Ah. Halcyon days.

I could never get all the characters unlocked.
(Thu 7th Apr 2005, 22:41, More)

» The nicest thing someone's ever done for me

I'll never forget this.
Two years ago, in the run up to christmas, I was going through a pretty bad time of my life. My wife had left me two years earlier for another man and had just had a child with him, and although I pretended to myself everything was OK, I was completely broken up inside. I occupied my time going out and enjoying myself with my friends, but when I was alone I sometimes just wished I could go to sleep and never wake up. I'd been to the doctors and was going through a little stage of trying anti-depressants but they weren't helping, at the time I didn't think I was too bad but looking back now I realise just how low I was. For the most part, I kept it all to myself and didn't tell another soul how I felt, put a happy face on and tried to be normal. I'm quite a private person and don't share things easily.

I had moved back in with my parents after the split, and had pretty much wallowed there ever since. One evening, as I sat in my room watching telly, my mum stuck her head round the door and asked if I was ok, and for some reason, the usual "aye, fine" just didn't come out. She came in and sat down on the bed and asked what was wrong and I started making up the usual excuses that I just wasn't feeling too well, but then I just blurted out the words "I miss her, mum."

My mum had hated my ex and wished I had never married her. "I know I shouldn't after everything she's done, but I just miss her." She didn't say anything, she just gave me a hug and I completely broke down. I sat there crying like a baby and just let everything I had held in for two long years flow out.

It was around that time that my mum fell ill, and a couple of months later she was taken into hospital and diagnosed with cancer of the stomach. It had already spread and within a month she was gone. I never got to tell her how much that hug meant to me and how it helped me through one of the darkest times of my life. I'll never forget it.
(Thu 2nd Oct 2008, 17:45, More)

» I Quit!

Aha!
Something I can relate to. I have had several jobs in my time, and have quit, so far, all of them.

My first ever decent, full time, actual hard work job was, as I think I might have mentioned before, a sugar boilerer (they told me that's how it's spelt) in a sweet factory near where I live. Although for the first little while it was interesting, after a bit it became incredibly dull, monotonous and really quite lonely. I was young, only 19, and had a lot of responsibility placed on my head.... something I didn't cope well with. The main problem was, however, that it was a family run business..... my immediate boss was the owners son.

For an overview, it is important that you get an idea of our physical comparisons, me and my old boss. I was 19, 5'7" and weighed at the time about seven and a half stones (I was very thin, but had been stressed out so much by work that I didn't eat much at the time). He was about 6', 30, and was into bodybuilding.... he was quite heavily muscled and I'd say about 15-16 stone. He was also, I'd imagine, damned handsome from a lady's perspective, but this was counterbalanced by hos foul breath.

The long and short of it was that my workload had increased massively over the year-and-a-half I had been there and so had my hours. I was expected to start early, stay late and had once been threatened with the sack for being 50 minutes early rather than the full hour. Basically, I was young, I was a worrier, and I just basically hated the job. I gave them a months notice and prepared to leave.

After that, I began to be treated like absolute shit by my boss. He ridiculed me every chance he got and tried to belittle me in front of everyone in the factory (I was pretty popular there, everyone seemed to want to mother me :P) I managed about a week and a half before I snapped.

You see, I might have been small, but I was not thick. I have a 145 IQ, and while I know this is hardly mensa, it was waaaay more than my boss. And the one thing, the ONLY thing guaranteed to snap my otherwise infallible patience is to make me feel stupid.

The first time was on a tuesday. I had about a week and a half left of my notice to work. I was left with a million things to do as usual, and one of them involved *his* forklift. Which of course, he now needed *IMMEDIATELY* "HURRY UP! HURRY UP! RUN! MOVE IT" he was following me around shouting *RIGHT* *IN* *MY* *FUCKING* *EAR*. "I need that forklift NOW" he wailed.

"WELL FUCKING TAKE IT! IT'S YOUR FUCKING FORKLIFT YOU FUCKING TAKE IT!"

He looked like I had just shot him. I had turned round and was facing him full on. He could not believe it. I felt like a GOD!

