sandman said:

 I had my first grandchild 5 months ago and I worry about how that relationship works. I've never had a grandfather give me a hug and tell me he loves me. My dad's dad died before I was born, this is foreign territory for me.

My other kid is having a baby next year, so I need to un-fuck myself and figure it out, I suppose.

Hug them. Kiss them. Tell them that you love them. Be present.

But, it sounds like you know what to do. Just do it.

[mininghorn88 2277]

4 hours ago, Sandman said:

My buddy was a medic in Afghanistan. When his unit would go door to door, he was the breacher that went in with a 12 gauge. He got to go home on leave when his son was born. Fast forward to today, his son is 13 and playing the new Call of Duty game. My buddy is watching him play and his son had built a breacher class, complete with a 12 gauge and whatnot. He tells his son "Hey, that's me. I did that in the war.". He said his son looked at him and scoffed "Pfft, you were just a medic". 

Respect to your buddy.

Edited September 23, 2023 by mininghorn88

[SHOOTER12 8800]

On 9/21/2023 at 11:40 AM, heso said:

I have 2 I can add. 

1. When I was 7 my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I remember my dad coming into the living room to tell me and my sister. I remember pretending to cry because I didn’t really understand what exactly that meant but my dad and my sister were crying so I thought I should too. I was told that it was caught early enough and she’d be ok. The next 7 years were a roller coaster of “this has gotten worse” and “she’s going to be fine”. Multiple surgeries and chemo as it metastasized to her colon. My mom wasn’t fat, but full figured. Between the multiple rounds of chemo and the multiple sections of her colon being removed she was down under 90 pounds and had to walk with a walker. I vividly remember being 14 and frustrated/scared/embarrassed and being impatient at her needing to use a walker one day to get out to the car. She died not long after. I chose to not be in the hospital the day they unplugged the machines keeping her alive. That’s the last memory I have of her. I’ve never fully forgiven myself for that.

During the last few years of my mom’s life, my dad’s mom got alzheimer's. It was pretty ugly for my dad. She died a year and 10 days after my mom. All things considered, my dad did a remarkable job leading my sister and me through all of it. Looking back at it decades later I can see how much that time period broke him. I wish I was less of a shit head for him through that and a few years after. 

2. May 25th 2019, 3 days after my daughter’s 3rd birthday. My wife, 32 weeks pregnant with our second daughter, had gone to the hospital because she hadn’t felt the baby move in a while. It was late at night, our 3 year old was asleep upstairs when my wife called. There was no heartbeat. Our baby was dead. I had to wait around for my sister in law to get to the house so I could go down to the hospital. Holding my wife’s hand as she sobbed, delivering a lifeless baby was excruciating. After the delivery, the placenta didn’t detach and she was bleeding pretty badly. They had to rush her out to the OR. So there I was sitting alone in a hospital room, moments after they wheeled our dead baby out, moments after they rushed my wife to the OR, not sure if she was going to die or not, thinking about my 3 year old sleeping at home. That was the single hardest moment of my life. 

They were able to stop the bleeding and moved my wife to the icu. They weren’t able to get all of the placenta out so there would need to be some follow up procedure to take care of that. My wife would be fine. We comforted ourselves with the fact that she was ok, and after she healed up, and we mourned the loss we could have another baby. The follow up appointments and MRI showed that the placenta had grown through the wall of the uterus. She had to have a hysterectomy. There wouldn’t be another baby. 

A year or so after that my wife started having severe, unrelated, health issues in her colon. Probably 12 ER visits over 24 months, half a dozen colonoscopies, they thought it might be crohns, through all of the hospital stays and repeated rounds of antibiotics, she had developed recurrent CDIFF. Ultimately they got that under control and cauterized part of the inside of her colon that has seemingly been resolved. With all of the physical pain she was in through all of that they kept her on a pretty consistent diet of narcotics, which also made the emotional pain disappear temporarily. That combination lead to a pretty severe narcotics dependency. A year and a few months ago she took the steps to move beyond that, and a really difficult year later she’s in a much better place. she’s still not the person she was before the still birth, and part of me wonders if she’ll ever be able to be as truly happy as she was before that. 

Now, with all of that hopefully behind us, we’re in a position to start to move forward with surrogacy. Every meeting and appointment we’ve had so far has yielded positive results, but I’ve been so beaten down by the last 4 years that it’s so hard to have real genuine hope for something because I keep just waiting to be kicked back down again. 

