Hundreds, but who gives a toss?
Can I just echo what Flish-paps said? These QOTWs are feeble.

I've seen hundreds of dead bodies, thank you, it was part of my job.
( MisterPunch did it that way on, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 13:19, 2 replies)

dead bodies
i drive an ambulance, so i see alot of dead bodies.

on Halloween i was called to a house where a bloke was "unconscious". i walked into the living room and took a step back in fright!

he was sat on the sofa with one foot tucked in to his bottom, both arms in the air with fingers splayed like he's grabbing for you and a really angry snarl on his face. cold and stiff with rigor mortis, this bloke looked exactly like golum from the lord of the rings.

the family said "he likes to have a nap on the sofa after dinner"...

as we were getting ready to leave the house, the door bell went and outside were about a dozen kids all dressed as skeletons - "trick or treat" they shouted... talk about timing!
(elphantasmo for xmas i want santa's list of naughty girls!, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 13:10, 2 replies)

No, I have never seen a dead body.
But if you're a med student in Cardiff on your dissection year, you're likely to be seeing my grandad quite soon *snif*. There was no funeral, because he wasn't religious in the slightest (just after he died, my nan had to tell the nurses gently to please take away the bible because he wouldn't have wanted that) and only a celebration of life on Tuesday that I wasn't able to attend, being 200 miles away, so I'm feeling a little lacking in the closure department. Reading these stories is either helping me or not helping, I'm not sure.
( Maladicta, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 12:10, 4 replies)

Not a human..
I saw what was going to happen but was powerless to stop it. A poor ginger cat ran under a car that was in front of me as I was pulling into my drive.
The chilling thing was that he went straight under the back wheel, got up and tried to run away but obviously, there were major injuries and couldn't and collapsed again.
I went over to see if I could help but he'd gone. In fact it was quite a gruesome sight.
I decided to pick the cat and move it to a grass verge. No collar ID unfortunately or I would have gone round to break the bad news to the owner.
I was distraught for days.
A few weeks later, I saw an almost identical scenario with a fox. This time the driver stopped then drove off.
Again, I had to move the poor bugger to the side of the road, but this time he was breathing and still alive. A few minutes passed and the foxes breathing became weaker and weaker until he'd gone.
Distraught for days after again.
( Fronkle99, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 12:07, 4 replies)

Tramp
I was walking down a quiet lane near my house on the way home from my rugby club one night when I spotted what looked like a big pile of rags behind a tree. As I got closer I noticed that it was an old tramp. I thought he had just huddled up and gone to sleep there because he looked, well, still alive. A few days later when I was making the same journey I saw he was still there, in the same position. I prodded him with my foot and he didn't move, but what did happen has scarred me for life. The lapel of his jacket fell open to reveal a large sort-of graze on his cheek and it was full of maggots. Think he must have fallen and smacked his face and then died in his sleep or whatever.

Yummy.

This was the days before mobile phones so I basically sprinted the half mile or so down the lane to where my house was to get my dad. He is an ex-para who has seen lots of dead people so he came up and had a look too. He took one look and recognised the guy as one of the blokes in his platoon/squadron/whatever! Spooky! Got the shock of his life. The bloke wasn't a mate or anything though so he wasn't exactly traumatised but gave the old bloke one hell of a fright.
( Normanator Bad case of trapped wind since, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 11:31, 1 reply)

Yes.
Post Mortem.
(Ning Has taken out flounce insurance., Sat 1 Mar 2008, 10:40, Reply)

I've just witnessed
the still-twitching corpse of QOTW. I thought things couldn't get any worse than some of the recent ones, but I guess I was wrong...
(Home Bargains was last seen wanking like a safari park chimp:, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 9:03, 3 replies)

The last supper
I have the dubious pleasure of knowing a few people in the medical field and thus have heard lots of first hand stories but this one takes the cake.

A friend of mine was a student nurse at the time and she introduced me to one of her fellow students a woman in her early 30s who had been a soliciter but wanted a change.

She seemed ok but a little odd but nothing you could put your finger on . A few weeks later she had left the course after a certain incident...