He started mumbling something about how dare I speak to him like that, but I was emboldened. "You won't be my boss for much longer, mate. Don't fucking speak to me like that. If you want the forklift, fucking take it and bring it back when you're finished." He turned and stormed off, as did I. It was then I noticed the ENTIRE FACTORY had fallen silent. I got a round of applause in the tea room that day for standing up to him, turned out they had all noticed how badly I was being treated. He caught me in the warehouse, where no-one could see, and tried to give me a decidedly calmer dressing down for being insolent, at which point I calmly pointed out that if he treated me with respect, he would get respect. He disagreed, saying (and I couldn't believe this) he was my boss and would treat me how he wanted. I just walked off.

The following week, everything was going wrong again. He was again on my back and was now blaming me for everyting that went wrong in the whole factory. I again snapped and shouted "Tell you what, Tom, it mus all be fucking MY fault then eh?" He must have been waiting for this, as he immediately shouted "OFFICE! NOW!" As he strode through the office door, he almost took it off it's hinges. At that point, I realised I may have been about to receive a stern beating. This only quickened my step.... I was at the end of my tether.

He launched into the "who do you think you are?" speech as soon as he got behind his desk..... had he remained my side of the desk, I might have been a little less bold. I cut him off by asking who he thought he was. "You think cos you pay me a pittance you can speak to me like shite? I've broke my fucking back for you, I've worked every overtime you've asked of me, I've never fucking compliained before now. I'm fucking sick of being treated like this you stupid, STUPID man. And I'll tell you what else for fucking nothing!"

I paused. He bit.

"Wh.... what?"

"I'm going fucking home."

He managed a "good!" and strode out of the office behind me. I went back into the factory, told my trainee replacement to take over, I was going home, bid a few people goodbye and walked out the fire exit.

The idiot was so thick he waited by the main exit for me, not realising that his "don't go out the fire exit" shite no longer applied to me. Apparently, according to the guy I was training to replace me, he ran all through the factory looking for me, and when he realised I was gone, his bottom lip was trembling.

It was this incident that confirmed my belief that brains are better than brawn.

I've only seen him once since. He was in a video rental shop when I walked in. He slammed the video he was looking at down and walked out.

Again. I felt like a GOD! :P

Oh heavens. Apologies for length, and it's not often I get to say that.
(Thu 22nd May 2008, 16:51, More)

» Mobile phone disasters

The look on that kids face will stay with me forever.
A few months ago, I ventured to that London on a college trip for a few days. A fine time was had by all, despite the fact that we were mainly confined to the hostel due to a few slight riots that were going on about a mile away from us. Still.... we all got hammered and had a great time for 4 days.

On the way home I was sat next to one of the lads from my course and we got to chatting about a wide variety of amusing things. Eventually, we strayed into the territory of amusing videos and began swapping videos from our phones via bluetooth, when suddenly someone began sending us lots of crazy messages and videos. Hatching a fiendish plot, the guy I was next to devised a way to find out who it was. He sent a video he had of himself when he was younger, in which he emitted a high pitched and very loud laugh. As soon as the person played it, we'd hear it. It worked, and we discovered the irritant was a boy of around 12 sitting a few seats behind us.

The messages continued, bombarding my mates phone with constant videos and messages, when suddenly he realised how to stop it. You see, one of the videos I had given him was the highly disgusting "make your own mcflurry" one, containing a scene from two girls one cup. As soon as I realised what he was doing, I tried to reason with him but it was too late, he'd already sent it...... the bluetooth messages came to a sudden and abrupt halt.

About half an hour later, we arrived at newcastle and the train ground to a halt. A lot of people were getting off when the boy in question walked past our seats. He stopped and slowly, ever so very slowly turned and looked my mate in the eye. There was a look of abject horror on his face.

I don't think he'll be doing that again in a hurry. He wouldn't even wave back after he got off the train either.
(Thu 30th Jul 2009, 20:13, More)

» Bedroom Disasters

A flthy little pearoast will slot in nicely here, I reckon.....