Much love to you and the family brother. 

[Dnaguy 11916]

When I was 14, my best friend, his brother, his sister, and mom all died in a car accident a week before christmas. 
That sucked. Nowadays I still don’t know how his dad made it through that. I’m so scared to ever bring it up. Because idk what kind of wound I would open up. I don’t know if I am strong enough to live through what he had to. It was first time to see a dead body. I remember seeing them in the casket and seeing all that makeup… but also how it was covering up their scrapes and what not. I’m sure they were far more fucked up due to the car crash as it was a head on 18 wheeler vs minivan. Christmas stuff was everywhere at church as we had a memorial service. It was a total mind bender at 14.

In 2019 my plant had a catastrophic explosion that killed a guy and fucked up some others pretty bad. I saw a dude whose skin was melting off. Or I think I did. It’s super weird because some of the event is kind of like a movie in my head now.

I almost remember my feelings more than the actual events.

I distinctly remember however the actual explosion  and seeing the ceiling tiles jump up and dust going everywhere. It’s like how people describe shit going into slow motion.
The panic of the people behind me at the turnstile  and looking back at the huge black mushroom cloud was also something I won’t forget. 

[Dnaguy 11916]

On a good note. I remember balling my eyes out in joy when my first daughter was born. Idk if I ever cried from being happy before that.

I also remember being incredibly nervous / scared before my second daughter was born. I was legitimately frightened that I could not / wouldn’t love her as much as I did the first one. As if love exists in a finite manner or is some kind of zero sum resource. But once she popped out I was teary and smitten all over again.

It felt like that scene from the Grinch where my heart just grew however many sizes bigger….

If only my patience grew with the love then I’d be a lot happier today🤪

[Rimbo 25911]

well, this is a pretty easy one for me to answer

[SHOOTER12 8800]

2 hours ago, Dnaguy said:

On a good note. I remember balling my eyes out in joy when my first daughter was born. Idk if I ever cried from being happy before that.

I also remember being incredibly nervous / scared before my second daughter was born. I was legitimately frightened that I could not / wouldn’t love her as much as I did the first one. As if love exists in a finite manner or is some kind of zero sum resource. But once she popped out I was teary and smitten all over again.

It felt like that scene from the Grinch where my heart just grew however many sizes bigger….

If only my patience grew with the love then I’d be a lot happier today🤪

This reminds me of someththat I wish I had still forgotten. 

When I was in elementary school my best friend in the world was the son of the Hispanic Baptist minister. We had just been picked to play LL baseball together.  His fathers church was across the street from our little 3 room house and their parsonage was one block down. Being best friends with a Hispanic kid was pretty much frowned upon back then.He had a large family,  8 brothers and sisters all of whom were great people. I awoke one Saturday morning with my dad telling me he needed to have a serious talk with me. Turns out the pastor and his whole family had gone to a Baptist conference in San Antonio Friday night and on the way back had been hit head on by some asshole driving on the wrong side of the road. Everyone was killed except my friend, and his next older brother. I refused to believe it and rode my bicycle to their house. I sat on their front porch waiting for them, crying and praying until dark when my father finally convinced me to come home. I saw his brother Alex at Alto Frio Baptist encampment a few years later. He was severely handicapped,  unable to ever use his legs again. I never saw my best friend Ricky again. It reminds me of the Eagles song, End of The Innocence, because mine damn sure died that day.

Ricky, Alex, if you're still out there, I love you guys...

 

[Bevo&Pevo 5120]

12 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

I've never forgotten that moment, an intersection of childish purity and innocence, my pain, and a stranger's kindness, at the formica counter at Jim's at 10:00 on a weeknight.  The loss of that was a slow-burn for me.  It still hits me sometimes, in a random wave. 

 

"a stranger's kindness"   100%.  This.

After several months of less than stellar behavior, living conditions and alcohol, a stranger's kindness finally managed to re-ignite my need to give a shit again.  Family and friends tried, but I pushed them away.  People may not always remember what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel.  I took a break yesterday from our piece of the internet.  I knew if I came back to this thread, it would get dusty again.  Not disappointed, it has again.   I also knew I needed to come back to this thread before my wife would be awake to witness this.  Our human spirit is not a tangible thing, it can't be measured by machines or algorithms. I didn't intend to post again here, but brisket's words resonated with me.  You never know where help or inspiration will come from.  I hope that I will be a stranger one day that will lift someone up and let them know they are needed, and they count for something.  I may be only one person in the world, but I also may be the world to one person.  Keep digging, never give up, and if you are going through Hell... keep going, don't look back. 

