What Is The Craziest Thing You've Ever Experienced?

[Munjibunga]

My parents were on vacation and a friend brought a bottle of Everclear over.
We were being cool and lighting shots on fire. My drummer at the time, trying to be even cooler, decided to drown out the oxygen and put the fire out with his hand.
It worked, but the shot glass was hot from being on fire. And when all the oxygen burned out it created some suction that stuck the hot shot glass to his palm. He couldnt drum for a couple weeks and still has an O-shaped scar on his palm.

Bitchen.

 

[Chainsaw Willie]

I was13 (1976) when I heard some older boys talk about a "Polish Mortar". It had something to do with taping two metal tennis ball cans together to make a little cannon. It involved a hole at the base. Some rubbing alcohol, and a bicycle pump. It would launch a tennis ball clean out of the neighborhood. I didn't understand what I heard, and I had never seen one, but I was creative, industrious, and stupid, so I gave my best effort at building my own.

I took a can opener and removed the base of one can, then taped to another with a little hole nail-punched near the bottom. I poured some alcohol in, dropped a tennis ball in, and held a match to the hole. Nothing happened.

I poured more alcohol in, swirled it around so some came out the igniter hole, and held a match to the hole. The Alcohol on the outside of the can burned off slowly, but otherwise nothing happened.

I went in the garage and held the oxy-acetylene torch to the tiny hole and blew in some gas. I returned to the yard and this time there was a little "whoosh" but the tennis ball did not leave the can.

So my little 13-year-old brain figured most of the gas had leaked out, and the pressure I did create blew around the ball instead of pushing it. This time I wrapped the tennis all in duct tape so it sealed the can. I filled the can with both oxygen and acetylene and held my thumb over the little hole as I walked out to the yard.

I held the cannon on my left hand and the match in my right as I added flame to the equation.



I had never been close to an explosion before.
I had never heard an echo in my neighborhood before. (And actually it is kinda amazing that I ever heard anything ever again.)

The cans ripped open at the seam and wrapped around my left hand. Somehow all my fingers were still there. There was no blood, but everything from my fingertips to my elbow felt like I had a giant shot of Novocain. About 1/2 hour later I slowly began to feel pain, and the hand to mid forearm was turning dark purple.


But the worst,
The absolute worst thing...
Was at dinner that night, when my dad noticed I was only using my right hand, and I was hiding the left under the table. He demanded to see it. My mom freaked, and my dad made me explain what I did and why I thought that was a good idea.

That part really sucked.

 

[Chainsaw Willie]

Oh yeah, I forgot...

I never found the ball.

 

[paste]

OK, OK. I'll bring out the big guns, then. When PSA Flight 182 crashed in San Diego back in '78, it crashed just short of the house and a couple rental units owned by one of my colleagues at work. Bodies from the crash landed on his property, in his trees, and a flight attendant flew right through an upstairs wall and landed in the bath tub. Other bodies went through walls downstairs. My brother and I went up to his place two days after the crash to help clean things up.

We had a rented bobcat, and there was so much blood and body parts in his yard we had to excavate the upper six inches of dirt and put it in the alley for the city to come by and pick it up with a front-loader. We had to pick up any body parts and possessions, put them in black trash bags, and take them to a headquarters trailer PSA had set up nearby. There were bones and flesh of all sorts (ribs, fingers, spinal columns, etc.), but the hardest to deal with were parts obviously from children.

There were flesh and body parts in a big tree on his property. The city crew came and asked if he wanted to save the tree, or should they just cut it down. He had them cut it down. It was a mess.

I went into a laundry room where a body had gone through the wall, and my colleague's wife was trying to sweep flesh and sinew off the chicken wire that was exposed (it used to be used to support stucco). She was overwhelmed because she was in the house when the plane crashed and she was suddenly covered with blood - not hers. I told her to leave and go to her mother's house, which she did. I should mention that the temperatures were in the 90s, so the smell of death was oppressive.

I've asked my brother how he feels about the whole experience and he doesn't like to talk about it. He says it really affected him. It never seemed to bother me that much - so far. But it's been 35 years so I don't think it's going to. My colleague was never the same after that. He was completely devastated and became chronically bitter and irascible. He and his wife got divorced a couple years later.