Back in the days when I was married, I remembered hatching a fiendish plan to seduce my lady wife as she arrived home from work. Utilising only a few household props, I managed to concoct a situation that would instantly make her knickers fly from her body as soon as she walked in the door. She would, quite simply, not know what had happened until an hour after it was all over.

You wouldn't think it possible to duct-tape yourself to a bed, but it is. I managed my ankles easily, it was my wrists that took a little skill, but after a mere ten minutes, I was securely(ish) fastened to the headboard. I waited. Like a sleek panther, I waited. My prey would come. Oh yes.

And she did. And she brought with her her sister and her sister's boyfriend. I began struggling when I first heard their voices in the hallway, and managed to get one hand free as my ex walked into the bedroom. Seeing me half strapped to the bed, rapidly deflating knob flapping around as I flailed wildly to free myself did not, oddly enough, turn her into a gibbering pile of juices, but instead reduced her to gales of laughter. She only snapped out of it when she realised her sister and her sister's boyfriend had also come upstairs and were about a nanosecond from entering the room. Obviously her sister had to be shielded from the vision of pure sex that lay flailing on the bed, lest she be overcome with lust, and so my wife managed to halt them in their tracks and take them back downstairs as I freed myself from my self-made bondage and hurriedly got dressed. Good girl. That would have been embarrassing, that would.

I suppose it would probably have been more embarrassing than the 3 hours of smirks and repressed giggles I endured that night as I sat there red faced. The bugger told them what I'd been up to.

Hmph. It was months before I tried a surprise seduction again. Youd be amazed at the many varied reactions springing from the understairs cupboard bollock naked can illicit.
(Sat 25th Jun 2011, 4:02, More)

» DIY Techno-hacks

A story further down reminded me of this.
A good few years ago now, my fiance at the time and I went on a daytrip to blackpool. We did all the usual things, strolled along the beachfront, went to the pleasure beach and saw the sights. As the day wore on, we began to make our way back towards the bus and stopped in a few of the tat.... sorry "souvenir" shops. I bought the usual..... one of those little glass cases full of water and coloured sand that makes a new photo each time it's flipped, a mucky postcard and so on, then came across an item which I knew I had to buy, not for myself but for my cousin.

My cousin was a one-off. He's sadly no longer with us, having passed away at only 20, but when he was younger he had the craziest sense of humour I think I've ever come across. He found almost everything hugely hilarious and when I saw this thing there in front of me, I knew it would cause him to wet himself with glee (a feat which I managed to make happen once when he was about 10 by repeating his name over and over in a funny voice).

There it was. It was a small plastic figure, about eight inches high, of a man bent over goatse style. On his face was a cheeky grin, and between the cheeks of his little plastic bum was a perfect rendering of a ringpiece which was big enough to fit a finger in if that's your thing. It had on it a motion sensor which caused a massive fart noise to fly from the bumhole whenever someone passed in front of, or should I say behind it.

When my ex had picked me off the floor and calmed me down, I held in my immature guffawing long enough to pay for the item and we went back to the bus.

Suffice to say he loved his present, even if his mum was horrified at the monstrosity which I handed him through howls of laughter. He was around eleven at the time, and shortly after that I lost touch with him as he went off to high school, met new friends and stopped visiting.

Several years later, we got jobs working with each other and I discovered to my joy his sense of humour hadn't changed at all. One day I mentioned the old present I'd got him all those years ago and he immediately began thanking me for it, saying it was one of the most useful things he'd ever had. Useful? It was a farting model! How could it be "useful"?

As it turned out, shortly after I lost touch with him, he discovered the joy of wanking, but quickly found that the lack of creaky floorboards outside his room led to a few near misses as his mum would burst in unannounced to find him scrambling for the remote in his pants. So, being the resourceful little bugger he was, he began placing the farting man at his door, ring pointing towards the stairs, giving him an amusing warning of his mum's approach with the added bonus of disgusting his mum every time.

Class act all the way :)
(Thu 20th Aug 2009, 20:33, More)