Story Time

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Thought about a thread where we share some stories after recalling a few in the box last week. We've had something like this before, but might not be a bad time to tell a few. Share if you will. Here's one from a while back (and it's true)...

I have a good buddy that finished law school after graduating from UF, got a job with the district attorney in Marianna, met a girl and asked her to marry him. She accepted and her folks put on this big engagement party and invited a bunch of his family and friends from Gadsden county. My wife and I went with another couple and had a great time not only meeting his future wife's family, but also seeing a bunch of our old gang. We also had a friend of ours that went stag, known to all as "Big." He was well-named as he stood about 6'3" and weighed 375 or better. He was as full of you-know-what as he was large and was always the life of the party.

The groom-to-be brought his future brother-in-law up to a group that included Big and introduced him as so-and-so from Malone. Malone, of course, was renowned for its high school basketball program having won multiple state championships. Big walked up and shook the gentleman's hand and said "From Malone, huh? I thought there wasn't nothin' in Malone but (hoars) and basketball players!" The guy's face turned beet red and you could tell he felt rightly insulted, but being he was smaller than Big he was struggling with whether or not to square off and defend his honor. After a few seconds, he summoned up the courage and told Big with balled up fists and a little quiver to his lips "Sir, I'll have you know my wife is from Malone!" Without missing a beat, Big replied "Really? What position did she play?!" We fell about the place.

 

[AuggieDosta]

Awesome story Cover!

And speaking of "hoars" Did you hear about the time Bob Hope did Gator Growl?

He was impressed with our architecture.

 

[cover2]

Awesome story Cover!

And speaking of "hoars" Did you hear about the time Bob Hope did Gator Growl?

He was impressed with our architecture.

So I heard! He should know the only schools interested in graduating virgins are all Catholic.

 

[cover2]

Alright, here's another true story that I heard a while back. One of my colleagues at work played football at F$U and tells a lot of good tales from out of the locker room. He said that this one time all the players that were travelling had to line up outside of Coach Bowden's office to get their trip itinerary and per diem. Usually this was mostly upperclassmen, but the Nole$ had a big freshman defensive lineman named Allen Dale Campbell (from Perry or Monticello I believe) that was pretty good from the get go and was travelling for the first time. When Allen Dale made it to the secretary's desk, Allen Dale took the money and turned to leave. The secretary stopped him and asked "Allen Dale, don't you want your intinerary?" With a puzzeled look, Allen Dale thought for a moment and then replied "No ma'am, I'm on scholarship!" My colleague still busts out laughing when he tells this one and says that the entire team never could figure out or get Allen Dale to tell them exactly what he thought an itinerary was! Nole$ been Noling for a long time!

 

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One more and we'll call it a week. One of my coaching stints was as the golf coach and we were fortunate enough to play mostly tournaments. At these tournaments, we'd get the kids to the course, let them warm up, and then scoot them out to their tees. At the time, the only coaching/talking we could do with them was at the turn, so there was quite a bit of time to kill between start and finish. One of the older coaches from Valdosta would assemble all of us in our carts somewhere on the course, but out of the way of players and spectators, and he'd hold court. The guy was hilarious and kept us in stitches for hours.

One of his best stories he told on himself. Said that about six months back he had to drop by the drug store to pick up a prescription and the druggist, who was a friend and booster told him "Man, you're getting about that age where you probably need a little help in the romance department, aren't you?" When asked what did he mean, the druggist said "I've got some sample packs of these little blue pills that you take an hour or so before you get ready to be intimate and they'll keep everything working and never let you down!" Indignantly, the coach replied that he didn't need any help in that area and that everything was working just fine. "Yeah, but at your age, you'll never know when a break down will happen. Just take them with you and if you ever think you need them, just follow the directions and they'll have things rolling in no time!" Reluctantly, the coach took the pills home and hid them in the medicine cabinet thinking "I'll never use these things."

About six months later, the coach had things lined up to take "Momma" out for a nice dinner and a drink afterward and then home for a roll in the hay. While he was getting his Old Spice out of the medicine cabinet, he spotted the pills he tucked away six months prior. He held them up and looked at them for a few minutes and even though he didn't think he needed them, his curiosity got the best of him. "Hell, I'll just try it this once to see if it works or if it's any help." So he took one of the pills, splashed on his Old Spice, got dressed and took Momma to the Sizzler and then stopped at a lounge and had a cocktail before heading home. Once they got in the house, he got changed into his best boxers and then jumped into bed and cuddled up next to Momma, expecting a night of passion like never before. Then, Momma spoke the phrase that all men hate to hear..."Not tonight, Baby! My head's killing me!" The denouement of his story was this: "Mr. Gentlemen, I'll have you all know that I spent from 10:00 that evening until 6:00 the next morning laying in that bed with what felt like a hoe handle strapped to me!"

I miss stuff like this about coaching as much as anything.

 

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At the old high school, we had a table in the lunchroom that the male faculty would sit at and discuss a myriad of things after eating lunch. The discussions could get quite spirited from time to time, but we also had a lot of laughs as well. One day the discussion centered around the Episcopal Church ordaining gay priests (sometime in the early 2000's I think). This one AP brought the subject up and gave us all a 10 minute oratory on his and the Presbyterian Church's views (or at least that was his claim). He ranted that in the Presbyterian Church, they didn't allow such and furthermore it was an abomination that they didn't tolerate. He went on about the sanctity of marriage, hell being the destination for people who supported this, and so forth and so on. When he finished, he sat down with his arms crossed and looked smugly over the crowd as if he'd just saved our souls.

While the AP was preaching, the basketball coach started elbowing me and grinning, so I knew he had something coming when the floor was open. He started out with "Mr. X, where I go to church, we believe that all people, regardless of their sexual preferences, are God's children and we are to love them like we love our own families. And furthermore, as a Christian, we should be tolerant of the the opinions of others and if we disagree, we should try and win them over with love."

By this time, the AP's face had turned beet red and smoke was starting to come from his ears! The coach continued "and Mr. X, we are to follow the Lord's examples in our lives to help make the world a better place where people of all orientations can live as one! and Mr. X, you are a Christian aren't you?!" At that, the AP sprang to his feet and shouted "Hell no, I told you I'm a Presbyterian!" We ran out of that place like it was on fire and the AP never did understand what we were laughing so hysterically about as we exited.