[SHOOTER12 8800]

5 minutes ago, Bevo&Pevo said:

 

"a stranger's kindness"   100%.  This.

After several months of less than stellar behavior, living conditions and alcohol, a stranger's kindness finally managed to re-ignite my need to give a shit again.  Family and friends tried, but I pushed them away.  People may not always remember what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel.  I took a break yesterday from our piece of the internet.  I knew if I came back to this thread, it would get dusty again.  Not disappointed, it has again.   I also knew I needed to come back to this thread before my wife would be awake to witness this.  Our human spirit is not a tangible thing, it can't be measured by machines or algorithms. I didn't intend to post again here, but brisket's words resonated with me.  You never know where help or inspiration will come from.  I hope that I will be a stranger one day that will lift someone up and let them know they are needed, and they count for something.  I may be only one person in the world, but I also may be the world to one person.  Keep digging, never give up, and if you are going through Hell... keep going, don't look back. 

God Bless man...

[Bevo&Pevo 5120]

^^^ Today's trip down memory lane wasn't as bad as the first day I posted.  I WAY more prepared.  I got caught off guard the first time.  Thanks.  

[TwiceHorn 31438]

9 hours ago, Sandman said:

My buddy was a medic in Afghanistan. When his unit would go door to door, he was the breacher that went in with a 12 gauge. He got to go home on leave when his son was born. Fast forward to today, his son is 13 and playing the new Call of Duty game. My buddy is watching him play and his son had built a breacher class, complete with a 12 gauge and whatnot. He tells his son "Hey, that's me. I did that in the war.". He said his son looked at him and scoffed "Pfft, you were just a medic". 

Haha, these two are comical.  My Dad was a torpedo and gunnery officer on a Fletcher class destroyer from 1943 until the end of the war.  Frankly, less heroic than a combat medic or any number of other military "occupations."  But even as a ringmeat kid, I was awed by this and never would have dreamed of making fun of that.  

I'm so awed by my Dad's service and those of his peers that I have spent my entire life as a military history fiend, particularly of the naval variety.

Then again, I was overawed by both of my parents, so maybe that wasn't the healthiest relationship.

[South Austin 52448]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Then again, I was overawed by both of my parents, so maybe that wasn't the healthiest relationship.

Unless they were beating you with reeds on a weekly basis, I’m not sure how it can be unhealthy to be overawed by your parents, as long as you also recognize that they’re fallible.

[TwiceHorn 31438]

10 minutes ago, South Austin said:

Unless they were beating you with reeds on a weekly basis, I’m not sure how it can be unhealthy to be overawed by your parents, as long as you also recognize that they’re fallible.

Only child, older, overbearing parents.  Never really asserted independence, except in passive-aggressive ways.

[Incredulity 11650]

On 9/22/2023 at 11:10 PM, mininghorn88 said:

Respect to your buddy.

X2.

 

[Al_4_ISU 12447]

My freshman year of high school (1999-2000) was pretty trying.

In November of '99, I was sitting around with some of my buddies in the lobby after lunch.  We got an hour for lunch, and after you were done eating, everyone would just hang out in the lobby until 1PM and classes started back up.  We got yakking about how the town next to us got a day off of school because someone called in a bomb threat.  About 5 years earlier, someone called a bomb threat into our school and they just sent us outside to play all day.  As a bunch of 14 year olds, we all thought this was hilarious and we should do the same and get a day off of school.  So one by one, we all went into the bathroom and wrote something on the wall of one of the toilet stalls about some kind of bomb.  I kinda chickened out, and wrote "if this is erased before October 31, the school will blow up".  I felt like I'd done my part to go along with it, but hedged by putting a past date which would make it obvious that this wasn't a real threat.  This was on a Thursday and we had Friday off for conferences or something.

Next Monday, riding the bus to school, we hear that once we get to school everyone is getting sent home because they found a bomb threat in the school and SWAT teams and dogs were there.  My heart absolutely sank.  I had no expectation that anyone would take this seriously.  Keep in mind this was before we had school shootings in America every week.  As soon as I got to school, I went into the principal's office, took responsibility, told them what had happened, and that this was just a prank no one really thought would get taken seriously. 

