(type: bizarre ... a first person account)

Ed: Although I don't feel like any of my own life stories are as remarkable as most of the ones I've been posting here, I decided it would be silly for the creator of a story-based site not to include a story of his own.

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I had an encounter with a special kind of freak not long after I first set foot in California. I had finished doing some shopping one day in San Mateo and was waiting at the bus stop when I saw a man exit a building across the street with a large radio slung on his shoulder, yelling back at the building as he walked. Now, keep in mind that this is broad daylight on a fairly hot, sunny day, at a large intersection. The man had spiked red hair and was dressed in a black leather jacket, black jeans and white high-tops. His radio was blaring the Eagles. He wandered a few feet to the right, paused for a minute in indecision, then started back the other way, heading toward the intersection, where he waited for the light to change. "This is not a good sign," I said to myself.

He started to cross the street. Oh, no. The intersection was filled with, "Welcome to the Ho-tel Cal-iforn-ia..." Please God, don't let that asshole sit down here. But indeed, he stepped onto the sidewalk, turned toward me, walked over and (oblivious to the fact that anyone else was present) sat down, radio in his lap. I stared straight ahead.

To suggest that this person was hopped up on something would be to suggest that water is wet. He was sweaty, shaking and behaviorally incoherent. He fiddled with the tuner, trying to find a station he preferred, but the volume was on max, so I was treated to a lovely barrage of full-bore static in between radio chatter. Finally he found a station he liked: the same station. Must have been a marathon, because now they were playing, "New Kid in Town." This drugged-up, red-headed punker dressed in black I-don't-give-a-shit garb apparently loved his soft-rock ballads from the 70's so much that he had to crank that volume to the max. In fact, he loved it so much that after a couple of minutes of staring into space, he was compelled to stick his fist in the air and scream, "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" I swear I'm not making this up. I, of course, was doing my best during all of this to sit perfectly still and hope that he didn't grab my neck and tell me to make the dancing zebras go away.

It was apparently then time for a nap. Further evidence of his being unaware of my presence was the fact that, despite our bench being plenty long, he laid down in my direction. The paper cup that I had been drinking lemonade from earlier still sat beside me, and his head happened to come down right on top of it. He tried to lay his head down a couple of times, not comprehending why something was poking at the side of his head, then turned, saw the cup and knocked it to the ground. I managed to scoot over a little bit just before his head leaned against my hip. *shudder*

Finally, the bus came, and fortunately for everyone on it, Freak Show Red did not need a lift. I looked around a bit for some recognition of my torment, but of course no one on the bus could have known what the nut-job on the bench had been doing for the past ten minutes. Oh well. At least it was over.

Posted by Whit at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

(type: funny ... a second person account)

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Capio and some friends made a surfing trip to Mexico a few years ago. Their destination was so remote that they had to take an SUV down a very long, backwoods trail, much of it crossing the desert. The beautiful scenery that they passed along the way included some amazing 30-40 foot cacti, which they were all very impressed with. More impressed, no doubt, because they were all fairly drunk.

After several hours of driving, one of the passengers, a Phd, suggested that it would be fun to knock one of the cacti down with the truck. They all agreed that was a good idea, but forgot about it after a few moments. Several minutes later the Phd spoke up again about his terrific cactus-felling plan, which they again agreed would be funny but didn't make a concerted effort to make it happen. Phd would not be dissuaded. "I think we should go ahead and do it while we're thinking about it." Okay, okay, they said, and stopped when they found a suitable plant.

The cactus in question was something like a foot in diameter -- much narrower than some of the giants they had passed, but this seemed like a safe start to their new hobby. Capio took to the driver's seat, lined up with the cactus and drove slowly into it. Bump. Nothing happened. No big deal, he just backed up a little further, drove forward again at about twice the speed of the first effort, and... bump. Still, the cactus remained unfazed. Third time's a charm! He backed up around thirty feet from the cactus and launched forward at a strong clip, and then...

Crash. Probably one would have to be drunk not to guess that either A) the cactus would be stronger than the bumper and grill of a car, or B) the cactus, when knocked down, would fall toward the vehicle. As you may have guessed, both of those results applied in this case. The front of the truck was smashed in, but worse yet, the windshield was almost completely covered in a lattice of broken glass.