***I hope that no one gets offended by either the religious or sexual tones of this event, but it happened and we still laugh about it to this day some 15-16 years later. Heck, as a Methodist, I get a kick out of my Baptist buddies who always kid me about our religion being devout on Sundays and profane every other day!

 

[stephenPE]

Mr. X, you are a Christian aren't you?!" At that, the AP sprang to his feet and shouted "Hell no, I told you I'm a Presbyterian!" We ran out of that place like it was on fire and the AP never did understand what we were laughing so hysterically about as we exited.

OMG that is almost Mark Twain worthy. Its all down hill now today for funny stuff, nothing will top it. Had I been there I could not have run out because I would have been paralyzed on the floor crying in laughter.

 

[5-Star Finger]

Okay, I've got one. Fair warning, it is long.

First, you need to understand that I grew up as rural as rural gets. When I say I grew up in the woods, I mean that I was part of an enclave consisting of a handful of homes literally surrounded by national forest with only two dirt roads out. We never really had any kind of pest problem because snakes and birds of prey (and a barnyard cat or two, batting cleanup) typically took care of it sight unseen, with the only the occasional owl pellet in science class as a reminder that there were even rodents in Florida.

After college I got my first "real" job in Dothan, AL and found my first house a bit north of there. It was a nice little raised foundation home on a packed clay road bordered by peanut fields to the north as far as you could see. This view was only interrupted by the trees forming the windbreaks in the distance. The house itself had nice high ceilings, a porch that wrapped around the front and side and another smaller covered porch- only big enough for a couple of chairs - out the back door towards the fields. It is this smaller porch that will feature prominently in our story. South of the house there was a small grove of large mature pecan trees. There were a couple of these trees in the yard as well. The house sat on roughly 2 acres and we had a neighbor whose property adjoined ours, but other than that we had this entire area to ourselves. It was a quiet place to raise some kids. Early on the only issues were that our neighbors were Jehovah's Witnesses that occasionally burned trashed. Each of those facts is separately and tangentially related to stories for another time.

So here I am, in my first real home with a young wife, a good job, in a beautiful spot with the early days of fall ending in cool dark nights. It was a veritable paradise on Earth - and that is when I met my first mouse.

He was a shifty-looking, furry fellow with beady black eyes and small frame all of about three inches. The annunciation of his arrival was a cacophonous symphony which commenced with a primal scream and quickly crescendoed into hastily composed prayers of imprecation and the metallic pinging of hurtling flatware and concluded with headlong exodus of my bride from the kitchen into the living room. It was here that she lept up onto our newly purchased Rooms to Go ottoman and began to pump her legs with a fury that would have shamed Richard Simmons while screaming "there's a rat in the kitchen!!" repeatedly like it was some kind of incantation in a pagan exorcism ritual.

Now, as I previously mentioned I had never tangled with a mouse before, but I had dispatched more than my share of armadillos and raccoons who were intent on digging up gardens and rummaging in trash respectively. How hard could it be to get rid of a mouse? Brimming with confidence and the swagger of John Wayne I strode towards the kitchen, looking back over my shoulder, giving her a wink while letting my mind wander to the rock star reception I was sure awaited me for removing the interloping rodent.

I came face to face with my foe in the kitchen. He was brazenly gnawing on a piece of corn that had been intended for a side dish at dinner that night. We locked eyes and he twitched his whiskers, no doubt considering what my next move would be. I realized that in my haste I was unarmed and had no way to mete out the mousey justice needed, so I scanned the room and selected the no stick frying pan that had been a wedding gift. Silently as death, I slide my hand around the handle and began to roll heel toe slowly towards the rodent. He made no attempt to retreat. Once within reach I slowly raised the pan over my head and then brought it swiftly down for the killing blow.

With lightning quickness the lesser mammal darted out of the path of the killshot. The next moments were a flurry of activity. Bellowing in rage and bloodlust, I launched several enormous T-Fal haymakers in his direction – each with no effect other than successive dents on the floor and cabinets. Apparently believing I would eventually get lucky, he decided a tactical withdraw was in order and deftly passed through a barely perceivable crack under the baseboard. The wife was less than impressed.

Growing up I learned from my father that the two most important items in any home maintenance arsenal are a hammer and caulk. While on this occasion the latter seemed like the appropriate remedy I quieted my inner frustration by promising it that I would exact vengeance with the former if possible. The confidence I feigned in my repair did not inspire the same in the lady of the house. The next night proved she was correct.

My nemesis was back the second night, this time bringing a friend. Perhaps the promise was “dinner and show” or whatever the rodent equivalent might be. The irritation in Mrs Five-Star was evident. Words were used like “overrun” “diseased” “vermin” and “plague” that left little doubt the stakes in the war were rapidly escalating. At first I suggested poison. This idea was quickly shot down because she had read in a magazine that it was dangerous to expose pregnant women or women who expected to be pregnant to rat poisoning. Earth shattering research there. There was a wife veto; poison would be a no-go. So I went to see Charlie, a friend from church who owned the local hardware store.

Charlie was as Alabama as it gets. He was nearly as wide as he was tall and the alternating tan lines on his face from his nearly-ever present ball cap and Dale Earnhardt-esk sun glasses gave his rounded head an appearance that always vaguely reminded me of an ABA basketball. He was “good people” as my grandmother used to say and was only too happy to help me end the War of the Rodents. He sold me several spring traps at a fair price and recommended peanut butter as bait. It’s hard to quantify the dark satisfaction that crept over me as I bounced down the washboard clay. I set the traps and went to bed with smug certainty.

The next morning I woke up with devilish excitement of a grim Christmas. My wife got out the bedroom door first in the predawn dark and I heard a gasp right after the sound of the kitchen light switch clicking. Bingo. I strutted out of the bedroom, through the dining room and into the kitchen to perform the battle damage assessment. Only one of the traps was sprung but had done its work masterfully. The bar had come down on the invader’s head and ejected his cranial contents through his ear at high velocity onto the nearby wall. Confirmed kill.

My turn towards my wife was smart and I had nearly begun to raise my hand for a high five, when her eyes met mine and they were filled with tears. Now is a good time to note that Mrs. Five-Star’s upbringing was somewhat more refined than mine and distinctly not rural. The death of varmints was as alien to her as cucumber sandwiches were to me. There had already been an empathic explanation that a back porch was not the place to mount a board to nail catfish to for the purpose of easy cleaning. My defense of “I used a wash tub underneath” had done nothing to allay her angst about that matter; and it was now apparent that a grave miscalculation had occurred in this one as well.