Apparently she had been on a gereatric care ward looking after patients. One of her tasks was to help feed patients that couldnt do it themselves.
A particular patient was upright in bed when the meal came round. So she started to feed him the soup went down easily , the meatballs were abit of a challenge as was the apple pie and custard.
It was only after the roumered second helping of the dessert that she noticed he seemed a bit quiet.

Yup she had just given a 3 course meal to a corpse and hadnt noticed. I cant think why she didnt complete the course.

I know this is a bit off topic but at least its a humourous entry
(welgar, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 8:24, 4 replies)

I didn't kill them this time.....
For her 5th birthday, I bought my oldest daughter a fish tank, then a fish for each of my daughters. Shortly after waking up on the 3rd day of being the proud mother of children who are taking care of their very own pets, I thought to myself, "time to feed the new fish".

Just as I'm about to call the girls over to feed their new darlings, I realize we have dead fish. Concerned they won't take the news well, I gave the girls a lengthy and gentle explanation of death. Of course, their reaction was to argue over who got to hold the bag of dead fish on the way to return them to the store to exchange for live fish. I held the bag.

Sooo.....I wake up on the 2nd day of being the proud mother of children who are taking care of their very own *second* set of pets......

"Meg, do you know why there is water on the table around the fish tank and the fish are dead?"

My child sheepishly replies, "They wanted to get out of the water and play with me. But then they died so I put them back in the water so they would come back to life."

Cue another, yet more stern, lecture on death and why we do not put our hands in the tank or take the fish out. And, this time, I let the girls hang on to the corpses.

When we arrive at the pet store......."Meg, why is the fish now unrecognizable mush?"

A matter of fact reply this time, "I wanted to see what was inside the fish so I squeezed them."

After convincing the shop clerk that the fish died of natural causes regardless of their current flat and gooey state, we leave with our 3rd set of fish.

Sure enough, 3rd day in....."Meg!!"

"I didn't kill them this time Mommie. I promise! And if you let me hold the bodies when we go to the store, I won't even crush them."

After the 4th set of dead goldfish, a new clerk informed me that the 1st clerk sold us fish who were too big for the size of tank we bought, so died because they suffocated on their own body waste. Gee thanks.

The good news is, our 5th set of fish lived a whole 9 months.


Around the same time, my Mother started fishing and felt the need to keep the first fish she caught wrapped in plastic in the freezer. During every visit, the girls would insist on holding the fish and parading around the house with Grandmother's new pet fish. I think they even named it.


Another fun twist is that my Mother spends many hours a local cemetary photographing headstones for her geneology group. It didn't bother me when she said the girls enjoy going with her to run and play in all that space. Of couse, once my children informed me that they can always tell the religion of the dead person by the way the headstone is facing and they like finding the graves of children, I quit asking what they did that day at Grandmother's house.


Occassionally I worry about my childrens' apparent facination with death and corpses.....
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Sat 1 Mar 2008, 7:00, Reply)

Wanna see one?
Fuck me. Anyone who wants to see a corpse should just wander over to my house. Might just have to top myself after a week of reading nothing but these.
(tuqueboy has been in a medically -induced coma since, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 5:26, Reply)

meine Opa
three things I remember
- his veins turned inside out, it scared me the most of anything I've ever seen. They were seriously hollowed out into his arms in a gross kind of reversal of a really muscular man
- my Oma was too scared to come in, she sat outside all day smoking until me said his only word of the day "Aenne" 3 weeks off their 50 year anniversary and he wouldn't die without her
-everyone in the room just knew when it was over, 15 people had been standing around watching him for a day and a half and suddenly we all turned around, put on the lights and started with the funeral arrangements.
(misskitty reeks of sex and turpentine; laudanum afternoons, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 4:24, Reply)

sheep
I was, at 23, married to a shepherd/farmer. In the middle of lambing, my husband caught a cold, which, due to the hours he was working quickly progressed to pneumonia and pleurisy ( I think one is an infection of the lungs, the other is of the lining)

There wasn't really anything I could do apart from take over the night shift of being midwife to 800 ewes (as well as work two day jobs and run the house, and care for my two kiddies)

Imagine getting up for work at 7 am, dropping one kiddie off at school, the baby off at the gran's, working half a day at the school, the other half in the office job, picking kids up, getting home, cook tea, bathe them, put them to bed, get some housework done, get out to the lambing shed at 8 pm and work til 5 am....then get up at 7 am...etc etc...I have never ever been so tired.