How funny, they all said - it totally destroyed the vehicle! Ha ha ha! But wait a second... how the hell are we going to get home? They were ten hours from the U.S. border and that mangled truck was their only method of getting there. The engine did still work, but there was almost no visibility through the windshield. One of the members of the group suggested that they knock out the windshield and use their scuba masks to drive, but they were fairly certain that the border patrol would not let a vehicle with no windshield into the country (Ed: but they would allow a webbed windshield in?). The final decision was to make use of a tiny, triangular area at the bottom left of the windshield that was still intact. The trip home was scary and long, but they eventually made it out of the Mexican desert with no further incident.

Oh, and they later learned that felling cacti is highly illegal. Job well done, guys -- very classy.

Posted by Whit at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(type: amazing ... a second person account)

Ed: I'm having trouble getting SB rolling (more on this later), so I'm going ahead with a story that would be better told by the main character if he would ever get around to writing it out for me. It's a story for everyone who wishes they could get their hands on the asshole who stole from them...

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Sometime after college, Mike made the obligatory trip to Europe. He was filling out a form at a post office one day in Spain when he set his wallet down on the table beside him. A couple of minutes later, a young girl rushed into the room and started yelling at him in Spanish (which he doesn't speak). The only phrase that she seemed to be able to deliver in English, and the only one he really needed, was, "Your book! Your book!" His wallet was gone.

Mike rushed out the door, took a quick glance around and saw nothing, so he took off running down the main street in front of him. He didn't get far before noticing a bus pulling to a stop further down the block, so he made a beeline toward it. Once on the bus, he scanned its occupants until his eyes fell on one kid who all but screamed "guilty" -- sweating, panting and not acknowledging the crazy American who had jumped onto the bus and stared everyone down. Mike walked over and faced him. "Give me my wallet," he said. The boy did nothing.

Mike grabbed his arm and pulled him off the bus. They scuffled around a bit before Mike reached into the kid's pocket and pulled a wallet out. He let go of the boy, who bolted away, then looked down at his hand. He had taken the kid's wallet instead. Down on the ground was the second wallet, Mike's. Justice is sweet.

Posted by Whit at 04:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(type: bizarre ... a third person account - this is a story that happened to one person and was told to me by another person the night I decided to create WSB)

Ed: I hate to include a third-person story, but not only is this a really good one, it's the first story that I actually collected for this purpose (well, it was also to make conversation with the author). I wasn't given any names, so I'm making them up.

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Marcus was vacationing in Mexico when he met another U.S. traveller, Maria, a cute chick who liked him enough to take him into the hot tub, where they... you know. Just before the you know commenced, Maria set her valuable Cartier watch on the side of the tub. Eventually they ended up in her room, at which point Maria realized that her watch was gone. She asked Marcus where her watch was, to which he replied "What watch?"

"You know what watch," she said. "The one you stole." Marcus assured her that he did not steal her watch, so they went back down to the hot tub to see if it was there, which of course it wasn't. Before long they had the entire hotel staff searching for the watch, to no avail.

The next day, Marcus was walking on the beach when he saw a woman scanning the sand with a metal detector. He walked up and asked her if she had come across a gold watch. She asked him to describe it, which he tried to do, and then she put down her detector, walked out into the water and started digging in the sand. She pulled up a canister of some kind and brought it back, opened it up, and... handed him a gold Cartier watch. Bizarre, to say the least, but unbelievably fortunate.

Not so fortunate was the coincidence that Marcus, the man who Maria was sure had stolen from her, now had the watch. He couldn't very well give it back and expect her to believe that he had never stolen it, so he asked a hotel manager to do so and say that he had found it. Maria was so grateful that she gave the man a $5000 reward.

Posted by Whit at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This is mainly a test. My apologies for the utterly mediocre look of this thing - I'm brand new to MT and haven't yet learned how to customize the look and feel (and you know I will). I'm excited about the concept, though, and look forward to seeing it take shape. Over and out.

Posted by Whit at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)