immortality
Family rituals?

We. just. won't. Die.

The world keeps trying to kill us, but as far as I can tell … my family is immortal.

My father has been in a good dozen serious accidents (mostly not his fault), motorcycles, cars, trucks, one autobahn accident at top speed, he was in a helicopter when it backed into a cliff (it was foggy, that’s all the explanation I’m ever given) during the crash of which the landing strut pushed up through the floor rearranged his face, a few boat crashes, a plane's "forced landing", no train crashes that I know of (I may ask, I'm unsure), I think he may actually have been in a serious accident with every type of transport known to mankind. And of course he's done the usual fun stuff like bar fights, fallen through the ice, gone to war, dated a mafia princess, worked in southeast DC for years, jumped out of planes and slept with twins with whom he did not share a common language.

Ok, the last one wasn't particularly dangerous but he deserves credit all the same.

One time riding his motorcycle back to base after a weekend of drinking he topped all the little jokes fates played on him completely. It's two thirty in the morning and he's riding his motorcycle with his sunglasses on... cause, you know - he's "cool" like that.

He needs to take a piss and he's pretty drunk (these may be connected) so he pulls over to a fast food place on the side of the road hoping to use their bathroom. Nope - it's 230am and they're closed up tight - so he looks around and hey, over there at the edge of the parking lot there's a little wall and some bushes behind it - he'll go over there and do his business and all will be good. He runs over, he jumps over the little wall and...

They're not bushes behind the little wall... they are instead - the tops of fuck all tall Trees.

He's just leapt over the protective wall at the edge of a cliff.

Maybe if he hadn't been wearing super cool sunglasses in the middle of the night he'd have been able to tell the difference but no...

Instead he wakes up the next morning, at the bottom of the cliff looking up at some broken branches in the trees and the sun coming down at him through them. Flat on his back and sore as hell but otherwise unharmed - he says the funny thing is, he didn't have to piss anymore either.

Of course it doesn't end there - he has to go back to base (now seriously late for roll call) and explain *why* he's late, "sorry sarge, you see, I jumped over this cliff..."

He eats a little humble pie, explains what happened - and seems to get away with it.

Except two weeks later he's called into the base psychiatrists office - to be asked "so how long have you had these suicidal feelings?"

Have you ever had to explain that you're not suicidal - you're just really really stupid?

Every year or two I swear there’s something like this, just one more thing for the list.

Granpda was tougher and meaner than dad. When he was 93 he fell out of a tree, landed on his head, broke his neck - and didn't die.

For fucks sake I do not know what it takes to kill one of us.

I should find out what happened to great grandpa...

Myself, being young (and non-alcoholic of bent) have not had quite as many adventures, I've been laying unsecured in the back of a pickup truck during a pretty serious spinout and accident – but I didn't even spill my soda so that barely counts, I stood on my roof in a hurricane as lightning struck all around wearing a fucklong big iron tow chain as an accessory once (it kinda made sense at the time), been kidnapped by west Virginians known only as "rebel" and "rusty" for a night, been hit by a car while biking (and then he hit me again when he still didn't stop fast enough - bumper to brainpan – blegh), been stabbed (hard with a sharp knife... but my skin didn't break, so maybe it was just "poked"), thrown from a full galloping horse named "back breaker" (cause he had) and been shot in the chest... all with out anything more than a scrape.

ok, the shooting was just paintball =) but the bullet didn't even break - it just hit me and bounced off, which according to the ref means “I lived” ... you can't even kill us for pretend!

I can’t explain it – but I do love it, be it dumb luck or something more it’s made me fearlessly willing to try anything – which will probably lead to more stories to tell my kids later =)

That or at least one last interesting story to tell at the wake...
( Allisade would love to hear from you, Fri 21 Nov 2008, 2:48, 4 replies)

Is your dad
Lee Majors? When he jumps about does he do this to a strange 70's style electric guitar going wahhh-wahhh-wahhh-wahhh-wahhh-wahhh in the background?
( SpankyHanky, Fri 21 Nov 2008, 9:35, closed)

To add a random story of y own...
My mates dad and a friend were once driving home very drunkly and recklessly on a motorbike. Given that they were careening all over the place its not surprising that before long they noticed suspicious blue flashing lights behind them.

As they were tripping their nuts off on LSD, it was decided that the best course would be to outrun their pursuers, dump the bike and walk home, to return for the bike in the morning.

So the guy speeds up as quickly as he can so they can lose the tail on the otherside of the large hill coming up.

-----------the next day------------

Both guys wake up in a confused heap in some weed clog ditch several meters from the road. They are bruised, sore and hungover but have no recollection of how they got there, so they assumed they had been walking home ad fallen asleep. They headed back to the pub to find the guys motorcycle, but it was missing. So he phones the police to report it stolen.

He goes in to the station and picks the bike up - they have it - and asks them where they found it. Apparently, they were pursuing the criminals on the stolen bike, which was then found several hundred meters down the road the other side of that large hill, with no sign of the riders.

Yep; thats right, somehow on going over the crest of the hill at top speed, they had been catapulted off the bike and into the trees where they lay unconscious and undiscovered til the morning. The bike had kept going for some distance before falling over in the road.

And they got away scott free.

EDIT: still not as stupid as accidentally jumping off a cliff though!
(Roopy all is not what it seams, Fri 21 Nov 2008, 10:20, closed)

One of my own
I was a young lass, and being the tomboyish sort was prone to doing some decidedly unwise things, usually involving a bicycle.

Near the house I grew up in, there was an artificial cliff where the side of a hill was carved out to make a road, I'd say about 20-30 feet tall. At the top of this cliff was a bit of a bowl, making a natural ramp. Above this was a field. So I, of course, decide that it would be a great idea to drag my bike up the (not perfectly vertical) cliff, up to the field, and proceed to jump the cliff at top speed. So I do.

About halfway across the road I realize that this wasn't the greatest of ideas. I let go of the bike, thinking that landing with it would be more painful than landing without it. I fly over the road, over a low fence, over a line of trees, and well into a pasture on the other side before landing in a small creek. Flat on my back.

I lie there for a few minutes as my friend climbs the fence to get to me, and take stock of my current situation. Am I dead? No. Am I hurt? Yes. Can I move everything? Surprisingly, yes. I stand up, find my bike, see that it fared about as well as I did, wave off my friend (who was convinced I had broken my spine and was in shock or something), and ride home to nurse my wounds.

In retrospect, I probably should've gone to a doctor to check for internal injuries, but I healed up fine, with nothing more than some bumps and bruises.
(Morgan is a damn dirty hippie, Sat 22 Nov 2008, 23:43, closed)

Thank goodness
I think the best design aspect of humans is the way we're made out of rubber and fuck all steel as kids.

Just last week I was jumping on the trampoline with my young cousin - he did a bad bounce, landed in a way that would have twisted my joints sideways forever, bounced up and then down onto the metal rim, flipped around it and slammed into the ground head first.

Time stopped for me, I was sure he was never gonna move again .... but hell no, stood up smiling, climbed back on and started bouncing again even higher - I don't think he even realized he was supposed to be hurt...

If I did that I'd be guiding the wheel chair with my tongue for the rest of my days =P

Kids are awesome.
( Allisade would love to hear from you, Wed 26 Nov 2008, 15:56, closed)