They immediately had me questioned by the town cop, and asked me to indicate the other people involved.  I refused to give anyone else up.  I was immediately suspended for the rest of the semester, and my case was turned over to the juvenile court system.  I spent my suspension working on the farm.  We were pattern tiling (essentially plumbing crop land to help water drain off it) a lot in those days, so I was out in the elements (November/December on the IA/MN border) working 50 hours a week as a 14 year old.

After the juvenile court officer processed the case, he recommend to the county attorney that I be placed on an informal probation.  His conclusion was that I was a good kid who did something stupid, owned up to it, and no one got hurt.  The county attorney took that recommendation and wiped his ass with it.  He charged me with Terrorism, a Class D Felony in Iowa.  He said the reason for this was to send a message that this wouldn't be taken lightly, but it was obviously a combination of my refusal to roll over on the other kids, and my last name.  My grandpa was the State Representative for our county at the time, and a political rival of said county attorney.  

I was allowed to go back to school for second semester, and the trial was slated for the end of February.  Because of what a hoopla the whole thing had become, and due to some other trouble I'd gotten into (parents had caught me drinking the previous summer, and some petty vandalism that I was never criminally implicated in), they decided to have me try doing a semester at the Catholic high school in Rochester, MN where my mom worked.  No one there would know or care anything about the case I was involved in, so I was all for it as I felt like I had become a complete pariah.  

At the trial, the judge almost laughed the county attorney out of court.  I was convicted of 5th Degree Criminal Mischief, a simple misdemeanor, for the act of vandalizing the bathroom wall.  My punishment was 10 hours of community service, which I completed by mowing the lawn of our church a handful of times.

In the end it amounted to absolutely nothing, but the whole experience was absolutely terrifying, emotionally draining, painful, and ultimately it steeled me into the person I am today in many ways.  I loved going to school in Rochester, and spent the rest of my HS career there.  Leaving my high school in a podunk town of 800 people with the same 30 kids I'd had class with my whole life and going to school in a much larger setting exposed me to all sorts of new ideas, and definitely got me to think beyond a small town mentality.  I learned that being honest and taking your lumps when you fuck up tends to lead to a better outcome in the end.  If I had kept my mouth shut, I'd probably have never gotten caught.  They claimed they could do handwriting analysis, but they never figured that out on the other guys.  Over the years, every single one of the other guys has come up to me and apologized for not taking their share of the blame.  Some of them honestly seem truly guilt-wracked over the whole deal.  Having to spend that month and a half out working like an adult was an extremely formative experience as the working conditions were often miserable (cold and muddy).  I almost never lose my shit in truly trying situations, and this experience is absolutely the reason why.  It just gave me a really unusual perspective that's benefitted me more often than not.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but I'm better off for having been through it.

[Al_4_ISU 12447]

On 9/23/2023 at 1:51 AM, Dnaguy said:

When I was 14, my best friend, his brother, his sister, and mom all died in a car accident a week before christmas. 
That sucked. Nowadays I still don’t know how his dad made it through that. I’m so scared to ever bring it up. Because idk what kind of wound I would open up. I don’t know if I am strong enough to live through what he had to. It was first time to see a dead body. I remember seeing them in the casket and seeing all that makeup… but also how it was covering up their scrapes and what not. I’m sure they were far more fucked up due to the car crash as it was a head on 18 wheeler vs minivan. Christmas stuff was everywhere at church as we had a memorial service. It was a total mind bender at 14.

In 2019 my plant had a catastrophic explosion that killed a guy and fucked up some others pretty bad. I saw a dude whose skin was melting off. Or I think I did. It’s super weird because some of the event is kind of like a movie in my head now.

I almost remember my feelings more than the actual events.

I distinctly remember however the actual explosion  and seeing the ceiling tiles jump up and dust going everywhere. It’s like how people describe shit going into slow motion.
The panic of the people behind me at the turnstile  and looking back at the huge black mushroom cloud was also something I won’t forget. 

Man, I can feel this one.

A month after the trial I referenced in my previous post, I was a passenger in a car crash.  My mom was driving, and she stopped about 50 feet short of a stop sign on a gravel road that crossed a paved highway.  She started off and entered the intersection not realizing a pick up was approaching from the west.  She ran into the bed of the truck, which caused it to roll over.  The drive wasn't wearing a seat belt, and (I swear to Christ it went down this way) I watched his body fly through the windshield and hit the pavement.  My mom was an RN and ran out to do CPR, while I ran to the nearest farm house (1/2 mile away) to call an ambulance.  This was in March of 2000, so there were no cell phones.