Her remorse was puzzling to say the least because just a couple of days prior she had attempted assassination personally by way of high velocity butter knife. Nevertheless, I loved this woman and did the best to comfort her despite my own confusion. I removed the carcass and cleaned the wall and decided to try to achieve a new consensus on a plan of action. Her request was for something more humane. No matter how hard I tried to express that the mouse probably didn’t feel anything, she wasn’t having it. She wanted something more humane; maybe a way to catch them and let them go far out in the field. So I went back to Charlie.

Here is where the story takes its tragic turn; as I was rather imprecise in my specifications to Charlie about the fault in the methodology of elimination. I simply told him my wife didn’t like the traps and wanted to catch them rather than squash them. Charlie’s response of “all I have are glue traps” at the time sounded like response to earnest prayers. It was perfect. A sticky trap that catches the mouse which I can then spirit off according to the wishes of the Mrs and release so he can be free. I baited the glue traps with peanut butter and sat down with the Mrs to watch a movie before bed. The frantic squeaking started just as she was starting to dose off next to me.

When we went into the kitchen, there, in the dead center of the trap was a mouse stuck in the glue squealing loudly. The Mrs beemed. “Okay, now let him go,” she said. I walked over and picked up the trap and immediately realized this had gone horribly wrong. Now as those of you who have been chortling since the last paragraph know, glue traps are about as far from catch and release as it gets. What greeted me was a terrified creature hopeless stuck in glue that had instantly bonded with its fur. It got even more scared when I got close and began to struggle. I did my best to try to turn my body to shield the lady from the scene but she was peeking around my shoulder when it its struggle it pulled its own ear off. It went downhill from there. She began to sob. “Help it, help it!” she was instantly shrieking. This off course did nothing to calm the rodent’s demeanor. “Use a butter knife!” she yelled, with no further direction. (I would come to realize later that for those of the fairer sex with a refined upbringing a butter knife is the tool of choice much like a hammer is to a man from the sticks. This was why it was her go to offensive weapon in the earlier encounter. ) I tried to follow this instruction by attempting to use it as a lever to free the doomed mouse. The results were what you might expect. Realizing that the only realistic option was to end the animal’s suffering and also realizing that if I did this in front of my wife she would probably never speak to me again I told a white lie. “I’m going to go outside to help it calm down,” I said, “when it isn’t struggling I’ll be able to get it out and let it go.” I promised myself I would tell her the truth later – but right now it would be unhelpful. So I kissed her on the forehead, turned on the porch light and headed out the back door.

The night was moonless and overcast. To those of you who have never lived in a rural setting it was a night my dad would describe as “darker than a miner’s *******.” Pitch black. The brightest light for miles was the little glowing orb of light coming from my back porch and it barely head the dark back. I picked up a brick that I used to prop the door open in nice weather and resolved to walk far enough into the black where there was no chance she would see what needed to be done. The mouse’s cries had become soft whimpers and I was attempting to make good speed across the yard to put it down quickly.

I was just getting to where the porch light was barely a pinprick and I was certain she couldn’t possible see when the mouse started going nuts. WHOOSH. Something in my hair. My brain reeled. WHOOSH something huge right by my neck. Here in the dark – I was under attack by something unseen and massive. Blind panic. Deep down in my lizard brain the message for my feet to run was engaged with my brain still in neutral. “Open the door!” I yelled “Something is after me!” I barreled as across the yard – mouse screaming and the huge unseen thing grasping at me over and over. In a full panic mode I got up the steps and grasped for the door. LOCKED. Cold dread washed over me. That’s when it appeared out of the darkness, coming into the orb of light underneath the roof of the back porch. Claws. At least that is what I saw. Huge, claws. Open and pointy.

I know it is a movie trope that everything goes to slow motion, but I swear that even though it was over in seconds the rest of this at the time seemed to stretch out forever. Into the light behind those massive talons roared in an enormous hawk. To this day I’m not sure who was more surprised to see who, but the result was the same for both parties. The next few second degenerated to a knife fight in a phone booth. This bird (although my brain at the time hadn’t registered it as such) despite his best “oh ****” effort to stop hit me square in the solar plexus, sending me back hard into the door. Instinctively I began wildly flailing with both the brick hand and the mouse hand at this as yet unidentified threat. The bird for his part bounced off of me and tried to fly up and away, but in his own panic hit the ceiling with a thud and sputtering to the floor in a rain of feathers. As he did he let out a loud screech that did little to calm the situation. Likewise in the midst of my flailing the brick hand shattered the light plunging both parties into to confused and panicked darkness. I tried to back away still flailing and hit the guardrail so hard it partially gave way and sent me heels over ass off the side of the porch. I landed on the mouse (thankfully sunny side down) and had the front of my head collide with the corner of the brick I was holding. With the wind knocked out of me and my bell rung I had no choice but to lay there and allow my thoughts to final collect.

Once I had finally pieced together what had happened I noticed that there was not a small amount of blood coming out of a scalp wound. I picked myself up wincing – but fortunately other than some bruises and that cut I was no worse for wear. Gathering the shards of my dignity I walked up the back steps and calmly knocked on the door. “Honey, please let me in – I’m hurt.” No answer. “Hey, I’ve got a nasty cut and you’ve locked the door – can you open the door?” No answer. I walked around to the front porch and knocked. Still no answer. Finally I walk to the bedroom window. “Please open up, I’m cut up and tired.” Finally the blinds crack and flash light shines in my eyes. “How do I know this isn’t a trick?” she says. I just stared at her in stunned silence for a moment. The flashlight goes out and I hear the front door unlocked. I walk in and she is standing there holding the bat I kept by the bedroom door in those days. “Why did you lock me out, I was calling for help?” Fair question. “You said something was after you and I was scared so I locked the door and hid.” Love you too babe, love you too…

 

[bradgator2]

This is a true story, from a sailing trip I was on in 2012. It’s the 5th day on an epic sailing trip in the Virgin Islands. We are moored in the harbor of the little slice of heaven known as Saba Rock, off of Virgin Gorda. At this point, everybody is golden tan, everybody has consumed so much alcohol that you are actually dependent on consuming more, and everyone wants to enjoy a nice of day of relaxing on the beach or kite boarding.

Late afternoon sets it in, and happy hour starts at the local bar with $4 pain killers. This drink speaks the truth: it removes pain. It is the perfect combination of Pusser’s Rum, pineapple juice, and coconut juice. It has the magical power of making you forget how many you have consumed.