One night, I see this hideous Rouge Cross (look the fucking ugly things up) struggle and strain...I calm her, have a bit of a furtle, and bring out this tiny, malformed freak of a lamb - this thing was probably 8 inches long (bearing in mind lambs are normally born bouncing crazy things, at least 10 pounds in weight, up on their feet in no time) it wasn't even breathing.

When sheep give birth, first off you see this fat tear drop shape bag of fluid (I used to call them water bombs), looks a bit like bloody piss - each lamb has its own bag - then you see its little feet - and each lamb plops out, sometimes you have to tickle their nose with a bit of straw to get them to sneeze all the mucus out of their airways, or rub their ribs, but usually ok.

Anyway, in this case, the lamb was just a streak of failed development - but the ewe was obviously in agony - so I furtled a bit more and pulled out more of these water bombs, and more, even worse mis-shapen freaks of nature - as I said, I was absolutely exhausted - the time was about 4 in the morning. I was aware of another ewe coming over to me and just lying down next to me (very unusual, even when you're Ms Doolittle like I was) I was so preoccupied with the ugly French sheep squitting out these awful foetuses - there were 7 in all.

I eventually got all of it out, and as she wandered away looking for food, I wiped my hands down my jeans, panting a bit with the effort and the emotion. I looked down at the Texel ewe (cute dutch sheep that really do look like teddy bears) and could see a pair of little lamb feet sticking out - she was really straining - Texel lambs are often massive - and just got a grip on his heels and pulled him gently out.

He'd been asphyxiated by her contractions - the poor little dude was cold and purple in the face.

I will never forget her lying so patiently next to me as I fucked about with that awful fucking horrible sheep.

I kneeled in the straw and bawled my eyes out.
It makes me cry even now - it's so rare for a sheep to come and lie next to you - willing you to help her - and I had failed so badly. That dead body I held had more effect on me than any other body I've seen in my life.

I've lost close friends, I've even lost my mum, but holding that beautiful little lamb that didn't even get chance to take a breath affected me more than those - because it was in a completely different way - I felt I had let a baby die.

It was not long after this that the whole 'farming' 'eating meat' thing, really got to me, and I could not reconcile the job that I did, with someone buying a lamb chop in the supermarket, it fucked my head up so much I gave up eating meat...I couldn't, on the one hand, care so much about the ewes that were giving birth, and the next moment just look at their offspring as units of profit...it really brought it all home to me.
( curvylittlegoth heard the voices in your head on, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 4:18, Reply)

badgers
I come from a very small Rural Community in the wilds of Herefordshire. My dad still lives there. After making some semblance of recovery after the horrific death of my mum from years of alcohol abuse, he got it together enough to not only do his own shopping (Iwas so glad not to have to find him in bed for days on end, or have to get some food in for him) but to start up with some old hobbies he had always loved - running was one, but another was campanology.

He seemed to be perking up...he'd got a whole new circle of like-minded peeps - I wouldn't go so far as to call them friends, but in a small community like we came from (less than 50 inhabitants) you can't pick and choose.

The bell ringers consisted of Jill and Aubrey (slightly odd escapees from Birmingham, but sweet and lovely - they also ran our local archery club which I was a member of) a couple of other random peeps, and, most memorably, Mr Handley - an ageing undertaker. This guy looks like one of the Adams family - he's small, very old, twisted up old body, you only have to look at him to imagine the crematorium dust wafting off him as he walks...

Well, not only does he love ringing the bells (esmeralda) he is a fervent lover of Badgers.

Now, where I come from, not only do they still advocate lamping (which is perfectly acceptable to the morons - ahem - guardians -of the countryside) they also still quite like a bit of badger baiting.

