» Self-Inflicted injuries

Mom had a twisted sense of humor
My friend T and I spent a year living with my parents and working in a sheet metal shop to save up some money before going off to uni. One Friday he was tasked with moving a few score heavy sheets from one pile to another and the guy assisting him grew annoyed at the slow pace. So they started flipping several of the plates at one time. One set slipped and slammed T's hand into an upright stack, slicing through his glove and into the back of his hand. Bad cut, but no serious damage.

Off to the emergency room in a company truck with T holding a wad of paper towels against the cut with his hand in his lap. Four stitches later he was back at work to finish the day. When we got home that night, he discovered that blood had soaked through the lap of his pants and into his Y-fronts. He dropped them into the bathroom trashcan. We ate dinner with my parents and went out for a night on the town.

Next morning we discover that my mom had fished T's underwear out of the trash and laundered them, getting out the bloodstain. They were neatly folded next to the bathroom sink, along with an ancient box of Kotex and a pamphlet titled "Now You're a Woman".
(Mon 2nd Dec 2013, 15:10, More)

» Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics

The Fucking Kennedy Lady
I live in the suburbs of Boston, MA in the US. From 1984 to 1997 I took the subway to and from work, and 2-3 times a week on my trip home I would encounter the woman I called "The Fucking Kennedy Lady".

She was a thin, elderly, woman always dressed in once-elegant, but now worn and mended, clothes. Clean. No smell, even on a hot summer day when the air conditioning had broken down. She did have one little quirk.

As the train left the station, she would start a little diatribe in a conversational tone of voice:

"I told that fucking Bobby Kennedy. I told him. Don't you touch me fucking Bobby Kennedy. Get away from me fucking Bobby Kennedy."

After a few minutes of this, her false teeth would start to emerge from her mouth and she would begin wrestling them back into place with both hands. It was a mighty struggle for her, but she always managed to subdue them and return to her rant. As the train approached the next station, she would fall silent, starting up again when the train left the station. She didn't flail. She didn't yell. She just ranted about Bobby Kennedy and wrestled with her teeth while remaining inside the space where she was seated.

No matter how crowded the train was, people would move away from her when she started up and the person sitting next to her would vacate their seat. Result!

I would take the free seat and enjoy the comfort of open space in front of me, reading a book while my personal commuter repellant worked to maintain the vacant area for me in the crowded train.
(Fri 28th Sep 2012, 19:49, More)

» Your Revenge Stories

Effortless Revenge
My friend and I got evicted from a cushy, cheap, apartment in Cambridge (the other one, in Massachusetts) by a couple of jerk landlords who converted the building into condominiums. We found another place that happened to be near the largest shopping center in the area.

This shopping center had a strict parking lot policy because of the shortage of local parking and the guards were quick to have a car towed away if they saw the owner leave the premises. Parking only for patrons! A few days after we moved, I was walking to the store and noticed the ex-landlord's car in the lot. I went and stood next to the driver's side door until one of the guards looked at me, then haughtily sauntered off the premises, across the street, and into a bar. I sat by the front window and enjoyed the spectacle of the car being towed as I quaffed a cold one. It was especially gratifying to see the ex-landlord come out from shopping with bags of groceries only to find the car missing.

Four or five more times over the next year my friends and I spotted one of the two ex-landlords' cars in that parking lot. "Hey guys, time for a pint and a side order of vengeance."
(Fri 14th May 2004, 3:01, More)

» The Occult

Fauxthereal
My friend Bob had something haunting his mother's house, where he lived in between jobs and/or girlfriends. Several times a year, in the quiet of late night, a moaning sound would come from the third floor. It was faint, and repeated searches of the two bedrooms would turn up nothing before the sound stopped.

His mother usually rented out those two rooms to a boarder. One of them was rather superstitious, and the moaning caused him to pack his belongings and leave, never to return. He abandoned almost three months of prepaid rent in the process. His mother was very religious, so she requested an exorcism to resolve this. Her denomination didn't do exorcisms, but they did send a minister over to pray for the house and to bless it. (Meanwhile, Bob and I were in the basement burning sacred herbs and chanting along with punk rock music.)

Neither technique worked. The moaning sound was noticed again a few months later.

About a year later Bob and I spent a rainy day repainting the third floor rooms and were in the process of blessing them with vegetal oxidation when we heard the moans. Nothing in the room we occupied. Nothing in the adjacent room.

Bob says, "I think the sound is coming from outside the house!"

We raced down the stairs to the back door and outside. The moans were louder and we could ascertain a direction.

The north side of the house had few windows, as is common in New England, and the telephone line led directly from the pole to the a point near the center of the north wall. We watched as a strong and steady gust of wind pushed a tree branch up against the telephone wire and sawed back and forth with the wind like a huge violin bow. The north wall became a giant sounding board.

The next morning I stopped by to help Bob exorcise the moaning spirit with a pruning saw on a pole borrowed from a neighbor.
(Mon 12th Sep 2016, 4:41, More)

» Local Urban Legends

Screw Job Bob - Local Legend
A bit pathetic, this one...

Back in the mid-80s I was driving my girlfriend home and we were stopped at a light.

She points to a man across the intersection and says, "Oh, there's Screw-Job Bob."

I asked about the unusual nickname and she explained that he had a mild mental disability from a car accident and lived on the proceeds from an insurance settlement. He constantly chatted up (what he thought were) impressionable schoolgirls (15-18 range) hoping to score. They, in turn, tried to talk him into purchasing them some alcohol, after which they could ditch him. The running average of successful results was: girls about 50%, Bob 0%.

Thirty years later I overheard a couple of girls talking about him as my wife and I came out of the movies.

"Who wants to hit up Screw-Job for a pint of vodka?"

"No way. That's so junior high. My brother's home from college and he'll buy liquor for us."
(Tue 17th Jan 2017, 6:14, More)