The wind blew continuously the entire trip. Several days before, a local shop owner in Trellis Bay, Tortola even commented that she has never seen wind like this in the 30 years that she lived there. That night in Trellis Bay was the Full Moon Festival. An amazing party where one of the highlights was setting ablaze massive steel balls filled with gasoline soaked wood which are located about 20 yards off shore. As they were preparing to light these massive candles, the crowd grew near and many people were standing in ankle deep water. The wind was blowing directly on shore. As the fireballs quickly grew, the embers looked like exploding canisters of napalm setting the crowd on fire. Remembering the events of that night, I have no clue how nobody was burned alive. Sadly, we didn’t realize the significance of how bad a combination of fire, wind, and alcohol can be.

Back in Saba Rock harbor, night has set and good judgment disappeared about 3 hours ago. One of our crew reveals the fact the he brought Chinese floating lanterns and tonight would be perfect night to launch them. Obviously airport security in the Virgin Islands is non-existent. Our boat is moored just about as windward as possible from the entire armada of sail boats parked for the night. For the record, sail boats have tall masts. The few people who uttered: “I don’t know about this” were quickly convinced that this was probably the most brilliant idea ever. So the plan was for everybody to take a lantern, light the kerosene soaked wax ring, and all release into the beautiful night sky. Unfortunately, we underestimated how hard these would be to light due the never ending wind blowing across the boat. Nobody could light their lantern, and so Plan B was to focus on one lantern at a time.

We quickly learned that once the kerosene soaked wax ring on a Chinese lantern is lit, it gets hot. Really hot. But you have to wait for the lantern to fill with heat in order for it to float away. Again, the wind didn’t help this situation. Some poor soul held onto the lantern, eyebrows starting to melt, begging to let it go. When he did, the wind blew it directly into the water. It maybe traveled 60 or 70 feet downwind. Being a good steward of the environment, I jumped into a dinghy and fetched the water logged lantern out of the harbor. Of course, I had to wait until the wax ring extinguished itself because it had the amazing ability to stay lit in the water. I thought about bringing up this newly found fact to the rest of the crew, but the pain killer told me not to.

So I decided to stay in the dinghy, leeward of our boat, to enjoy some peaceful alone time. The sky was so amazingly clear that night. Even though I was only maybe 100 feet from our boat, I couldn’t hear anything due to the never ending wind. It was almost pure silence with the occasional metal ding sound that is ever present on a sailboat. So I just quietly watched my friends attempt to light another lantern. Which they did, and this time they held on long enough for a perfect launch. Now I have seen the space shuttle launch, in person. And this lantern reminded me of that. An amazing fire ball that lifted high into the black sky until it was the size of star. Nobody onboard the boat that night ever envisioned that it would be such an amazing treat for the eyes. So of course, we had to do it again.

I quickly cranked up the dinghy and returned to our boat to invite somebody to watch the next launch from the downwind perspective. The Captain quickly jumped at the opportunity. This time however, the lantern launcher did not hold on long enough and the lantern dove straight to the water upon release. Miraculously, it never touches the water as it struggles to lift into the sky and is heading directly toward us. About 30 feet windward of us, it starts to rise and it is maybe 10 feet off the water as it crosses over our dinghy.

It’s amazing the thoughts that run through your head in just a few seconds. My initial thought was that this is bad. We are in the middle of harbor filled with sailboats and a floating ball of fire is struggling to reach a comfortable height. I also thought about jumping up and snagging that sucker right out of the sky. Luckily, the pain killer was on my side and warned me of the possibility of setting my hand on fire. So we could do nothing except watch the lantern rise at an incredibly slow rate of ascent. Rise, baby, rise. Please rise. The Captain starts yelling, “Start the dingy, start the dingy.” I could hear him yelling, but my brain couldn’t get my body moving. And that is when the freshly lit Chinese lantern flew directly into the mast of another sailboat in the harbor.

There have been a few times that I have panicked in my life. Driving home from the hospital with my newborn daughter in the backseat… that was panic. Totaling my truck in a snow storm in deserted eastern Oregon, while I was technically unemployed because I was moving from one job to another… that was panic. And then there comes the feeling of setting another boat on fire, in the middle of a harbor, in pitch black darkness, at maybe 10 o’clock at night, in a foreign country.

At this point we are racing towards the sailboat and we could tell the occupants were awake and in the aft of the boat, but have not realized yet that their boat was on fire. Now I don’t remember the specifics of the dinghy. It probably had a 15 HP motor and could plow through the water at maybe 15 MPH. Although in our case, I think a sea monster had a hold of us and we could only travel at 2MPH. But we eventually got to their sailboat and the Captain leaped aboard. Imagine part flying squirrel and part Spiderman. I think the pain killers turned him into a super hero.

By now, the actual burning paper of the lantern and the burning wax ring had separated and fallen onto the deck of the boat. I was busy trying to tie up the dinghy. I couldn’t see what our Captain was doing. I think he actually stopped to admire the stars or check out the amazing sailboat he was now standing on. I am sure his version is different. The occupants of the boat were now racing toward the carnage. In all the confusion, I thought the guys were German and were going to kill us with WWII era machine guns. Somebody, I don’t know if was the Captain or the German, threw the burning wax wing overboard. In a million to one shot, it landed right in my freaking dinghy. A dinghy that is inflatable. And a dinghy that has a container of gasoline sitting right between my feet. I quickly tossed it overboard and watched as it burned underwater. Luckily my dinghy escaped friendly damage.

Back on the sailboat, it was pure chaos. But nothing on their boat caught on fire and the only flames were from the actual lantern itself. Thinking back, it was probably the wind that kept anything else from igniting. I was scared, but I came onboard. The Captain at this point was already telling his 4th version of what happened. I think it started with, “My buddy and I were just motoring around in the dinghy, at night, and saw this fireball hit your sailboat.” The painkillers were telling him to lie, but he is an honest man and eventually the full truth came out. The only real mess was that the burning wax melted all over the deck of their boat. Which was a total bear to remove and I needed to return to our boat to get more cleaning supplies.

As I got back into the dinghy to return to our boat, I couldn’t see it. The rest of crew were literally scared out of their minds, turned out all the lights, and were basically hiding. So naturally, I told them that these guys were very upset and are holding our Captain hostage until the Coast Guard shows up. I quickly grabbed some bleach, several bottles of rum, and headed back for the cleanup.