There is an organised group of people who, if they find a badger corpse by the side of the road, remove it, as if it remains where it is, is an obvious indicator of a nearby badger sett.
(I do not like badgers one bit - they are not the cute fluffy creatures you may be led to believe, but that's another story - but I also get quite sick at the thought of people using the stupid fuckers in organised fights)

So lovely Mr Handley, on his way back from a funeral in Hereford, in his gleaming, polished black hearse, whilst wearing full funereal regalia, spies an expired Brock at the side of the road, skids to a halt and retrieves his trusty Badger Burying shovel from the back of the hearse and sets to....

Cue lots of amazed/scared/freaked out people driving past this ancient Victorian looking undertaker digging a grave at the side of the road....

feck off, I don't care if it wasn't funny. None of my stories are. It made me giggle, and that is an indicator of just how sad accountants are.

so there.

yes.
( curvylittlegoth heard the voices in your head on, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 3:37, 3 replies)

Smells Pretty Good?
When I was about 17 I got on a YTS placement with the council and my job was mow the grass around graves and the memorial gardens

The job was boring
(some might call it Dead Boring but I wont cos that's silly)
anyway as people do in boring jobs I took every chance to skive off and part of this enabled me to strike up a friendship with the guys that worked the crematorium

one day I was invited into the back room
to have a look at how it worked and
to my joy ( I was 17 and a boy )
they were just about to stick an ex somebody in
It was pretty much automated all the fellah had to choose was oven 1 or oven 2 and in the coffin went
little flames popped up on the lid even before the door closed which was pretty cool
the oven next door had somebody in about half done and you could look through a little window to see how they were coming on
so I had a look and got to see that the coffin had completely gone leaving the almost perfect skeleton on display all be it charred and as you would expect
the head was closest to the window and you could see that the ribs were burning down at different speeds just like what matches look like
bone/black burnt bone/ash
obvious when you think about it but I hadn't and it surprised me
didn't freak me out just surprised me
I have decided that will be the way I go
It seems strangely peaceful and very final
unlike the slow decay in the ground

anyway the heat was great for drying out damp clothes when it rained

but the smell of people being cooked .. well I'm sorry to say made me hungry

that might sound odd but it didn't smell like burnt
it smelt like roast dinner
and I wasn't the only one to think this

* Moral *
working in graveyards makes you learn stuff about yourself its best not knowing.
(Bleak Outlook No Daddy.. I Dont Wanna Wear The Special Shoes, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 3:22, 1 reply)

My late husband.
I eloped back in October and we were married for five weeks. Then he got in a freak car accident; the results being suddenly and violently lethal. He never wore a seatbelt. I'd left that day on a business trip, came back the next day. It was actually a relief to see his body because it didn't look anything like him. More like something out of a movie. I couldn't cry.

In a way it was comforting, because even though he was dead, he still smelled the same, and I got to lay my head on his chest one last time.
(Avacado Platypus, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 2:33, Reply)

Only one so far...
My miscarried son. The girl and me made a baby- turns out birth control pills fail with anti-depressants- and we were both starving students but thought to make a go of it. Anyway five months on the water breaks and we all rush to the hospital for hours and hours of labor and tension, the baby barely alive but holding on.
Well eventually I guess it got to be too much for the little guy and he died soon after birth. I saw him. He was thin.
I still feel bad because I didn't want a child. I didn't want him to not live, though, either.
My father died yesterday, on the other end of the continent. I think by the time I get there the body will no longer be viewable. I'm a little out of sorts, sorry about the whining.
(douchebarge, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 1:04, 1 reply)

Yes
I saw a murder scene before the scene of crime officers had secured the area. I got moved along by the police pretty quickly though, so no stick-poking fun to be had. The guy had obviously been in a fight on his way home from a club the night before and had fallen and hit his head (so manslaughter then). He just looked like he was asleep though. Didn't approach any closer to investigate further as the police were already there.

I felt nothing much really - I didn't know him, and there were no blood and guts on show either.

Oh, and I saw my aunt in her coffin. She was catholic and they did the whole tradition of lying in state at the house the day before funeral. She was only 45. Died of a brain hemorrage (or something with simillar spelling).