At least once a week I see that guy flying through the windshield.  My family got sued by his family, and that whole process really sewed the seeds of my parents' eventual divorce 7 years later.

[South Austin 52448]

On 9/25/2023 at 2:13 PM, Al_4_ISU said:

My freshman year of high school (1999-2000) was pretty trying.

In November of '99, I was sitting around with some of my buddies in the lobby after lunch.  We got an hour for lunch, and after you were done eating, everyone would just hang out in the lobby until 1PM and classes started back up.  We got yakking about how the town next to us got a day off of school because someone called in a bomb threat.  About 5 years earlier, someone called a bomb threat into our school and they just sent us outside to play all day.  As a bunch of 14 year olds, we all thought this was hilarious and we should do the same and get a day off of school.  So one by one, we all went into the bathroom and wrote something on the wall of one of the toilet stalls about some kind of bomb.  I kinda chickened out, and wrote "if this is erased before October 31, the school will blow up".  I felt like I'd done my part to go along with it, but hedged by putting a past date which would make it obvious that this wasn't a real threat.  This was on a Thursday and we had Friday off for conferences or something.

Next Monday, riding the bus to school, we hear that once we get to school everyone is getting sent home because they found a bomb threat in the school and SWAT teams and dogs were there.  My heart absolutely sank.  I had no expectation that anyone would take this seriously.  Keep in mind this was before we had school shootings in America every week.  As soon as I got to school, I went into the principal's office, took responsibility, told them what had happened, and that this was just a prank no one really thought would get taken seriously. 

They immediately had me questioned by the town cop, and asked me to indicate the other people involved.  I refused to give anyone else up.  I was immediately suspended for the rest of the semester, and my case was turned over to the juvenile court system.  I spent my suspension working on the farm.  We were pattern tiling (essentially plumbing crop land to help water drain off it) a lot in those days, so I was out in the elements (November/December on the IA/MN border) working 50 hours a week as a 14 year old.

After the juvenile court officer processed the case, he recommend to the county attorney that I be placed on an informal probation.  His conclusion was that I was a good kid who did something stupid, owned up to it, and no one got hurt.  The county attorney took that recommendation and wiped his ass with it.  He charged me with Terrorism, a Class D Felony in Iowa.  He said the reason for this was to send a message that this wouldn't be taken lightly, but it was obviously a combination of my refusal to roll over on the other kids, and my last name.  My grandpa was the State Representative for our county at the time, and a political rival of said county attorney.  

I was allowed to go back to school for second semester, and the trial was slated for the end of February.  Because of what a hoopla the whole thing had become, and due to some other trouble I'd gotten into (parents had caught me drinking the previous summer, and some petty vandalism that I was never criminally implicated in), they decided to have me try doing a semester at the Catholic high school in Rochester, MN where my mom worked.  No one there would know or care anything about the case I was involved in, so I was all for it as I felt like I had become a complete pariah.  

At the trial, the judge almost laughed the county attorney out of court.  I was convicted of 5th Degree Criminal Mischief, a simple misdemeanor, for the act of vandalizing the bathroom wall.  My punishment was 10 hours of community service, which I completed by mowing the lawn of our church a handful of times.

In the end it amounted to absolutely nothing, but the whole experience was absolutely terrifying, emotionally draining, painful, and ultimately it steeled me into the person I am today in many ways.  I loved going to school in Rochester, and spent the rest of my HS career there.  Leaving my high school in a podunk town of 800 people with the same 30 kids I'd had class with my whole life and going to school in a much larger setting exposed me to all sorts of new ideas, and definitely got me to think beyond a small town mentality.  I learned that being honest and taking your lumps when you fuck up tends to lead to a better outcome in the end.  If I had kept my mouth shut, I'd probably have never gotten caught.  They claimed they could do handwriting analysis, but they never figured that out on the other guys.  Over the years, every single one of the other guys has come up to me and apologized for not taking their share of the blame.  Some of them honestly seem truly guilt-wracked over the whole deal.  Having to spend that month and a half out working like an adult was an extremely formative experience as the working conditions were often miserable (cold and muddy).  I almost never lose my shit in truly trying situations, and this experience is absolutely the reason why.  It just gave me a really unusual perspective that's benefitted me more often than not.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but I'm better off for having been through it.

If this post is deleted before October 31, this site will blow up.

[WinningIsHard 4026]

4 hours ago, South Austin said:

If this post is deleted before October 31, this site will blow up.