With a lot of elbow grease, we basically got their sailboat back to pristine condition. With only a very small brown, burnt looking spot on the deck. The real tragedy was their boat was brand new and on its maiden voyage. Their boat was actually filled with a bunch of very cool, old, rich, Danish sailors who could barely speak a word of English. After the dust settled, they invited us to heavily drink and eat nachos made of Cool Ranch Doritos. This is an ingenious combination that I have used many times since then. I had to return to our boat to bring back more alcohol… and more drinkers. I told the rest of still hiding crew that we needed to pay them off with booze. It turned into a very fun late night drinking.

Saba Rock:

 

[bradgator2]

I believe Zambo re-posted this story in a poop thread. It's one of the funniest stories I have ever read:

Before a company goes public, the highest level executives embark on a multi-city tour with their investment bankers to drum up support for the upcoming IPO. This trip is called a roadshow and since the group will typically visit dozens of cities on a tight schedule, a private jet is the preferred means of transportation. During a roadshow, it's not unusual to visit two or three cities in a single day so work starts at the crack of dawn. That doesn't mean the group goes to bed early. Every night, the bankers treat their clients to a wild night out in whatever town they are in, complete with thousand dollar dinners and endless alcohol. No matter how hard the group parties the night before, the private jet will lift them off to their next destination very early the next morning.

Just for a minute, pretend you're an investment banker traveling with some very important clients on one of these roadshows. Now imagine that you spent the previous night drinking way beyond your limit only to be startled out of bed by a piercing 6:30 am wake up call. In an attempt to get your head and body feeling remotely human again, you scarf down some waffles, eggs, bacon and at least two glasses of coffee at the hotel's breakfast buffet before jumping on the shuttle to the private airport. Within a few minutes of arriving at the airport, your entire group is seated and the plane begins to taxi down the runway. At this point you might feel a bit of relief as the morning's blur subsides. All you have to do is sit back and relax for the one hour flight to the next city.

There's just one problem. In your rush to get out of the hotel, down to breakfast and onto the plane you forgot to do one very crucial thing. Go to the bathroom. And I'm not talking about peeing. You have a stomach full of dinner, desert, drinks, eggs, waffles and coffee churning around your lower intestine at 30,000 feet. But that's not the worst part. True horror sets in when you realize you're not on a spacious 20 person G5 with couches, beds, lay-z boys and a fully tucked away private bathroom. No, on this day you are traveling on a six-person puddle jumper sitting shoulder to shoulder with your clients and co-workers.

Just over halfway through the flight, all the coffee in my stomach feels like it's percolating its way down into my lower intestine. I hunker down and try and focus on other things. What feels like an hour, but probably isn't more than twenty minutes, passes. We then enter what turns out to be pretty violent turbulence. With each bounce, I have to fight my body, trying not to **** my pants. "Thirty minutes to landing, maybe forty five" I try and tell myself, each jostle a gamble I can't afford to lose. I signal to [the flight attendant] and she heads toward me.

"Excuse me, where is the bathroom, because I don't see a door?" I ask while still devoting considerable energy to fighting off what starts to feel like someone shook a seltzer bottle and shoved it up my ass. She looks at me, bemused, and says, "Well, we don't really have one per se." She continues, "Technically, we have one, but it's really just for emergencies. Don't worry, we're landing shortly anyway."

"I'm pretty sure this qualifies as an emergency," I manage to mutter through my grimace. I can see the fear in her face as she points nervously to the back seat. The turbulence outside is matched only by the cyclone that is ravaging my bowels. She points to the back of the plane and says, "There. The toilet is there." For a brief instant, relief passes over my face. She continues, "If you pull away the leather cushion from that seat, it's under there. There's a small privacy screen that pulls up around it, but that's it." At this point, I was committed. She had just lit the dynamite and the mine shaft was set to blow.

I turn to look where she is pointing and I get the urge to cry. I do cry, but my face is so tightly clenched it makes no difference. The "toilet" seat is occupied by the CFO, i.e. our fuking client. Our fuking female ****ing client!

Up to this point, nobody has observed my struggle or my exchange with the flight attendant. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." That's all I can say as I limp toward her like Quasimodo impersonating a penguin, and begin my explanation. Of course, as soon as my competitors see me talking to the CFO, they all perk up to find out what the hell I'm doing.

Given my jovial nature and fun-loving attitude thus far on the roadshow, almost everybody thinks I'm joking. She, however, knows right away that I am anything but and jumps up, moving quickly to where I had been sitting. I now had to remove the seat top – no easy task when you can barely stand upright, are getting tossed around like a hoodrat at a block party, and are fighting against a gastrointestinal Mt. Vesuvius.

I manage to peel back the leather seat top to find a rather luxurious looking commode, with a nice cherry or walnut frame. It had obviously never been used, ever. Why this moment of clarity came to me, I do not know. Perhaps it was the realization that I was going to take this toilet's virginity with a fury and savagery that was an abomination to its delicate craftsmanship and quality. I imagined some poor Italian carpenter weeping over the violently soiled remains of his once beautiful creation. The lament lasted only a second as I was quickly back to concentrating on the tiny muscle that stood between me and molten hot lava.

I reach down and pull up the privacy screens, with only seconds to spare before I erupt. It's an alka-seltzer bomb, nothing but air and liquid spraying out in all directions – a Jackson Pollock masterpiece. The pressure is now reversed. I feel like I'm going to have a stroke, I push so hard to end the relief, the tormented sublime relief.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." My apologies do nothing to drown out the heinous noises that seem to carry on and reverberate throughout the small cabin indefinitely. If that's not bad enough, I have one more major problem. The privacy screen stops right around shoulder level. I am sitting there, a disembodied head, in the back of the plane, on a bucking bronco for a toilet, all while looking my colleagues, competitors, and clients directly in the eyes. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" briefly comes to mind.

I literally could reach out with my left hand and rest it on the shoulder of the person adjacent to me. It was virtually impossible for him, or any of the others, and by others I mean high profile business partners and clients, to avert their eyes. They squirm and try not to look, inclined to do their best to carry on and pretend as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, that they weren't sharing a stall with some guy crapping his intestines out. Releasing smelly, sweaty, shame at 100 feet per second.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry" is all the ashamed disembodied head can say…over and over again. Not that it mattered.