I concur with Evilscary.
(Seance Trumpet has got no beef with a man enjoying a croissant, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 0:51, Reply)

Too many....
Watched autopsies with great interest (the smell is nasty, but well worth suffering through)

Helped the local funeral guys --a.k.a. body snatchers-- bag up many a former (I work in a hospital)

Met ambulances in the bay to help grim-looking Paramedics carry out their inactive "patients"

Been to accidents where my "Sir, are you okay?" question never gets answered ("Why yes, he did look mighty gray now that I think about it...")

And, topping it all, my b/f and I came across a suicide-in-progress involving semi-tractor versus 20ish year old girl (guess who won?). We got to speak to her before the final breath... lying to her about how she would be just fine and should just rest until help arrives. Then I directed traffic and gawkers around the scene until an ambulance arrived.

My point? It gets routine after a while. I see them as just still, lifeless bodies. I'm not emotional about it as it's just an ending. Hope that you never get to that point.
(Tukatz, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 0:12, Reply)

I've never seen a dead body
but I got a text from my bro this afternoon saying that he'd been to see mum and she looked lovely.
I fail to see this. She may have looked like she was finally at peace, but I can't for the life of me imagine that a dead body "looked lovely" and was slightly pissed off at him for telling me.
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 0:04, Reply)

Dry Pussy
I like cats, not particularly squeamish though; So when two mates and I were cleaning out a horrendously packed full of crap garage (to the roof) and found the mummified cat under a mattress, I wasn't fazed. Despite the agonised look on its'half eaten face.

I (the veggie) went to clean it up, whilst the other two (manly meat types) cringed and whimpered. It was interesting from an anatomy point of view so I smiled evilly at them and after wrapping it, popped my new friend in the haversac (that worried them)
and trundled off on my ancient motorbike.

Here's the good bit.
I rode over to Maxines' place a mile away (said I'd visit) and her strange mate Dave was there.
Thinking I could get more fun from my crumbly new pal, I went in and exclaimed

"Bet you can't guess what I've got in my rucksac (hehheh)"

Dave just looked me directly and calmly said, "a dead cat" before settling down in his armchair, smiling.

Neither of the mates at the garage knew where I was going, Maxine or Dave.

I'll never understand how Dave was right, he KNEW.
Brrr.

Irony:-
I still have the cat, but the mice have been nibbling at it.
( FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 29 Feb 2008, 21:59, Reply)

I've never seen a dead body
but this annoying little kid I know is ALWAYS going on about how he can see dead people.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 21:57, Reply)

Dead babies
Ahem, well gents here goes. Our little story of how a 13 year old boy found himself in a room surrounded by lots of dead babies, infants and animals whilst not at war, nor in a war zone.

Are you ready? then we'll begin...

It was the mid 1980's and I was all about being a moody 13 year old both by losing myself in the latest album by the fat boys - 'coming back hard again'anyone?! lol. And by being a traditional grumpy teenager. My parents decided that me and my older brother really needed a bonding holiday to Austria where we could walk, see culture and visit historic places and generally have a 'great' time as a family. I had an obsession with knives at the time (didn't you at that age?) and my brother had an obsession, in fact he had many but his most obsessively obsessed obsessive obsession was for gore.

(long story short time methinks)

Other then a mistachio'd pot bellied bloke emergerging from Lake Wolfgang with a 'Guten Morgen!!' whilst his little johnson waved at family 'Jamin not much of interest had happened. Then on one of our last days on said holiday we were persuaded by my brother to visit a local museum, all good think mum and dad, all boring thinks I.

Other then usual stuff on the lower floors, the top floor of this run-of-the-mill-isn't-history GREAT museum was intriguing.....there was a black curtain across the door and a sign (in Austrian, or is that German?) with a lot of BIG letters with underlining and everything. We could tell it was a warning of some sort. My brother walked straight in before parents could stop him..........

He came back 2 seconds later with a thousand yard stare 'come in it's great!' he said (probably)

I held back the curtain and entered...........