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

Wait - so the city decided to offer cutting down your friends tree but not the pieces of body strewn throughout his house? Am I getting that right or did I miss something there

 

[Munjibunga]

Wait - so the city decided to offer cutting down your friends tree but not the pieces of body strewn throughout his house? Am I getting that right or did I miss something there

They were running a front-loader up and down the alley to pick up stuff that homeowners threw out there. There were so many houses affected that there weren't enough people to do the whole cleanup right away - they were working on removing the plane and the houses that were hit directly. I assume PSA eventually would have sent clean-up people into the peripheral areas, but who wants all that gore sitting in your yard for a week? They did recover the whole bodies and large body parts prior to our arrival there. We found a few ribs, which were pretty much the biggest pieces they didn't get in the first sweep.

One weird thing was that eventually PSA paid to re-stucco my colleague's structures and, in some parts with less damage, they just stuccoed over the existing. Unfortunately, there was fat and grease from bodies that had splattered on the old stucco, and about six months later grease spots started showing up in the new stucco. Ish.

 

[Munjibunga]

Then there was that motorcycle accident after which my right foot was lying very close to my right ear. I couldn't figure out how that could possibly be, but I do remember saying to someone, "Don't touch me. I think my leg is broken." My femur had snapped and it came right out through the flesh of my leg. There's much more to the story (drunk driver, hit-and-run, etc. etc.), but I think the PSA story should pretty much satisfy any residual morbid curiosity you might have.

 

[MatticusMania]

OK, OK. I'll bring out the big guns, then. When PSA Flight 182 crashed in San Diego back in '78, it crashed just short of the house and a couple rental units owned by one of my colleagues at work. Bodies from the crash landed on his property, in his trees, and a flight attendant flew right through an upstairs wall and landed in the bath tub. Other bodies went through walls downstairs. My brother and I went up to his place two days after the crash to help clean things up.

We had a rented bobcat, and there was so much blood and body parts in his yard we had to excavate the upper six inches of dirt and put it in the alley for the city to come by and pick it up with a front-loader. We had to pick up any body parts and possessions, put them in black trash bags, and take them to a headquarters trailer PSA had set up nearby. There were bones and flesh of all sorts (ribs, fingers, spinal columns, etc.), but the hardest to deal with were parts obviously from children.

There were flesh and body parts in a big tree on his property. The city crew came and asked if he wanted to save the tree, or should they just cut it down. He had them cut it down. It was a mess.

I went into a laundry room where a body had gone through the wall, and my colleague's wife was trying to sweep flesh and sinew off the chicken wire that was exposed (it used to be used to support stucco). She was overwhelmed because she was in the house when the plane crashed and she was suddenly covered with blood - not hers. I told her to leave and go to her mother's house, which she did. I should mention that the temperatures were in the 90s, so the smell of death was oppressive.

I've asked my brother how he feels about the whole experience and he doesn't like to talk about it. He says it really affected him. It never seemed to bother me that much - so far. But it's been 35 years so I don't think it's going to. My colleague was never the same after that. He was completely devastated and became chronically bitter and irascible. He and his wife got divorced a couple years later.

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

Damn Munji, thats some madness.

Coincidentally, I just watched the 2nd Season Finale of Breaking Bad with my gf yesterday.

 

[paste]

Madness indeed. I hope the people on the plane passed away a quick and painless death.

 

[IGotGas]

Man I remember the PSA accident like it was yesterday. That was long before we moved to Louisiana. I lived in Allied Gardens and went to Marvin Elementary School at the time. I think I was in 6th grade. I remember looking South at around 0930 or 1000 and seeing a tall black puller of smoke trailing up into the sky. When we returned to class, they rolled TV's into the class room and, well, we all sat there mouths agape.

My dad is a minister, and back then he preached in a church out in La Mesa. I can remember our church being involved in helping clean up efforts, and there were a round of funerals. Truly a horrific event. Sadly, evidence eventually showed that vast number of folks on the 727 died when the hit the ground or went through the walls and roofs of houses there in North Park.