"Pretty sure this qualifies as an emergency"

 

[Back Alley Gator]

That was great 5Star....I have to ask...was a mutually acceptable division of labor and responsibility ever worked out between the two of you regarding dispatching vermin? That would have had to have been the first thing we discussed after getting my scalp sewn up.

Like you, I spend lots of time in the country and have certain expectations about wild animals around and in the home. :)

 

[Swampy!]

Thought about a thread where we share some stories after recalling a few in the box last week. We've had something like this before, but might not be a bad time to tell a few. Share if you will. Here's one from a while back (and it's true)...

I have a good buddy that finished law school after graduating from UF, got a job with the district attorney in Marianna, met a girl and asked her to marry him. She accepted and her folks put on this big engagement party and invited a bunch of his family and friends from Gadsden county. My wife and I went with another couple and had a great time not only meeting his future wife's family, but also seeing a bunch of our old gang. We also had a friend of ours that went stag, known to all as "Big." He was well-named as he stood about 6'3" and weighed 375 or better. He was as full of you-know-what as he was large and was always the life of the party.

The groom-to-be brought his future brother-in-law up to a group that included Big and introduced him as so-and-so from Malone. Malone, of course, was renowned for its high school basketball program having won multiple state championships. Big walked up and shook the gentleman's hand and said "From Malone, huh? I thought there wasn't nothin' in Malone but (hoars) and basketball players!" The guy's face turned beet red and you could tell he felt rightly insulted, but being he was smaller than Big he was struggling with whether or not to square off and defend his honor. After a few seconds, he summoned up the courage and told Big with balled up fists and a little quiver to his lips "Sir, I'll have you know my wife is from Malone!" Without missing a beat, Big replied "Really? What position did she play?!" We fell about the place.

Cover, I live in Cottonwood, AL; just across the state line from Malone. My sister-in-law actually teaches elementary school at Malone. The description is appropriate!

 

[Back Alley Gator]

I've got two stories from my time as a software developer at a financial services firm in NC. Both of them involve the same fellow, a legally blind software developer I'll call WC. This fellow was amazing in that he managed to hold down a job as a developer and function at a (mostly) high level despite being unable to see text smaller than a quarter inch per character from a foot away from the screen.

Anyway, this first story happened in mid to late 2000. The QA team had finished its nightly automated build and regression testing of our application. The idea was that any issues introduced the prior day would be caught overnight and reported for attention the next day. Everything had completed and test results had been reported. At that point automated jobs rebooted every single rack machine in the testing lab. None of them booted properly. Every single machine sat there with an error message asking for a bootable disk. Naturally this led our very excitable and generally unplesant test lead to pitch a fit, and an investigation was launched.

None of the developer machines were affected and none of the non-rack mounted QA machines were affected. Over the course of two days, development essentially stopped as everyone was tasked with searching through the code changes to see what happened. It turned out, WC was working on a project that required us to write large numbers of files to the TEMP folder on the machine. To do that, WC used the standard Windows API GetTempPathA. This API scans various locations for the environment variable that points to the TEMP folder on the machine. Due to laziness, he failed to keep track of all the temp files he'd written and just removed all files in the TEMP folder figuring "What the hell...they're only temp files. If they're locked, the delete operation will fail."

All of that was bad enough, but he neglected to check what folder was returned as TEMP. Documentation on GetTempPathA says if it can't find an environment variable for TEMP, it will return the Windows folder. For whatever reason the rack mounted blades didn't respond with a valid environment variable for TEMP and so C:\Windows was returned instead and all of the files in that folder were removed. Since this happened shortly after the Melissa/ILOVEYOU virus had swept through the Philippines, we called the incident the WCLOVESYOU event. Ultimately all of the machines were re-imaged and re-configured and the code was fixed.


The second story involving WC is more straightforward. For whatever reason, management assigned him the task of developing UML documentation for our application. Why they chose the blind guy to write UML diagrams is unknown. Anyway, WC was hard at work creating a use case diagram complete with stick figures interacting with terminals and such.

For whatever reason, WC decided that his stick figures needed feet. Feet are not part of the standard UML diagram so he added line segments to the bottom of the stick figures where their legs ended. Unfortunately, these lines were in no way connected to the rest of the figure. So, when the figure was moved in the diagram, the feet stayed where they were. What wound up happening was that one of the stick figures was moved down and to the right such that the foot was now protruding from the stick figure's crotch. WC, being blind, completely missed this fact. He sent the diagram out for feedback to the entire dev/qa/business teams. We called that the WCLOVESYOULONGTIME event.

 

[GatorJ]

Okay, I've got one. Fair warning, it is long.


First, you need to understand that I grew up as rural as rural gets. When I say I grew up in the woods, I mean that I was part of an enclave consisting of a handful of homes literally surrounded by national forest with only two dirt roads out. We never really had any kind of pest problem because snakes and birds of prey (and a barnyard cat or two, batting cleanup) typically took care of it sight unseen, with the only the occasional owl pellet in science class as a reminder that there were even rodents in Florida.

In a much less loquacious recollection - We got a mouse in the house (as my wife called it) right before we went on an Alaskan cruise. This was probably about 15 years ago.


Wife called an exterminator who said to just catch it with a glue trap. She said “what do I do once we capture it”? He said “just fold the glue trap over and hit it with your shoe”. She then became distraught and said she didn’t want to kill it so he said to just pour a little bit of vegetable oil on it and it’ll break down the glue and he should be able to escape.


So I did exactly that. We caught it and I took it out to a field and poured a little bit of vegetable oil where he was adhered to the glue trap and after about 2 minutes he broke free and frantically ran through the field.


And then a hawk swooped down and took him.


A couple years ago I saw a video on YouTube of something very similar:

 

[bradgator2]

In a much less loquacious recollection - We got a mouse in the house (as my wife called it) right before we went on an Alaskan cruise. This was probably about 15 years ago.


Wife called an exterminator who said to just catch it with a glue trap. She said “what do I do once we capture it”? He said “just fold the glue trap over and hit it with your shoe”. She then became distraught and said she didn’t want to kill it so he said to just pour a little bit of vegetable oil on it and it’ll break down the glue and he should be able to escape.


So I did exactly that. We caught it and I took it out to a field and poured a little bit of vegetable oil where he was adhered to the glue trap and after about 2 minutes he broke free and frantically ran through the field.


And then a hawk swooped down and took him.


A couple years ago I saw a video on YouTube of something very similar:

it could always be worse:

 

[Back Alley Gator]

One more story, this one at my own expense. This one is a hunting story. Kinda. At least hunting and its accessories were involved.