Behind the curtain was a room full dozens of huge glass jars, inside of which appeared to be stuffed toys and animals, all of which were deformed or disfigured in someway. Babies with too many limbs, babies with not enough limbs, cats with three heads, dogs with no legs, babies with deformed half formed siamese twins but most of all were row upon row of babies with HUGE heads, some were huge but squished flat as if there was nothing inside,some were just plain big and all were wrinkled and very, very milky white in colour (ouch just had a few images returning to me after over 20 years)

All well and good thought I, and I presumed it to be a load of models of still born and terminated off spring to demonstrate the extremes of what can be given birth to.

It was as we walked away from the museum that it hit me 'hehe' said gore loving older brother 'can't believe mum and dad let us see that' 'what do you mean?' said I.

Cue ear to ear grin from my brother, yes they were real alright. Hundreds and hundreds of dead babies, all pickled and preserved.

Ahhhhhhhhh!!!

I stopped eating pickled onions very shortly after that.
(bensgotjamin Should I apologise for my 3 1/2?, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 21:57, Reply)

My dad.
Died a couple of years back when I was 15.
He had what's known as 'Lewey Body Dementia' - a mixture of Alzheimer's and Parkinsons - nasty stuff, avoid it at all costs.
He had this for about 13/14 years (it made for an... alternative childhood) before catching pneumonia in a respite home and subsequently... well... dying.
We had the call from the home a few days earlier from a lovely but indecipherable African nurse, saying that he really wasn't very well and it didn't look like recovery was on the horizon.

When he died a few days later, my mum, being too upset (naturally) to drive called my aunt - Jane - and her husband with a drivers license - Phil - informing them of the situation and asking them if they'd be good enough to drive us up there.

We got to this home - having visited it before, it was quite nice, smelled of the aged and death.
I thought we we're only picking up my dads stuff...

I cannot begin to describe my suprise at walking into the room and seeing him lying there on the bed. He died at 5 in the morning and we went in at 9ish.
So, he had been there for 4 hours and no one - NO ONE - had taken the time to think about closing his eyes.
It looked like jelly. Grey jelly.

He was all stiff and rigid.
My aunt called it 'regaining his dignity' (Wtf?)
I call it rigor mortis.

I was not having a good day (much like the rest of my family.)

Out of interest... who the FUCK, brings small children to a funeral?
You know if you went to church, and there was always a small kid making noise during the sermons but it was adorable... yeah... not at a funeral.
Even when the priest says "we're here today to say goodbye" GOODBYE GOODBYE, interrupts the child.
Fucksake.


Oh, and I saw a dead badger today.
Didn't look dead, more like it had one hell of a night and passed out at the side of the pavement.
Seriously, it was grinning.

Length joke about badger cock... or something.
(Good Looking Deity Grew a magnificent beard on, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 21:52, Reply)

More "not seeing a dead body" fun
I worked at a station for a year and in my interview the interviewess casually mentioned that "we get about 3 jumpers a year". It's popular there because it's quite remote and had a fair bit of through traffic, and with a line speed of about 110 mph there it would be quick, I suppose if you wanted to use a train you'd want it like that. Most of the staff had a tale or 2 of people who been minced, but for some reason I start and did we have any? No. Not 1. No idea why it lost its appeal, and I don't think there's been any there since I left either, but I'm glad I didn't have anything like that to have to sort out on my shift.
(tinypod will never learn. Ever., Fri 29 Feb 2008, 21:40, Reply)

Nope
Surprisingly no I haven't, and I'll tell you why. I'm doing a forensics/police based course at university (a double whammy against me in the likeability stakes I feel, a student AND a copper) so you'd think I'd see a bunch of gore, not so much... kind of. I've seen plenty of pictures of bodies chopped up or full of enough water to keep pre-pubescent America stocked in water bras but nothing in real life. One of my mates died when I was 18 but his funeral was closed casket so I didn't see anything there either. More surprisingly though my mum is an embalmer (makes dead guys look less, dead) and I haven't even seen any of those!

I guess I better hope all that stuff about media desensitization is true.
(maca2kx, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 21:21, Reply)

One of the many occasions when I didn't see a dead body...
that springs to mind was when Tommy Cooper died live on the telly. It seems morbid now but I was 17 at the time, most teenagers have a pretty morbid curiosity, and the whole school was buzzing with it. Absolutely everybody except me had seen it and I felt like a pariah, I can vaguely remember watching every news programme going hoping to see the moment when it happened (as if they would show THAT but hey - I was young, I knew bugger all) and being disappointed when they announced it but showed nowt. I'd be a bit more mature about the whole thing now but at the time I'd have given a goolie to have seen it.
(tinypod will never learn. Ever., Fri 29 Feb 2008, 21:12, 2 replies)

Kissing a corpse
Driving back from our lunch-break my mate and I saw a man lying on the pavement surrounded by concerned onlookers, at his insistence I stopped to “help”.

An off-duty policeman promptly arrived and prepared to give CPR to the corpse that had apparently been lying there for about 20 minutes. He (the off-duty policeman, not the dead body) ordered my mate to do the 2 breaths bit (mouth to mouth) while he pounded the heart, my mate (no 1st aid training) gave one blow, got an earful of dead-mans snot then sat up and said “s**t, I’ve lost my chewing gum”.

The off-duty officer muttered “for f**ks sake”, under his breath then started shoving his hands down the dead mans throat, after a little while he emerged triumphantly with the gum and for some reason I’ll never quite fathom stuck it in my hand with an instruction to “here, you look after this carefully”.

On the way back to work I had to pull over twice so my mate could throw up because he could still taste the dead mans salty spit, I’ve still got the chewing gum.

Every time we drive past a dead body now my mate just says “just keep f**king driving”, although admittedly we haven’t driven past very many.
(Whippet, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 21:05, 2 replies)

The first time I saw a dead body
I was in hospital, aged 20, recovering from blood poisoning from a cat bite and on Intra-veinous anti-biotics (there’s a funny story about that I’ll save for another time).

For some reason I was on a ward full of old people because that was the only place they could find to put me.

One morning I woke up to see an old man, a World War One veteran no less, sat up in bed staring at me. I returned his gaze with a smile; he kept staring, and staring, and staring. I watched him carefully for about 5 minutes, and unless he blinked at exactly the same time as me, he didn’t blink at all (I put that to the test with some random blink-testing).

I then noticed the other old bloke in the bed next to him looking at me, “dead ‘int he?” he said, “um” I said, “yeah, dead, I’ve been watching him for ages now”. He then pressed the nurse call button, “Nurse, he’s dead” he said pointing at him, “and get us a cup of tea would ya?”. The nurse quickly examined the old dead man, tutted and drew the curtains around him; she walked off shaking her head and came back 5 minutes later with a cup of tea for me, it was the worst morning of my life, I wanted Coffee.
(Whippet, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 21:04, Reply)

Queen's Day Amsterdam
I can't remember how long ago this exactly was. Must have been a few years by now. For those who don't know, April 30th in The Netherlands is massive celebration called Queen's Day. Ostensibly we are celebrating the Queen's mothers birthday, her mom since it’s in April unlike the Queen's which is sometime colder. If you ever happen to visit Amsterdam at the time you will witness thousands of orange cladding men women and children swilling down gallons of Heineken and selling their junk on the street. Good times are had by all.

Well that is obviously not true when you consider the prompt for this tale. As my friends and I roamed around the city, I slowly realized that this area happened to have many black people. Slightly surprising for as culturally and ethically diverse as Amsterdam is, a white person is rarely in the minority at any given point, except a rap concert or the like. This part of course had the best music, so we stuck around for a while and danced on the street with the rest like the drunken fools we were. I slowly starting noticing a correlation, the closer you got to the center, the fewer people were dancing. Then I noticed the ambulance, then the rubbernecking crowd gather around, and then finally the white cloth covering with only a hand protruding. I suddenly didn’t feel like dancing, no, no not at all. It was an odd site to see, a dead body lying and the ground, however if you glimpsed around, the still remaining large crowd was bobbing to the rhythm of the music.
(dht, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 20:53, Reply)