This was back in 2002 or 2003, my second year of active hunting in NC. I had just acquired access to 500 acres of land 10 minutes from the house and was eager to go out and sit. This was sometime in the late October timeframe so it wasn't ungodly hot, but not cold either. I went out for a morning sit and freshened up some scrapes and a couple of scent wicks with Tinks69. (Doe in estrus urine, for those who don't hunt). The temps were in the 50s-60s and after a 4 hr sit, I hadn't seen anything and decided to put out some corn and head back to the house for lunch and a nap.

By the time I got back to the truck with my climber, I was sweating and hot. So I took off my coveralls and threw them in the back. I drove home, tossed the coveralls in the dryer, took a quick shower and started napping on the sofa. About 30-40 min later, my wife at the time came home from the store and woke me up.

"What are you doing with the dryer? Something's wrong in there. Did you kill something?", she asked.

Puzzled and a little worried, I groggily got up and walked over to the dryer. I knew what had happened before I got within ten feet. I'd left the little plastic bottle of Tinks in my pocket. It was now boiling in the dryer. The entire laundry room smelled of boiled deer piss. The bottle itself had elongated almost twice its normal length before the cap gave way and the pressure was released. Simultaneously cussing and apologizing I decided I might as well wear the coveralls and go out for my afternoon sit. Figured it would at least be decent cover scent. Not sure what the deer would smell, but it wouldn't be me.

My poor wife stayed home and ran wet towels through the dryer all afternoon long and succeeded in ridding the dryer and laundry room of the stench. Meanwhile, I sat all afternoon in those coveralls as penance. Not even the squirrels would come around. I saw nothing. Came home, threw everything in the washer and washed it for 2 hrs.

The wife and I had a good laugh and I was forgiven. Then, about a week or so later, she comes to me and complains that the dryer isn't working anymore. The clothes stay wet or it takes hours to actually dry a small load. Turns out, about 5 feet of flexible foil dryer duct had been completely eaten through by the urine. It looked like a stretched out slinky behind the dryer. I replaced the ductwork and the dryer lasted another ten years.

I still have those coveralls. And I still hunt in em.

 

[TLB]

My mouse stories aren't so awesome, and I know I will fall well short of the story telling ability shown thus far. Forgive me.


Story 1 - Ohio

Newlywed and relocated for work to Youngstown, OH, the wife and I had an apartment that offered one car space in a series of garage doors. Being the breadwinner and gentleman that I am, I took the garage space and left her to scrape snow. We had picked these apartments because they were up against a rather large park with 18hole golf course and plenty of walking trails. Coming into one winter, it was chilly enough to warrant using the car heater, but there was an odd noise to it, like the fan blades were coming apart. I assumed it was just getting old would have to be replaced - live with it. Though, as the weeks wore on, the heater also began to have a bad funk to it. So, I spent most of the winter - mind you, it was an awesomely long and cold Cleveland lake effect kinda winter - struggling with the decision to drive around cold or put up with the noise and smell. Being from Florida, I took the heat with the noise and the smell. Come mid-April, I can start switching from heat to AC; expecting the noise to continue I was also hoping the smell was the heater and wouldn't be an issue. It was. But being lazy, I then used the windows and let it go because I couldn't afford to replace the AC system. 6 more months of this, with the wife occasionally riding with and stating 'WTF?' regarding the noise-smell option not abating and not being addressed. Dreading another winter, I finally take it to a mechanic to get it checked out. You know what he told me when it was 'fixed'. Because of the coming winter, a mouse must have left the park and climbed into my engine compartment for warmth, then got himself trapped in the fan blades of the AC system. I wasn't presented with the carcass, I'd had enough of my own experience with it for nearly a year. On the bright side, it only cost a few hundred dollars to tear everything apart and keep on using the AC the way it was. Only a few short months for the smell to finally go away.



Story 2 - Pennsylvania

In 2008 we moved to a new (to us) home, built in a large development back in 1995. Houses everywhere, no farms, fields, or parks. However, there are enough woods and creeks nearby that on occassion I've seen a fox running through the neighborhood; our neighbors complained a lot about the rabbits tearing up their gardens, and once in a great while, deer might wander through. Still, we're in a dense area of single family homes, relatively built up. The net of it is, wildlife persists, but isn't dominant. Our house is at the crest of hill for the development, so winds are always the same direction, beating against our bedroom wall. For a few nights, I keep hearing rasping noises, and write it off as the wind blowing branches against the side of the house. After a week or so, I start to question my grasp of what's really going on. I should pause here, and note, my only experience with a mouse was the Ohio episode. Still, there comes times when I'm in a downstairs office, listening to the rasping noises, and realize that while there is a shared wall up against the trees....the noise has moved above my head - to the first floor ceiling, second level floor. There's no tree branches between levels, nor wind. Awwwwno.

We'll pause for a moment and inform our readers that this was roughly December or January of yet another wonderful winter of snow. A few weeks prior, I took the kids out sledding on a great hill - steep, long, and only a few trees to maybe run into. While alternating which kid to shove downhill with all my might, I hear a bunch of branches under the snow go crackle-crackle-crackle-SNAP-crackle. I turn to my friend, a certified PA, and inform him that I don't think that sounded right. I didn't believe I broke anything, as I could stand up fine. Though I'd sprained my ankles many a time over the years, and this felt similar...but never with that sound. We go to a nearby seat, he does a quick check and thinks things are alright. I call the wife, she's busy with his wife and tells me 'You are fine.' I appreciate her expert second opinion. After an additional 45 minutes in the ice and snow, I call her again and say we are done. More accurately, I tell her I'm frozen numb and tired of this sht. We pack up, go back to their house, and while the kids play I strip that leg down and the PA takes a closer look. Everything looks fine. Push here, twist there, no real pain (because I'm numb) but he indicates it might be worth getting an x-ray anyway to be safe. So I do. And you guessed it again, broken leg. Technically not the load bearing bone where it connects to the ankle, and that's how I was functioning up to that point, but your's truly just earned 6 weeks in a cast. Some who have experienced this knows what a joy it is to shower in a bag, to crutch your way around (on ice, for the extra challenge), and have to navigate up and down stairs in a multi-level house. So, I'm about 3 weeks into my first time with a leg cast when we return you to our story.

I'm awake at night listening to the rustling in the walls, and ceilings, knowing what it means and praying there's only one or two, and most importantly my wife never figures it out. No.such.luck. One evening after an enjoyable day at work, I come in on my crutches through the kitchen to find the wife watching tv from the couch, both children are already asleep. I'm in the kitchen getting a bite to eat when she suddenly jumps up, screams and runs to the kitchen gibbering incessantly and trying to climb the island. I ask "what?" to which she replies "RAT! RAT! GET THE DAMN THING NOW!" I lean on my crutches, look at her, and wonder if this is really happening. It is. And the cripple is the MAN for the job. I talk her into helping me start clearing things out of the living room, as it has a sunken floor and I'm certain I can trap it without difficulty. It's behind the couch, in the corner. So I pull out chairs, end tables, everything I can to clear most of the floor. Then, being an engineer, I start laying down things as a barricade type corral to keep him contained. I hand her a small office trashcan to throw on top of him once I flip the couch over, expecting he'll just be running around in the roughly 6'x6' containment area I've constructed to keep him out of the fireplace or anywhere else. Plan is laid out, everyone ready, and....FLIP. Mouse takes off straight at the wife. She screams, throws the trashcan in the air, and escapes to the kitchen island again (it's not just in cartoons). So the one legged guy on crutches now has to grab the trashcan and catch Speedy Gonzalez...yeah, that'll work. I fail, only partly because I'm not mobile. I fail in most part because the ****er can jump and climb and laughs at my pitiful corral on his way up out of the sunken floor, across the kitchen, blows the wife a kiss as he escapes under the sink cabinets.

I now have the wife informing me she is going to wake up the kids and stay in a hotel until I get this resolved. Yay me. I talk her out of leaving, explaining the mouse is more afraid of us than we are of him. As I'm explaining, she's on the phone with Terminex signing us up for a year minimum of pest treatment. I will say, they've done a great job for the past few years. Nary an issue other than...

I dropped the Terminex after a few years, as we'd had no troubles and I didn't need the expense (I thought). But last fall, as the air gets cold and animals seek warmth, I hear the rustling again in the walls. I keep praying she stays asleep, but I know it is only a matter of time. It quiets down for a bit, and I assume he left. Until the day I come home from work and the cat keeps messing with the cabinet doors under the sink. I open them up, look in and see nothing, and tell the cat to scram. He doesn't...he keeps messing with the door. So, I proceed to yell and smack the cat to tell him how bad he is and throw him in another room. He goes right back to the cabinets. I open again, and this time see two beady eyes looking back from under a pile of crap. Good cat! I'm smarter, stronger, faster, and no longer crippled...I will win this battle, I am confident. I get a black trash bag and tape it around the opening to the cabinets. I then proceed to move things out to expose him, expecting him to sprint for the safety of that big black space, and it works. He's in! He gets still, as he's not sure where he is or what's going on. I get still, because wtf to I do now? I take it to the garage, and proceed to beat the hell out of it - slamming the bag against the concrete floor, eventually going to the workbench and giving several whacks with a hammer until I hear a few good crunches and no more movement. Then, kinda icked, I put the black trashbag inside an additional trash bag. Why? I can't say, but it was necessary. I come back in the house to find the wife on the phone with Terminex again.

This time, they found the hole under the sink where they've all been coming in, and they also took care of the exterior holes near the bedroom walls. We've remained rodent free for the past year or so, and my wife has assured me Terminex (not me) will keep us this way indefinitely.



Story 3 - Pennsylvania, 'the friend'

New Years Eve a year ago, we all gather at the one friend's house who always likes to be the center of the party. She's a single mom, a bit odd, the type that does crystals and pilates, whole natural foods, not quite granola and birkenstocks but still pretty crunchy, strong opinions everyone is entitled to hear whether they want to or not. So, her house is something out of the 60's, in an old neighborhood, but lots of trees and when she got the house the entire yard was overgrown. So we get to her house for the party, many of us have adult beverages and play games, she drops into conversation that she thinks a bat has crawled into her house. What? Yes, she claims it is a bat as they hear it in the walls at night sometimes - little squeaks and eeks. Ok, whatever natural girl. We countdown, and head home. Less than 5min at home and the phone rings, me and another guy HAVE to come get it now, they located where it is. We have to catch it and set it loose (she can't hurt animals). Of course, she is ultra resistant to logic about how setting it loose just means it comes back in the way it did before. Logic be damned! She wants it out The other fella is supremely hammered, and by nature a 'just do it' kinda personality. We get there, locate where there is a rip in the wall and trace out the sound from there. Once isolating it, we tear a hole in the wall (you're welcome, lady) to get it out, and this black furry things shoots across the kitchen up into the ceiling area of a small alcove above a door. I grab the fishing net, because that's what we have. I deftly swat at it, and capture it in the netting above the door and then think 'WTF do I do now?' Because, I'm above the door, if I try to slide it down, the door frame will create gaps and it will get loose again. I'm motionless, going through my lack of options repeatedly when suddenly WHAM! By buddy grabbed some blunt object, I still don't know what, and simply smashes its skull into the wall leaving a somewhat poignant arc of blood where he followed through after initial impact. Turns out, it was a baby squirrel from the trees outside that somehow fell out of it's nest and entered the house for warmth. Well, he doesn't have to worry about where to live next. We disposed of the body, and as I informed her we let it loose and she should watch for it coming back, my buddy was quickly wiping the walls clean. We weren't invited back this NYE.

 

[5-Star Finger]

That was great 5Star....I have to ask...was a mutually acceptable division of labor and responsibility ever worked out between the two of you regarding dispatching vermin?

Well, it's acceptable to me. I still saddle up and ride off to war and receive a hero's welcome when the task is complete. Time (and me coming home with countless dead animals) has made her less squeamish but it's still squarely my department and she's never lost her soft spot for anything mammalian.

Spiders are something different all together - as with them she is cold blooded. There is simply no curing her of her unhinged proxy war against arachnids. Those poor critters must think I'm the damned grim reaper. I try to atone for this irrational slaughter by keeping it contained to the house. I serve in an UN-esk peacekeeper fashion to 8-leggers that live on the property so long as they don't violate the house.

 

[5-Star Finger]

This is a true story, from a sailing trip I was on in 2012.

Were you traveling with Prestige Worldwide?

 

[5-Star Finger]

I knew what had happened before I got within ten feet. I'd left the little plastic bottle of Tinks in my pocket. It was now boiling in the dryer. The entire laundry room smelled of boiled deer piss.

I can't even imagine what this smelled like.